This is what you want when you drop a long breakdown - but what should you do if the crowd gets bored?
Here’s a great story from forum member Redblock: “Three weekends ago I was lucky enough to be behind the decks and presiding over a real rager. It was small to be sure – a 50 person room at max – but I was set up on the same level as the defacto dancefloor, so I had punters surrounding me.
“People were going crazy, it was the type of night that seemed to be too small for the room it was in. In short, it was the type of party that I guess most DJs have wet dreams about!
“It was all going amazingly. I felt like the greatest DJ in the world – for about 30 minutes. Right up, in fact, until I dropped a huge tune, but a mix of it I hadn’t heard before (it was Dada Life’s ‘Kick Out the Epic Motherf**ker’).
“People who knew what it was got even more raucous. Even people who didn’t followed their lead. It was great for the first few minutes – until the breakdown hit, which in the mix I had was way too long. It just seemed to go on forever.
“‘No problem,’ I thought, nervously watching the dancefloor get more and more irritated with me, ‘if the break is this long, then when the beat comes back, it’ll be huge, and everyone will go crazy again.’
It was all going amazingly. I felt like the greatest DJ in the world – for about 30 minutes…
“How wrong I was. Even after the bass and drums hit again, I was looking at maybe a third of the people that I was playing for before. I had essentially killed the vibe with that 1:30 of music. I was beside myself. Absolutely stunned.
“So my question is: What on earth do you do to keep people interested during these huge breakdowns?”
Digital DJ Tips says:
It’s a great question. I am sure every DJ reading the above knows the exact feeling you speak of when you’re nervously watching the dancefloor in a big breakdown.
So here’s some ideas as to what you can do if you find yourself misjudging the floor and dropping an overlong breakdown that isn’t working:
- Use a cue point to get out of it – Ideally you’ll have pre-cuepointed your music, and already have a cue set right on the beat where the breakdown kicks back in. Just count to the beginning of the next eight-bar phrase and hit that cue. Bingo: Break shortened. Not pre-cued the track? Load another copy onto another deck, cue it up at the end of the break, and do the same thing. Some software lets you skip on exactly eight bars, which has the same effect of shortening the break (as the crowd won’t hear the jump usually), so if so, make sure you know how to engage this feature
- Drop the beat of the next tune over the breakdown – If a beatless breakdown is boring people, and you’ve already cued and tempoed-up a new song that starts with just a beat, drop that beat over the breakdown. It will be in time, and will give the crowd something to dance to. You could loop it too to stop anything happening bar the beat in the new song. You could get extra kudos by cutting it in and out, perhaps with a bit of echo, but this is all optional – the beat is the important thing. As the breakdown builds up, you can remove the “backup” beats from the mix, letting the breakdown take over
- Have an acappella loop ready – something beatgridded (so you can drop it in in time) and instantly recognisable. You know your crowd best, but Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Louder”, for instance, dropped over a beatless, instrumental break will give your crowd something to sing along to, show you’re doing some “DJing”, and hopefully relieve the boredom. If the main song is instrumental even after the beat kicks back in, you could even leave it playing for a bit to add to the excitement
- Get excited yourself – You’re leading the party. People are looking to you for their cue about what to do next. If you’ve dropped a tune you’re not sure of, you’ve got to fake it that you are sure, that you know what’s coming, that this is all part of the plan, and that it’s OK for them to enjoy it too. It’s about persuasion. So clap, smile, act like there’s something massive seconds away that only you know about. Even if it seems to go on for an eternity…
- Use lighting and volume to accentuate the break – Leading on from the point above, to make it doubly sure that it looks like you know what you’re doing, accentuate the break by cutting the volume in half then slowly teasing the crowd by making it louder every eight beats, and by using the lighting (I am a fan of blacking out the room at the start of the break then bringing stuff back). You don’t need a lighting guy to do this; even at house parties you can send a friend to the light switch and blacken the room out!
Finally…
You touch on a bigger point, though: Know your music. Big breakdowns are a gamble, but used correctly they can define a night. If you had dropped a breakdown every 20 minutes for the last two hours, each a little longer than the next, and the crowd had loved them more and more, that would have indicated to you that in this instance, your really long breakdown would probably have worked really well.
Big breakdowns are a gamble, but used correctly they can define a night.
If the crowd just wanted to groove and weren’t in the mood to stand around Jesus posing, then you’d already have known that, because your shorter, less mission-critical breakdowns would have got an uninterested reaction, so you could have avoided breakdowns altogether and gone for a more intense, no-breaks period of DJing.
