First Gig Tips?

(1)
Nobody ever said you have to beatmatch everything. There are loads of transitions you can do. For example mix during a break where no beats are happening, if the next track is 1/3 or 1/2 time of the previous, you can simply do a lot of echo and delay F/X with it so the beats will double up and then fade the F/X out. For hip hop you can use the song slam (aka slam the next track in with the crossfader) or do various BPM blends (look on youtube for DJ Iceman blend and you will find it)…. loads and loads more options. Just do not think about it too much, do not hesitate and if you produce a train wreck, just keep on spinning and make a flicking cool hand movement as if it was totally planned 😉

(2)
Well yes Serato DJ is a step up and yes your library (cue points, saved loops,…) stay with you. I am constantly using both as sometimes I have DJ students who only have Intro and I need to show them something, so I need to switch forth and back.
HOWEVER Intro is really good on its own, if you feel comfy with it, it is totally fine to gig with. If you have to short a time to adjust to Serato DJ it might overwhelm you and you might just do some train wrecks because you did not think about it. On the other hand there is no problem in upgrading and if you feel you are more comfy with Intro take this gig with Intro and train some more and play the next one with Serato DJ.

(3)
The DJ rule says that for a 4 hour set you should prepare 8 hours of music at least. I would add an additional hour of what I call “Plan B” tracks. Those are tracks that I actually do not want to play in my set, but I do know 100% that they will fill the dance floor. So if my set goes south at some point I can take some of the Plan B songs to fill up the floor again and then resume my set.

1. Just make sure everything flows, take em to the journey, for example, imo, you play some happy party flavor hip-hop, then you slammed it with some deep dark tech house, and then slammed it again with some happy party flavor hip-hop, this will confuse your crowds, try to do it for example a few hip hop tunes, then try to bridge it toward your tech/deep house, just find some good transition that can bridge the gap between those 2 different genre

2. How soon is your gig? if its sometimes this week, I would recommended to play it “safe”, stick what you know and comfortable with which is Serato Intro just for now, later on you can opt for the upgrade

3. usually for 1 hour sets, i prepped around 20 tracks, so 20 X 4 = 80 tracks or so, just like Terry recomended be ready for Plan B sets, make some kind of folder in your Serato Playlist, named it The Anthem, fill it with a songs that you sure-fired will rocked the crowd, somthing you can fell into if your Plan A sets didnt get the party jumping the way you wanted it, these Plan B sets you can pick one of the track to tease the crowd see what their reaction is

Oh and if you want to collect a lot of tracks, of course you can find a YouTube channel that plays songs you like (Discothrill for nu-disco/funky house songs for example) and you’ll find a hell lot of new songs ! And there’s a website I find really useful too : http://audiomap.tuneglue.net/ you can find a lot of similar artists with this !

And then there’s the “dig beatport” thing, you may spend hours searching for labels, artists, suggestions and Top 100 lists but most of the time it is worth it. The problem comes when you think that tracks on Beatport are too expensive, and some of them are only available here…

That will do it, make sure to install the newest Serato DJ 1.6.1 as it has full Mavericks support.