Need help…

The whole idea behind DJ-ing is to be able to judge what people want to hear (next). This is true when looking for venues to play. You have to do your homework. Go to the place and see what they are playing now, talk to the staff, talk to the owner/manager what their expectations are, talk to some of the customers. Talk to other DJs in the area. In short, figure out what the place is about and adjust accordingly.

As you say it’s a bar, I am gonna take a wild guess here and say it’s probably not a genre-bar. This means they will most likely have an audience that likes a broader variety of music. Which would mean that even house as a genre could be too limiting and you are already talking about one single sub-genre.

So, if you haven’t done your homework locally, how can we possible suggest anything useful as far as picking genres is concerned?

Only if you are a producer you can and will have to get away with just sending the material you produce as that is your style.

But if you are a DJ, you have to figure this stuff out on your own and if you can’t (yet) you have to ask yourself if you are ready to stand in front of an audience and make it work.

pick tracks that no one will have heard of so you can stand out

Ummm…. no. lol

While Allen hasn’t really given us much to go on, if it is indeed a “bar”, as Vintage pointed out, it’s more than likely an open-format kind of place. Picking tracks no one will have heard is a surefire way to come off as someone who won’t appeal to a mainstream crowd.

A track can be recognizable yet no one has heard it before. I’m an open format DJ, and over a third of the tracks I play are pop40 remixes that no one’s heard before. That’s where I get all the comments, all the high fives, when all of my business cards fly off the table.

Todd must have been reading my mind 😀

I came away with the same thought! In this case I agree indeed. It’s always fun and a good idea to play something instantly recognizable to the folks in the crowd, yet different from the original mix.