As always it’s as much art as science, and there are no definite rights and wrongs – but as you can see from some of the ideas above, mastery of your tools can make the difference between digging yourself out of a hole and getting stuck in it.
• Thanks to Fressure, Terry_42, 2SHAE and Hee Won Yung from the Digital DJ Tips forum who contributed some of the ideas above, over on the original forum post.
Can you sympathise with our reader? Have you found yourself in exactly this situation? How did you get out of it? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Now go to:
How To Read A Crowd (And What Happens If You Don’t)
7 Set Planning Secrets Of Professional DJs
Your Song Choice & Set Programming Tips
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Man I’ve been in this situation before. I was doing a private party for my friend at a local venue and it was jumpin. The people were loving it and I could not have been putting out more energy than I was at the time. Then came a song I hadn’t previewed long enough in my headphones. I spun it thinking “man this is gonna be a good drop…I can tell!” The song built up just fine, I hit the filter, all the people cheered, and then there was no drop…just a simple 128BPM Kick-Snare. Immediately I saw faces turn sour, and a majority of the floor stopped moving.
The only reason I was able to save it was a vocal sample from a popular hip-hop song.
In situations like that it’s the best thing to have a plan-b, some kind of “go-to” tracks that can be dropped in a moments notice when the beat dies down. I like all the points above, all good.
Either way, the lesson is know your track before you drop it, unless you are willing to risk the crowd.
[ link ]Yeah, a “get out of jail” playlist is well worth maintaining…
[ link ]Quality article with some real sound advice…….
I love the part about knocking the lights off at a house party at the start of a breakdown. It would be even better if you had one of the dimmer knobs to bring the lights back in slowly
[ link ]Ah, but if you’ve got a dimmer, you can’t flick them on and off really fast for an instant “strobe”
[ link ]haha Quality….why invest in lighting….just use the in “house” lighting
[ link ]I mostly use delay and filter fx to add some movement to a static sounding breakdown spot. I know the song in the article pretty well and always began mixing it in starting from this long breakdown.
[ link ]If you’re using Traktor (let’s face it, you probably are), just use the beatjump aka “manual looping” to shorten the break down to a few seconds with just the turn of a knob. Just make sure you phrase it right, eg don’t skip more than 16 beats, pay attention to the phrasing and let it evolve naturally so tracks aren’t cutting in and out, etc.
[ link ]In addition to the get out of jail track, try having a good sample ready as well – something like followed by a “What the F*** was that Sh**” and then drop your get out of jail song. It’s a bit of a bold move, but if your crowd was pumping before they will go with it.
[ link ]Like it! You could have the sound of a needle being ripped off a record. I heard an Andy Weatherall remix that started like that once…
[ link ]Beatjump is another opportunity.
[ link ]Introducing another track with a “Bob Sinclar Filter Trick” can save you in that situation.
For playing one of my Live set with Ableton, I got a track with a loooong breakdown…
And there’s 2 cases :
- If I have not any lighting effects, I can killed the crowd mood, because it’s not “fascinating” people anymore…
So I have to jump to the next clip to be sure to not kill the moment.
- If I have lighting on this show, I have already told the lighting guy to put smoke, strobes and lasers to make the trick…
The knowledge of tracks, this is the secret.
[ link ]Use it to mix in another track that begins with a long break.Gently fade it in,in time of course,while fading it out…use with filter on both,dry to wet with wet to dry for incoming track.
[ link ]Use your mic,it works wonders in breaks
The Mic is your friend, use it! Most turntable guys dOnt talk on the mic.
[ link ]hang on, just getting used to this digital stuff, don’t tell me I have to talk now as well….is this what dj’ing has become?
[ link ]Let enter the beat of the new song, a delay effect to pump the break, an on/toff effect on the turntable, or delay freeze on traktor are other possibilities.
[ link ]breakdowns are a tricky thing! i dont like how most people play them! example: when i went to see carl cox, almost every song he playd (about 30 mins into the set) he playd it with a huge breakdown! like 16 or sometime even 32 bars! but the thing was the breaks almost never had any rythm! just some strings or something like that… after sometime you just had to stop dancing and the worst part was the fact that after all those huge breakdowns, instead of the beat coming back in ”full on” you know, with allmost all the elements, he would just bring a kick! then 8 bars later just an hi hat! i mean come on! that compared to when i saw richie hawtin, wich his breakdowns were a lot shorter, and he would just take the bass out! the rest of the groove was still there, everybody was still vibin and when the bass comes back is just instant hands in the air! it’s a much bigger impact! and he did that basicly all night long! but the funny thing was that ppl sort of liked those long breaks from carl cox (probably just because he is who he is), i must have been one of the few that didnt really like it, but in richie hawtin, i was so into it i literally didnt stop dancing to a beat and im pretty shure that nobody did!! thats the power of the breakdown!
