My first job as a dj…
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Lamid45G.
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February 13, 2016 at 4:50 am #2355491
Clifford Anderson
ParticipantI get the jitters too… did for my first show, and for every show that wasn’t a venue I’d played before.
I don’t know if it’ll work for you, but I just spend a lot of time practicing heading into the show.
The biggest thing I recommend, you may do this already, but you may not – even when practicing at home, when you screw up, DON’T stop… recover, move on. I suffer from the “whoops, stop, start again” thing… if you do too, then try real hard to stop doing that. It makes a big difference for me.
February 13, 2016 at 8:35 pm #2355561Sambhav Puri
ParticipantBased on what you are saying you probably are a perfectionist when it comes to many things, DJing being one of them. It’s good that they have an expectation that you won’t be perfect. Just remember that we all had to start somewhere. You don’t have to be perfect with beatmixing or song selection.
It’s always smart to ask clients for songs that THEY would like to hear that way you don’t have to make a bunch of assumptions right off the bat.
The one part I would recommend knowing how to do is microphone and speaker set up. That part you need to know how to do because if that doesn’t work then that’s a bigger issue.
February 14, 2016 at 4:55 pm #2355661DJ Vintage
ModeratorHonestly, chances of you doing a 100% perfect job at your first gig are slim. Even after almost 39 years at the deks, I still don’t get most at 100%. There is always small things and big things going wrong. Even if you did a technically perfect even, you may have been able to connect with the crowd and that “track selection magic” was just not happening. Or you nailed every track but ran into a train wreck. And any human error in between.
So getting over the “if it wasn’t perfect, it was a disaster”-bug is the first thing you need to train yourself to do. A good way is for you not to take yourself or your DJ-ing too serious. Short of totally messing up a wedding, nobody is gonna get die, hurt, go bankrupt or even lose 5 minutes of sleep if you make a mistake.
Don’t forget, if you don’t do the music, nobody would.
Even more important, be sure to enjoy these early gigs, there are very few of them. As soon as you have practice and experience, you become more natural behind the decks, more confident. You need to have positive experiences to look back on. Focus on what went well, if you do, you will always find that more things went right than wrong. Compliment yourself on what went well (even if nobody else does, they might have just forgotten to). Embrace every mistake as a learning moment.
We all know, you learn absolutely nothing from a perfect night. It’s the night we mess up that make us a better DJ, next time!
February 15, 2016 at 4:05 am #2355841Roh Furtado
ParticipantDeathy this is exactly what i do ,when i mess somehow my set I always stop it and start all over again and it kind of make me really upset ,but i didn’t realise that was a problem until you said it , i will follow what you said for sure =D Thank you very much , and have a good day !
February 15, 2016 at 4:24 am #2355851Roh Furtado
ParticipantSambhav i think when it comes to music and stuff i’m kind of perfectionist because i’m so passionate about it (maybe we all are haha ),but thank you very much for those tips i mean i completely forgot to ask her about the music she expects to hear and your comment made my mind explode with new ideas to do things that are not expected but might make a difference. (for example : after my presentation i thought about recording a set with the musics i saw people liked the most and put it in some cds and giving them to the owner to give to some people as a way to not only spread my work and name but to make them have fun meanwhile they are stuck on traffic for example.) Really thank you one more time! Have a good day =D
February 15, 2016 at 4:38 am #2355861Roh Furtado
ParticipantDj Vintage , what you said it made me think a lot , 3 things you said changed in a good way how i’m planning to face this first presentation and my career : 1 “Embrace every mistake as a learning moment.”- it’s not to hard to forget this and try to avoid our mistakes thinking they will solve themselves.
2 “So getting over the “Focus on what went well, if you do, you will always find that more things went right than wrong” – Be optimistic , sometime i just keep looking for my errors and don’t appreciate what i did correctly .
3 “Even more important, be sure to enjoy these early gigs, there are very few of them.” – i was taking all of this too serious and was forgetting to ” enjoy the ride” , forgetting to enjoy the music itself.
A don’t have enough words to thank you and all the others that helped me here , everyone of you helped me someway , thank you guys!! Hope to help you all in the future =D Have an amazing dayFebruary 19, 2016 at 2:25 am #2357501Lamid45G
ParticipantAre you gettin paid for this or some kind of compensation ?
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