Short, but not very simple question. At the end of the day it’s knowing your music, preparing as good as you can and actually going out there and doing it. With preparation I don’t mean creating and practicing a fixed set, but creating small 3-4 track playlists of tracks that go well together and you know when/where to mix in/out of. Then you can use the mini playlists as building blocks. Let’s say at some point you would think “A stint of Deep House would fit well here”, you take one of the appropriate playlists and you are ready to go without having to make a lot of on the fly decisions.
Not sure what you mean about is it okay to play an outro without the next song right after though.
First off, there are no hard rulez. You are the creative director of the evening and what you feel will work is what you must try. Experience will tell you if you were right 🙂 . Don’t be afraid to experiment, just be subtle about it. If you mean is it ok to play an outro out without beatmatching in the next track, then yes, by all means. I have let outro’s play out to the last note and used a 4-beat silence (do count lol) as a transition period. Then I dropped the strong first downbeat of a track in a different genre and took the crowd in another direction.
Again, you are the boss.
Final bits and pieces of advice:
1) Don’t take yourself too seriously, the crowd (especially a high school crowd) doesn’t!
2) Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. You learn most from the mistakes you make, not from the successes.
3) Expect things to go wrong your first gig and don’t worry about it. Nobody ever got up, stood behind the decks live for the first time and played the night like a pro. Transitions/mixes will go south (trainwrecks), music choices will not work out the way you thought (like clear out the dance floor, it happens), you’ll hit pause on the wrong deck sending the place into silence, cue up a song with the crossfader in the middle or the channel fader open and all the other things you can mess up in a DJ Booth. The sign of true maturity is the way you handle things if/when they go wrong, not trying to prevent them at all cost.
4) Be yourself, try to find the flow of the crowd and match it with yours. The ultimate gigs are where it feels you and the crowd are in the same place, the same flow. Suddenly everything seems to work, it’s like you can read their mind and they already know what’s coming
5) Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Be in the moment. Experience your first gig, you’ll only ever get ONE! Make it a memorable experience. It’s fun.
Good luck.
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