Diary of a Night DJing

What happens from start to finish

This is a legacy page from an older version of the site, kept largely as-is because it's a useful, informal companion to the book — a lot of the questions and answers in the book trace back to nights like the one described here.

One Friday night

This page started life answering a specific set of questions someone put to me about preparing for a night in the DJ booth. Rather than answer them one by one, I wrote up a diary of an actual night in a club I was working at the time. As far as I can remember, the questions were:

• What happens if you don't know the tune the DJ before you just finished on?
• Do you bring your own headphones? Which do you prefer?
• What do you say to the other DJs you meet that night?
• When do you ask for the money?
• Do you start with softer tunes and get harder?
• Do you clean each record before you play it?
• How do you arrange your tunes in the box — alphabetically, by genre?

What follows is a diary of my own from a Friday night (10 December 1999) starting a new residency at a club in Paisley called Pravda — from how I got the gig through to driving home afterwards.

I got the gig through networking, in the old-fashioned sense. A friend of the guy I ran a night with came into the pub where I was working and we got talking about DJing, and about me having just lost a Saturday residency. He was about to leave his own residency at Pravda, and offered to put me forward as his replacement.

I sent over a tape as requested, got called in for an audition, and talked through musical policy, set length (two hours, at that point), and money — the part I've always found awkward. I asked what I'd been paid at my last residency, added 25%, and they were fine with it.

I took most of my record collection along so they could flag anything too heavy or not a fit. Still under the impression I only had a two-hour set, I spent time building a proper set list — something I've mentioned elsewhere on this site is often wasted effort, since the room's mood on the night rarely matches what you planned, but it does give you something to fall back on if you lose your thread.

Halfway through building that set list, I got a call: change of plans, the regular Friday DJ wasn't showing, so I'd be doing the whole night instead — which suited me fine, but the set list went out the window.

Friday itself: I've always suffered from pre-gig nerves (going back to playing drums in a band), so not much sleep the night before. After running through a few tunes just to reassure myself I hadn't somehow forgotten how to beatmatch, I packed the car, filled up on the way, and headed off.

I got there about 90 minutes before opening — partly to finish talking through track selection, partly because it was a new mixer I hadn't used before. I like to arrive at least 30 minutes early as standard: if you're 15 minutes "late" by that measure you're still early, and it leaves time to fix anything broken or fetch anything forgotten, provided you're not past the point of no return.

The mixer itself had a real gap: no way to monitor incoming signal strength before the fader was already up. Beyond that, there was the usual pre-night setup — working out the room's acoustics, monitor level, headphone level, and so on.

The night itself went smoothly — a couple of requests to bring the volume up, or bring the energy down slightly, but nothing more dramatic than that. End of the night was equally simple: a debrief with the booker, a word with management, packing up, and driving home — then lying awake until 6am running the whole night back through my head.

Answering the other questions

What happens if you don't know the tune the DJ before you has just finished?

Ask him how it ends — he'll still be at the decks making sure you don't clip his outgoing tune, so ask if it ends on the beat, fades out, or rides a melodic refrain into silence. The first two are easy to handle; a fade is trickier. In that case, the simplest option is just to announce your arrival: bring in the next tune, cut the EQ and level on the outgoing one, and push the crossfader across without trying to beatmatch it. Not elegant, but it works.

What do you say to the other DJs you meet that night?

Ask how the night's gone so far, what people are asking for, and what's been working on the floor. Be polite, friendly and talkative — most of the DJs you're taking over from are warming up the room for you, and a bit of encouragement costs nothing. If someone tells you "you know, I'm a DJ myself" and starts angling for a go on the decks, that's usually a polite smile and a change of subject.

Do you start with softer tunes and build up?

Depends on the slot. Playing a full night, yes — most venues want a soft-to-hard progression, sometimes with planned peaks and troughs through the night if the crowd's up for it. Coming on partway through, the warm-up DJ has usually already done that work, so you can generally start closer to where you mean to be.

Do you clean each record before you play it?

A quick wipe with a sleeve if it looks obviously dusty is about it. Keeping records in their sleeves and avoiding static build-up mostly keeps them clean enough on its own.

There's more in the book

All of the above gets covered in more depth in DJing for Dummies — this diary is meant as a companion, not a replacement.