Randall Colelli

To jump back halfway into this conversation, I am just wondering how many tracks you all have in your actively used folders and what size events you usually play/length of your sets are in relation.

For my last gig, I had about 200 tracks ready to go, but it was a heavy request crowd at this 4-hour private event gig and I was happy to have ContentUnlimited under my belt (the Netflix of tracks through Virtual DJ, which I plan to use until I solidify a mixture of tracks I like and tracks I find to be popular with a mixture of types of crowds for the types of events I am booking for this fall), or else I’d have had to say no to about 20 people that night. Of the 100 people there, those were my main dance crowd with about 40 other people coming off and on throughout the night.

I like the idea of keeping a clean list, but I also like the idea of being prepared for anything. Before picking up VDJ software, I was using Ableton Live and an APC 40 since I produce non-DJ music as well, and I miss being able to color-code and columnize (to make up a word) my tracks by energy level on a temperature-type scale of blue to red. I am now experimenting with labeling folders in various ways to achieve a similar method of organizing my tracks. Please chime in on whether or not you like doing this and your approach to it if you do.

Don’t worry. Chart toppers are pretty homogenized these days, but depending on the age of the group at large, you can play stuff that has made it into classic status (80s, 90s, early 2000s) and just highlight it here and there with newer stuff.

Another tip–look for remixes of those songs to keep it familiar for them and easier to mix for you. Many remixes keep a dance BPM of 128-132.

After doing a few initial gigs similar in music style to your line-up, I have to say just go with the flow and don’t worry about breaking it down into blocks. Keep your eyes on the floor and see who’s dancing–appeal to them a bit to keep them there and raise the energy level to lock them there until they drop! This will attract more people onto the floor with them. The dancers will circulate and you will probably get requests; I recommend checking the internet service at the venue and see if you can’t get a service where you can download songs you don’t have on-the-fly to please the people who do requests. Get their first name every time, and when you see the crowd kind of lax, get your mic and elevate the crowd by announcing who it’s for then throw in a cheesy “Get on the floor with WHOEVER!” right before you let it drop. Let them do the work for ya by grabbing hands and pulling people out with them! Doesn’t always work but it will make you grin really big when it does 🙂

Being it’s your first gig, don’t fret at all if the floor remains empty here and there. If you are playing music that people aren’t giving you awkward stares for playing, that’s good, even if they aren’t all dancing. It isn’t a club, and people might be a bit shy about dancing depending on the family. Since it is kind of an intimate setting being a family birthday party, you will get less gruff about playing a request than they will give someone for requesting that song.

Don’t worry about super-smooth mixing with tracks you don’t know very well. Obviously, no hard cuts at awkward spots, don’t bring down the energy with transitions from an awesome beat to a long vocal intro of the next song, etc. It’s not as easy to mix top 40/classic pop/rock/hip hop as house is, but as long as the music doesn’t drop dead you’ll be okay. I did that a couple times at my first two gigs–don’t let ’em see you fret, just keep going! Also, be sure to listen to at least two minutes of the tracks so you know they maintain clarity, don’t have those bad rip popping noises, etc. They hurt ears through a PA!

To reiterate, above all else, take it easy and have fun, and just go with the flow! Good luck 🙂

As an amateur, I really like VDJ8 and you can try it with your controller if you subscribe to the pro version for a month. I also like ContentUnlimited because I tend to DJ events with large age ranges and get lots of requests for music I don’t own. Not sure if the other software companies offer a similar service.

Before going to an actual DJ format, I was using Ableton Live 8 and an APC40 lol–not a bad setup for DJing with some tweaking, really, but I bit the bullet on a Mixtrack while it was on sale on Amazon and haven’t gone back to my Ableton setup after 5-6 months of using VDJ and the Mixtrack controller except to produce.