Thread: Playing Live

How different is it to playing in your own comfort zone

Usually when I fuck a mix up, I'll just rewind it and do it again. But being live you don't get that chance and you know what, I LOVE that

It is one of the most frightening and exciting things you will ever experience in your life.

Certain things run through your mind:

What if I screw up
what if the dance floor becomes empty
what if the equipment in the club I have never used or seen before

There is nothing like it.

I've done it quite a few times and I still get that feeling each and every time.

Play at rowdy cramped house partys, get the worst loudest mouthiest offbeat MCs you can find, make sure there coming out of your monitors. If you can still concentrate & mix your tunes with noisy MCs coming out your speakers it will be easy when you have got your own monitors.

playing out live is such a buzz, i remember my first proper gig - i was so nervous/excited that i could barely put the needle on the record!!

best thing you can do is to learn to mix in your headphones so you dont have to rely on monitors...and be professional and dont be afraid to request changes to the setup if you're not happy with it at all. you probably wont get your way but it's always worth it imo.

To be honest when i played at home i fucked up alot because i was trying different things with my mixing... But when playing to a crowd it just seemed to go perfectly, i can only remember a few times when i didn't get a mix spot on... & i always used the headphones & not the monitors at the places i played (little crappy clubs that i played what i thought they wanted but added tunes i loved).

My secret which is actually no secret is to have a pint or two. i find it helps to take the stiffness of my nerves out of the equation. and being a Dj you are more critical of your mixes, the general crowd wont even know if you funk-up your mix unless its a real train wreck. and the few dj's in the house will probably notice the funk-up, but they will also apreciate the solid mixes you bust more then the rest of the crowd