Gigs for teens

you have family in radio? ask them if you can tag along as a roadie! for free or little pay! what youll learn in return in priceless.

my cousin took me along as super cheap labor when i was 13 but i had no idea i would fall in love w/ this crazy thing!

i was just there to carry crates and gear and make a quick $60 and fast fwd to 20+ yrs and im still in this game!

Hey Nick,

What you’d need is a controller, small PA (if you don’t have one perhaps you can borrow one, perhaps there is a PA rental company that is sympathetic if you are playing in a mall on a saturday afternoon in return for some advertising) and a MIC!

Suggest to the store owner that you will come play music on a saturday afternoon for free. If you have the PA, tell him you’ll bring that for free too (otherwise see if you can have him chip in for the rental fee, which shouldn’t be too bad for two active speakers with stands anyway). Have all your marketing materials ready. If you can afford it, have one of those roll-up banner thingies (6 or 7 foot high) made with your name/logo/website/phonenumber.

Make short sets and in between do some announcing for the store (make sure you find out what the owner would like) and maybe for the PA rental company if they sponsored your gear. And of course you do your shout-outs.

Don’t forget to check for permits, mall rules and such. Don’t want to be shut down by the local rent-a-cop.

Greetinx,
C.

p.s. A groupie is one of those clingy fans that hang around artists all the time. The term you were looking for is roadie I think LOL

That’s the million-dollar question right there. On the one hand you want to show what you do normally. You want people to go “hey, I like this guys style, might invite him to play at my next party”. On the other hand if your style is a bit out there, you don’t want people detouring away from you and the shop you are playing at either.

Talk to the shop owner, maybe find out what kind of music they play in the store normally to get an idea. Put yourself in the minds of those that go shopping on a saturday afternoon. Not sure they’d be ready for happy hardcore :).

Your job (next to your own agenda of promoting yourself) should be to bring people into the place you are playing at. In my opinion that works best with highly recognisable and accepted tunes.

Oh, and keep the volume in check too. No use blasting people out of their socks.

Greetinx,
C.

i will tell you what i did
it worked for me but i can’t assure you that it will work for you as well
first have a weekly visit at the venue you want to play (don’t go immediately for the big ones)
you will see you will get contacted by PR managers in order to book from them as a costumer. after a month ask to see the main manager and talk to him
you should look confident
try not look that you need the job.just try to make him think that he needs you. for example i pointed out that there was no trance music during there parties and it is a huge genre with a lot of fans and djs(i gave also the example of many top djs,avb,svd,bt etc) thus he saw he a had at least 50-100 people every night not satisfied.thus the need for at least 30 min of mainstream trance.then i said i am a dj.i told him that i was comfortable with the equipment and showed him some of my mixes.the following week i was asked to play some tech house in the beggining in order the main djs to get some rest and at 2:30 i had my hour of trance. one gig leads to an another. try to be a serious dj that is a teenager.not a teenager dj that tries to be serious.charge less and be better than your older colleagues.

And ow yeah another thing is Networking, go out there found out who’s who the local DJ’s in your area, get to knows them, be humble and friendly guy,
Sometimes they do an event or two, who knows they be like hey man you wanna spin in our event?

Nick Powers, post: 43632, member: 2466 wrote: At a mall, would a small pa speaker like a eurolive b205d work?

A small speaker could suffice, just remember that something as a mall is almost as bad as playing outside, which means you’d need more power for the same sound level “experience”. If you don’t have a PA of your own, I would not go buy something like this, but rent a set of good 12″s with stands. Easier to turn a speaker down than running it at full power (and risk distortion) because they can’t really bring the volume).

Also it is impossible to get a serious bass out of one 5″ speaker. There are physical limitations involved.

Greetinx,
C.

Those are passive (unpowered) speakers. You’d need an amp to power them, prolly not what you want.