The art and practice of set planning.

[Jimanee]

Good stuff, shall look forward to countering, after the weekend. I must go and have my disco nap, see you taters.

[Jimanee]

* laters

[Adzm00]

The court of DJF shall resolve this

[Jimanee]

Indeed, let's crack on:

OR

A starts playing his set, but the crowd aren't into it, but because he is a noob and has no idea what he is doing, plus too scared to move outside of his preplanned set, A loses the crowd and they go to B's room.

In the meantime, B has a few less than perfect mixes, but his crowd reading skills are slowly developing and he is managing to play tracks the crowd are reacting positively to.

A goes home and cries to his mum, B is invited back to play the next month.

You have made three mistakes in your post:

1) You have assumed that A is too scared to move off his preplanned set; but this is based of your experience of DJs THAT HAVE NOT READ THIS THREAD!!!!!

And you have been doing this in near all your arguments . The real prepared DJ, would have had Feeder Sets, Alternative mixouts and Contingency mini sets.


2) You equate set preperation with not reading the crowd; that is an evil slur. DJ A would have more time for reading the crowd, he would know what he was looking for and would have a strategy to deal with it; the example in the thread:

"Say DnB, say start Liquid and go Darker, then trump it with Funky. Let’s say just purely as a figure: 6 tracks of each.

Now here is a crude but powerful control: you can skip tracks to get to the desired level of attribute. You can read the crowd and adjust how quickly they progress through your journey.

Say they loved the Liquid, great play all 6, then you go Darker, three tracks in they’ve had enough, switch to Funky. That should do nicely for an hour set"


3) I've told you before, crowd reading skills develop independantly from mixing DJing skills. To infer as you have that, B not planning his set, means his crowd reading skill is more developed from A is total BS.

you can still 'map out an interesting, smooth proper journey with an actual destination...that leads a crowd' without pre-set planning, as you are planning on the move, as you go. Using instinctive imagination, live, with timing.

I think, with mixing on the fly, the planning begins once the DJ steps up to the decks and chooses the 1st record. It's better to make a plan once you have a map of the room; get a handle on the vibes happening at that precise time, in order to lead everyone where you want to take them.

Excellent, then we are agreed that you can lead a crowd to a destination. Such as an Anthem Smasher main set , then you will have all the goodies of preparation, that come from having spent serious time on it. The best of both worlds

[Jimanee]

Sig did nail it, for a mix tape or online battle hell yeah, but in a club the crowd is part of the mix and is better off being adjusted to and becoming part of the night then just witnessing your performance.
Both of your Hypotheticals seem too far gone for me to relate to. Never seen a noob wing it and read a crowd there is barely enough confidence to attempt their over planned, sync'd,my friends like it, practiced all week, now i'm gonna show the world what I can do mix.
Most of my experience is dated as well so I give you that, but if there are a lot of noobs crashing in front of crowds there are a lot of GM's that should be looking for new jobs. I've seen way more under skilled Dj's get past the interview with a planned set or mixed cd without the ability to do the job right.
I really have to ask this, how do you plan a floor rotation I have always done it off body language (or the bartender showing some malcontent).

"but in a club the crowd is part of the mix and is better off being adjusted to and becoming part of the night then just witnessing your performance."

Yes, but the point of this thread is that you can adjust in a prepared way.

"Never seen a noob wing it and read a crowd "

Lol I have, but they have not been mixing (and were shite anyway), don't tell adzm00 though.

"I've seen way more under skilled Dj's get past the interview with a planned set or mixed cd without the ability to do the job right."

Me too, chortle.

"how do you plan a floor rotation I have always done it off body language "

This can be a standard, straight from the "How to DJ right" manual, just plan in combos of 2-4 tracks of a Genre, tip them with a blank and switch to the next combo when the time is right (aka read their body language).

[Jimanee]

When I was a "noob" (in the DJing in the club sense at least), I never pre-planned and always tried to read the crowd (probably why I am good at it now) and I wasn't nervous about my gigs either. There is a reason for that, it is called lots of hard work and practice, I didn't even really do a mix for anyone until after 4 years of a lot of practice, so I knew I was a decent standard, not throwing down a half arsed, pre-planned (MIK told me what to play) sync'd up boring piece of shit mix. I practiced until I was good and that is what most people fail at doing today.

