Keeping a dancefloor busy and happy is not as easy as it looks
Ever got frustrated at people interrupting you, falling into you, trying to borrow a lighter or cadge a cigarette from you, wanting to look through your music (even on the laptop you’re DJing on!), thinking now is the time to have an in-depth conversation with you about something completely unconnected to what you’re doing, or just in any way, shape or form hassling you when you’re DJing? If so, this is the post for you.
So many people don’t understand that DJing is just the same as being on a stage (in a band, say). Would anyone wander onto a stage and try and chat to a singer while they were mid-set? Of course not. Yet DJs, it seems, are different.
What REALLY goes on in a DJs mind…
Here’s the first 10 I could think of of about 5,000 random things that may or may not be going through my mind when I’m DJing (once I’ve got over wishing nobody will turn up because I’m so nervous, then the panic when they start to, then the relief when the first people start dancing…)
- “Is this the right mix of this record? It sounds different to when I heard it at home…”
- “Shit, 30 seconds left on this tune!”
- “Is it time to ramp it up a bit?”
- “This next tune is weird, but I LOVE it. Should I risk it?”
- “Is it too loud? Or not loud enough?”
- “I wonder if the next DJ will try and hassle me off early.”
- “God, I’m REALLY nervous here. Better smile and move a bit and look like I’m having fun.”
- “Finally, got those girls dancing. What shall I play next to keep them there?”
- “Bollocks, left the key lock on. Wondered why it was sounding a bit shit. Better do some adjusting…”
- “Manager doesn’t look too happy. Is he going to come and hassle me again to ‘play something I know’?”
And on and on and on. It’s a constant stream of tweaks and improvements as you try to do the very best you can.
Working madly to keep the night going well, while smiling and generally trying to look relaxed and “one of the crowd”, is hard enough… but the trouble is, when you do it well, people believe you’re a natural, you’re relaxed, DJing is simple, and they feel very comfortable hassling you. That includes girlfriends and best mates who really should know better – after all, it’s not as if you haven’t tried to explain to them often enough!
Time to put your foot down…
So, how to deal with it. Here are some methods that have worked for me over the years:
1. Ignore them politely – This is easy. Nod, smile, and block them out. Just don’t listen! People have had a couple of drinks anyway, the music’s loud, you’d be amazed how many people go away when you grin and agree blindly.
2. Do what they want quickly and ask them politely to go away – Give them the cigarette/lighter/money, then say “catch you later” and physically (buy playfully) shove them away.
3. Explain to them that to you, this is a place of work and they’re getting in the way – Not so easy to pull this one off, but if you’ve got guest DJs in the box and expensive equipment, especially digital DJ equipment that’s perched precariously on any available spaces etc, you have to put your foot down. It IS a place of work, after all.
4. Be a prima donna and say “I’m performing!” – maybe using the DJ/singer parallel I mentioned above. Make yourself smile by going well over the top with “I’m an artist, you know!” etc.
5. Here’s my favourite (doesn’t work with your girlfriend, though): Lock the bloody DJ box door. One of the clubs I used to DJ at was rife for 20-people-in-the DJ-box syndrome, with hangers-on getting up to all sorts. I used to literally get in there at the start of my set and manhandle everyone out, locking the door behind the sorry ass of every last one. Job done.
You’re not going win any friends with some of the above methods, but look at it this way: You dreamed about DJing for who-knows-how-long before you started getting gigs; you spend all week listening to, buying and practising mixing your tunes; and this 1, 2, 3 or more hours is your ONE CHANCE to express yourself, to show what you’ve got, to fill your head with enough real experience of playing out as you can to give you something chew over for the time between now and your next gig. And your girlfriend wants to talk about the pair of you maybe going to her gran’s next week?! NO! 
Be firm but fair (as much as you can) with everyone, and force of will should get your point of view on this into their heads in the end – and you can always buy your mates / wife / brother a drink afterwards and tell them you love them really!
Have you go any horror stories of randoms coming into your DJ booth and interrupting your flow, spilling a drink on your equipment, flicking through your music when you’re mid-set, or trying to get off with your girlfriend/boyfriend while you’re in the mix? Let us know!
Now go to:
DJing in Nightclubs with Controllers and Laptops
6 Ways To Survive When DJing In Sports Bars
7 Ways to Keep DJing Past Club Curfew Time
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Tags: hecklers, performing
best method ever – i saw a rather excellent electronic live act playing, some dufus climbed on the stage to talk to him. artist ignores dufus. dufus persists. artist stops the music, turns to dufus and shouts ‘WHAT?!’. crowd jeers at dufus. dufus learns lesson.
[ link ]WHAT!?
Hahaha, that’s hilarious! I’m stoked that happened
[ link ]I used to have this issue at my old residency … Friends, ladies and everyone in between would come in the booth and spill drinks, mess up CD’s and all of that, but when i switched to my Digital setup I would lock the door … or make sure i had one of my good buddies stand near the door of the booth for crowd control… I do agree that it is tough to do this without making a couple people upset but with experience comes many more ways of keeping your space yours
[ link ]- Got a jacket thrown over the mixer mid mix.
[ link ]- Got a gun pulled out and pointed at one of the CDJs. LOL
- Fights broke loose in front of the booth.
