Here's a good topic for DDJT: The Recovery!

Yep, I have always had a set of (el cheapo) CD players sitting next to my MC6000 while playing mobile gigs, floorfilling CD tracks loaded and cued.

As far as making an IF … THEN … backup plan goes. I’d be careful with that. Yes it’s good to have a quick checklist/procedure of what to do when something goes south, there is are two downsides to extensive plans like the one you decribe. First, it sets you in a mode to start thinking about ALL that can go wrong. You might never be relaxed behind the tables again! Secondly, Murphy is all-present. So if you figure out 999 ways things can go wrong and how you can fix it, option 1000 will happen and you still have to act on the fly.

Personally I made sure I have some stuff redundant, so I am not dependant on any single piece of equipment/music. When something goes wrong, it’s either laptop (switch to alternate source, in my case CD-player, but iPad/iPhone will work too – be sure you don’t have all kinds of access codes to type and the device going into screen lock every two minutes) or controller/mixer (bit trickier when mobile DJ-ing, in a venue setting with a housemixer I’d look in advance what I can use that is already there or hook up my backup device to the house mixer). Anything else that goes wrong, it’s either too big a problem (entire PA blows, power is out) to do a quick fix on and you are gonna end up with extended silence, or someone else’s problem (venue system gone) and you stand back and don’t get in the way of the house engineer.

So, the first thing is to determine WHERE the failure is happening (why and how to fix the cause of the failure is of later concern) and then WHAT to do to resume musical playback asap. Even if I know it takes only 1 minute to fully reboot my laptop, I will still FIRST play a CD track when my laptop freezes and THEN start worrying about the laptop problem.

Secondly, see if the problem is easily solvable (dripping beer from a controller would indicate the controller is shot for the night at least), if the affected gear can be replaced (carrying a spare controller? I do 🙂 or if an alternate workflow is called for, starting your iPad DJ app for example. While the music continuous, you can cheat here and play a pre-recorded mix while you sort your stuff out, get rid of gear you don’t need, place the gear you WILL continue using so that it offers good working surface, then switch from emergency to alternate workflow and finish the night.

Hope that helps some.

Greetinx.

I will now tell you a secret why I always get out of such situations really easily and why such things are very easy to handle:
DO NOT PREPARE
This does not mean you should not have a backup. I plug a mp3 player or nowadays my iPad with Traktor for iPad into my mixer as backup, should my controller fail etc.

But the god honest truth is you cannot prepare for everything and if you prepare for one thing, something else will go wrong.
So the best thing that you can do to prepare yourself for being not prepared (awesome sentence here) is:
Be cool about it.

The only time I see people screwing up is when they panic.

If you teach yourself to be calm at all times even if you make bad mistakes you can instantly recover 99% of the time. If something really bad happens (like power outage on the PA or smth) and you stay cool, make a nice joke and look for the problem, it will simply make you look professional.
One time we had such a power outage at an outdoor wedding, the tech was looking for the problem and I simply animated the folks to do the “mana mana” song with me and we had fun until the power was back… just stay cool and make the best of things.