When I was a noob, I didn't have much money for records, so to keep things interesting I would work out the best mixes and write them in a book normally used for phone numbers. I would spend hours/ days going through my collection seeing what works with what, that is what I mean about "Knowing your collection".
For my first gig, I spent months practicing and honing my prepared sets, I would roleplay them under different circumstances, I would practice and record whilst blind drunk coming back from the club, just to see how I would fair under those circumstances.

I would practice interesting and tricky set pieces, over and over again, till they were second nature.

That's what I call hard work and practice.

I was nervous as hell on my first gig, and guess what? On the night, during my first mix, I was joined by a live drummer, a didgeridoo player, an amateur MC and some drunk b*tch banging on a triangle. I still nailed, all hail preparation

[Adzm00]

When I was a noob, I didn't have much money for records, so to keep things interesting I would work out the best mixes and write them in a book normally used for phone numbers. I would spend hours/ days going through my collection seeing what works with what, that is what I mean about "Knowing your collection".
For my first gig, I spent months practicing and honing my prepared sets, I would roleplay them under different circumstances, I would practice and record whilst blind drunk coming back from the club, just to see how I would fair under those circumstances.

I would practice interesting and tricky set pieces, over and over again, till they were second nature.

That's what I call hard work and practice.

I was nervous as hell on my first gig, and guess what? On the night, during my first mix, I was joined by a live drummer, a didgeridoo player, an amateur MC and some drunk b*tch banging on a triangle. I still nailed, all hail preparation

I guess I must just be naturally talented.

[Adzm00]

Indeed, let's crack on:




You have made three mistakes in your post:

1) You have assumed that A is too scared to move off his preplanned set; but this is based of your experience of DJs THAT HAVE NOT READ THIS THREAD!!!!!

And you have been doing this in near all your arguments . The real prepared DJ, would have had Feeder Sets, Alternative mixouts and Contingency mini sets.


2) You equate set preperation with not reading the crowd; that is an evil slur. DJ A would have more time for reading the crowd, he would know what he was looking for and would have a strategy to deal with it; the example in the thread:

"Say DnB, say start Liquid and go Darker, then trump it with Funky. Let’s say just purely as a figure: 6 tracks of each.

Now here is a crude but powerful control: you can skip tracks to get to the desired level of attribute. You can read the crowd and adjust how quickly they progress through your journey.

Say they loved the Liquid, great play all 6, then you go Darker, three tracks in they’ve had enough, switch to Funky. That should do nicely for an hour set"


3) I've told you before, crowd reading skills develop independantly from mixing DJing skills. To infer as you have that, B not planning his set, means his crowd reading skill is more developed from A is total BS.




Excellent, then we are agreed that you can lead a crowd to a destination. Such as an Anthem Smasher main set , then you will have all the goodies of preparation, that come from having spent serious time on it. The best of both worlds

You have made assumptions which support your argument, I have done the same but that support mine, because both could be correct.

[Mrspyaman]

Yes, but the point of this thread is that you can adjust in a prepared way.

"how do you plan a floor rotation I have always done it off body language "
This can be a standard, straight from the "How to DJ right" manual, just plan in combos of 2-4 tracks of a Genre, tip them with a blank and switch to the next combo when the time is right (aka read their body language).

Never seen that manual, I was self taught in the 80's. But I guess if that's the way you do it and want to share with others, have at it. I just feel most of the time planning leads to laziness and has a lot to do with hearing the same set groups from the same Dj's over and over again.

[Mrspyaman]

I would spend hours/ days going through my collection seeing what works with what, that is what I mean about "Knowing your collection".
For my first gig, I spent months practicing and honing my prepared sets, I would roleplay them under different circumstances, I would practice and record whilst blind drunk coming back from the club, just to see how I would fair under those circumstances.

I would practice interesting and tricky set pieces, over and over again, till they were second nature.

That's what I call hard work and practice.

I was nervous as hell on my first gig, and guess what? On the night, during my first mix, I was joined by a live drummer, a didgeridoo player, an amateur MC and some drunk b*tch banging on a triangle. I still nailed, all hail preparation

How often do you play? Do you play the same set more then once?