- Got asked for TOTALLY unrelated music to be played.
- Several different managers told me to speed up, commercialize and slow down simultaneously. LOL again
“Got a gun pulled out and pointed at one of the CDJs. LOL”
that is hilarious
[ link ]People asking me what I’m doing and how I’m doing it in the middle of a mix. I’m happy to talk the technical stuff, but not while I’m doing it.
“Got asked for TOTALLY unrelated music to be played.”
[ link ]This is one reason that I like playing vinyl. I can just say ‘that’s a great tune, but I don’t have it with me.’
Gotta try that one… Lol…
[ link ]im very new at this, i been practiceing with vdj software on the laptop and got very familiar with all the controls and i am getting better and better with practice. i been saving up to buy a digital mix controller in nov, im excited about going to the next level lol. im very eager to learn as much as i can. My question is how did you guys get started did you teach yourselves or did you shadow someone who taught you how to DJ?
[ link ]Hi Danny. You’re doing all the right things! Find someone else at your level and learn off each other, and keep practising. Mentors are good, but more for the business side of things in my experience. For the music side, practice and encouragement are what you need – and a few of you all learning together gives you just that. good luck, and welcome to the site
[ link ]“Got a gun pulled out and pointed at one of the CDJs. LOL”
WTF? How did that happen? 0.o
[ link ]@andrew that’s the best way, i enjoyed it a lot when playing on regular vinyl. now it’s bad cause people then ask you “don’t you have youtube?” and i say like “sorry, we dont have access here” but mean “are u insane guy/girl? get out of my way”
[ link ]It’s actually a growing issue for bar DJs who are more and more expected to have all the music in the world, and if not, then to just play it from YouTube. Yuk!
[ link ]My dad’s the CEO of a small company and hired a DJ for a corporate event a few months ago. I had to get in the DJ booth and he locked me out. I just went and got the key from my dad and we never hired him again.
[ link ]Did he play good music?
[ link ]He was OK.
[ link ]lol I did my first gig yesterday at my mums 40th. I DJ house, electro and trance etc. But these people wanted shit music. House was too “dancy” for them. Electro and trance was too “boring” for them. So I just throw on some radio music to shut them up. I wasn’t in my best mood after this. And in the DJ booth I was with 6 other people. 2 of them were my friends, which were alright, but there were others there, especially this little kid who just wouldn’t stop touching my equipment, the whole night I had to put up with the little kids in the dj booth. The studio had bad quality speakers. And my headphones were shit, so I couldn’t really here the next song to play. At least now I know what DJing LIVE is like lol
[ link ]I’ve definitely had some hecklar screw-ups before. I’m to friendly and because of that I’ve dealt with two strange blunders from hecklers.
1.) I was doing a show and a girl was asking me to play any random track under the sun and she talked my ear off so badly I lost concentration and accidentally hit the cue button on the live track.
2.) A girl with a curiousity for how it worked approached me and asked if I could show her how I was doing what I was doing. I politely said “sure” (fatal mistake), two seconds later the music goes dead as she had tripped over the extention chord that ran my entire set-up.
Lesson learned. I do the dick thing now and put a sign that says “please do not disturb” infront of any area that gives the crowd access to me while I’m performing.
[ link ]Looks like your problem is with mixing girls and DJing!
[ link ]I can just picture your face the moment you sense that the music is stopping..
[ link ]My friend (who was high. Very, very high) tore the connections off the live CDJ and literally threw the damned thing into the crowd. My reaction was to throw him in too, screaming “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
[ link ]Wow, haha. I literally LOLd reading that. doesn’t he know what and what not to throw into the crowd? Demos and water bottles=yes. Expensive equipment=NO. Even a stoner knows that.
[ link ]I used to DJ in a two bar college town in Ohio on a weekly basis- very small school, the bar would be packed full of the same people every week who liked to hear the same music every week
one night a hammered homeless
[ link ]Mexican got up on the stage and started to fall back, grabbing my 1500$ speaker as he went. Both went crashing to the ground, leaving a big dent in the cage. I was pissed but jumped down and quickly righted the speaker and kept playing- the damage was only cosmetic. After the show, no idea who I was, the Mexican dude tried to get me to let him come home with me and sleep in my house. Got a big kick out of that hahaha
Great story!
[ link ]I used to try and “please all of the people all of the time” but it’s impossible. if someone asks for a track i’ve no intention of playing I just say sorry I dont have it and maybe suggest something else I know i would play. if someone asks for a track you intended playing anyway then say yeah man great idea give me 20 mins…
even then, 9 times out of 10 the people asking for tunes soon forget they asked for them or even leave 10 minutes later for the next bar anyway!
[ link ]A couple more advantage for vinyl-only DJs are: 1) In the booth it is easier to insist upon exclusive space, due to the increased space requirement of vinyl vs digital. This helps offset the fact that transporting more than one crate of vinyl to and from a gig really sucks. 2) Unless the person making a request has a vinyl copy to hand over for you to play, it’s easier to politely indicate that you don’t have the song that they’re asking for. (usually true) Just make sure that your music is suited to your audience and all will be well!
Good luck, and most importantly, have fun!
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