Lamid45G

If your fund is limited, limit yourself to a few promo materials just now, the free soundcloud account ( no need for the Pro one not just yet), you can just stick your mini-mix 30 mins or so in there for now, and a pack of business cards, and promo cd’s to handed out, and put the rest of your energy to making a connection/networking

Maybe high five ing the DJ instead shazam ing? Introduce yourself, not only you gettin a new DJ buddies, you also make them feel good if you asked them whats the track he/she was playin ? (beware of some of them might respond in the douche way)

Where is this MASTERCLASS course you spoken off Chuck ?
Hadnt got it in my email , not jut yet

Serato is my first choice and i never looked back, everything in Serato (for me) is user-friendly, you just plug-n-play, where in Traktor, you have to go thru the setup menu everytime, to adjust the settings (not sure why ? even tough you already did it before with the same controller)

The interface is Serato is more easier in my eyes, no complicated menu, everything in there ready to roll, i like the way the waveform displayed in Serato, where in top of each other, make it more easier to see and mix.
Traktor interface? its too stiff for my taste, everything all crammed out, and whats up with no automation cue beat ? In some tunes in Traktor, you have to manually “guide” it so it will pick up the first beat of the tunes, it wont done automatically for you (some said you can set it up like that in the Setup Menu, err yeah once again you have to twiddle it first to get it right, in Serato its automatically detect your first beat)

ANd dont even try to mix a transition tunes in Traktor, it drives me mad, its more less complicated to mix that type of tunes in the CDJ environment for me instead trying to mix it in Traktor

Play some heavy duty EDM stuff, mainly trance, prog house, house anything with no vocal, southern part of the US tend to dislike these type of tunes,

And as D-Jam points out is rest on the club owner/manager, at least let them know the problem, if they not aware of it already, get other crews to support your story

1- A friend of a friend who was at my gig really liked it, and he wants me to DJ at his house party this week, and offered to pay me $200 for it, and I told him I would. My main concern is the sound system. I do not own a PA system, and the speakers which I had to DJ on at my first gig really weren’t enough for the party, and here I dont think there is anything better. What should I do in this case?

Rent one !, look around in your area, that provided renting out a sound system, you mentioned earlier there’s a DJ Company in your town, so more than likely they should offered a rental services, call them out and find out or if they dont surely they can make some kind of recommendation or places to look for. The things to look out for is how much to rent one ? This should basically exclude from your $200 DJ Fee, your fee should be just for your DJ Services thats it, if it required further equipment ( be a DJ Gears or sound system), it should be the party host full responsibilities ! Of course you can offered the party host to look for the sound system, but the cost to rent one should come from the party host not YOU !

2- Are there any good resources for hip hop/top 40 songs to stay updated on those? I don’t really know of any, and I can’t seem to find any good charts online.

The only good charts to go to is ( especially you in the US ) is the Billboard Charts ! be it the top 100 Hot Single, or the top rnb/hip hop, if the songs its whats trending now among teens, the Billboard chart covers it, and sometimes the charts went ahead themselves with new releases and such, makes you the hyped DJ for playing new release whos not even popular just yet

3- How should I deal with requests from the host which the crowd doesn’t like, or that dont fit with the music I’m playing? I didn’t mention it earlier, but the host of the party kept wanting me to play some trap at the party, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Smile ! the request is wayy to easy to fit into the mood, especially the trap, would fit into your top/40 hip hop flawlessly ! Just armed yourself with plenty of commercial remixed of trap and guarantee your host will smile all nite long

4- Is there any way to deal with not having a song after arriving at a gig which people are constantly requesting?

Covering a top 40 /hip hop should be an easy task, if you blanketed yourself with the latest top 40 and latest hip hop anthem, if you still dont have the tunes folks requesting, get sumthing similiar tunes the one they requested ( this required of you to KNOW all the songs, its your job you are the DJ) and wrote down what people requesting for the nest time around, Just dont for the love of god let them hook up their iphone into your set up, not only you dont know the quality of the songs they had, you going to starting a trend that nite, folks lined up just to plug their devices in your setup, and it will effect your role as a DJ that night

and this is gonna cost us a new car price tag i imagined!

Eh you dont really need 4 channel right at this moment, had my 2 channel controller for quite some time now, and I dont think I’m in ever needed situation that required an extra channels other than those 2 channels