J. Gatsby

Honestly, a lot of your fear will wipe away with experience. Partially because you’ll gain in confidence with repeated performances, and partially because (face it, it’s unavoidable) there will be a mistake or two that you will quickly learn from (and no, not every mistake is noticeable to the crowd, so whatever happens don’t freak out and calmly keep rollin’!) Now, prebuilt setlists are definitely going to make you feel comfortable when doing your first few gigs, so embrace them! It may feel like a blow to your ego at first, but it means that you will know for certain how you’re getting from one song to the next. Just leave a little flexibility in there so you can accommodate requests if you so choose. In the end, relax, have fun, and remember that you’re leading a dancefloor full of people on an emotional journey. Tap into their energy and feed them!

Personally, I create rotating “playlists” on a regular basis- I use one Ableton project with anywhere from 30-200 tunes preloaded and warped correctly, and then build from that “database” so to speak as the night goes on. This way I have the safety and accuracy of the playlist with the spontaneity of on-the-fly. I delete old tunes and add new ones in whenever I feel like it.

Maybe try vlogging too? I don’t know why, but I absolutely love watching DJs vlogs on YouTube (A-Trak and Dillon Francis are by far the best at it), even though I hate the concept when anybody else tries to do it. For some reason us djs just come off really well on camera.