[ link ]Funny because whenever I have seen Carl Cox his years of experience just let him move the crowd, as opposed to all your so called superstars playing anthem after anthem and breakdown on breakdown.
[ link ]just put in a drum intro, all songs have that. Slowly raise the volume and its done. dont need traktor just a regular mixer with volume controll and you are a dj. Too many put faith in filters and technology…most important is have fun and play good songs and a bad switch is ok compared to having a crowd that hates what you play.
[ link ]Doubles plus beat jump is how I do it, when the drop is mega long I load the same song into the other deck like instant doubles. Then use beat jump ahead 32 on the second one, and crossfade and mix into the one thats ahead, sounds great
[ link ]Know the track first, then make your own edit!
[ link ]Thats what I usually do.
key change to higher or lower then backspin effect or long break effect then a popular well recognisable tune as a get out of jail card?
its been my “cheap trick” when things have gone wrong and need to change fast
[ link ]I still say, press play and start the next song. Easy and noone cares if its mixed as long as next song is good.
[ link ]Throwing in a cool breakbeat through the breakdown has always worked a charm for me. One of my favourites is the Robbie Rivera remix of Basement Jaxx – Where’s Your Head At?
[ link ]I just avoid big breakdowns when I play for smaller crowds or more intimate gigs (~100 people or less). You´ve got to adapt and these minor details make all difference. It´s easier to “lose” smaller floors/crowds than bigger ones, even when you´ve got them locked on the groove. I guess breakdowns are kinda proportional to that, no matter how is the vibe.
Anyway, if we still get into this we must find a way out and those are all good tips for sure. Today it´s much easier than it was back in the vinyl days, with all live editing, hot cueing and stuff available with digital DJing. I still remember throwing a long ECHO, lowering the channel faders and jumping the needle to the next beat in more than one occasion when I got stuck into a boring break.
[ link ]It’s a bit like the breaks in old 12″ remix records (yes, I AM that old
) and they would often still have a beat going.
Some went on forever and with vinyl there is no beatjumps, no looping, no quickly sticking a copy of the song playing into the other “deck” (i.e. SL-1200) unless you have 2nd physical copy. And usually no delay, echo, flanger, filter, or what have you. Although the record break came standard, just hit the stop button
So, it was pretty important you knew when a break came and how long it lasted. I would use the lighting system if it was an acceptable length break, or toss in some lyrics from the acapella version of another floorfiller (lots of B-sides had acappela’s “back in the day”), but mostly I just considered the break(s) in long-a** 12″ remixes as dividers where you could do a beatmatched mix into the next song, or you could mix in the song at the end of the break just to play another part of it.
Reading all the comments I can’t help but think we have been given a WHOLE lot more possibilities to deal with long breakdowns now that we have gone digital.
I miss vinyl sometimes, but I wouldn’t give up all the wonderful creative tools and get-out-of-jail cards that digital DJ-ing brings us anymore.
[ link ]A little late to this conversation…the ‘long breakdown’, or its cousin ‘too many breakdowns’, is something I’ve been frustrated with lately from a number of producers, to the point where I’ve started making dj edits. I’ll take the raw wav file and pop it into an old copy of Sound Forge to reloop some beats, chop out one (or more!
) breakdown sections or rearrange where the breakdowns happen, and even do some ‘producer-y’ stuff by adding effects or stutter edits to ease the transition points.
This doesn’t entirely help your situation ‘in the mix’ and it goes hand-in-hand with ‘know your music’, but it’s something to consider. You can make an edit of that track w/ the super long breakdown and play it out more often instead of the right moment for a long breakdown.
I’m actually curious if any djs out there are doing this more often now that we can purchase uncompressed music?
[ link ]I think it’s something DJs are doing more of generally – it’s also something we thoroughly encourage!
[ link ]Phil, how about a follow-up article on best “practices” techniques for editing long breakdowns out of songs? Might include stuff such as:
- Different softwares
- Different techniques
- Tips & Tricks
Just a thought!
Thanks!
[ link ]Thanks for the suggestion, Dan, we’ll consider it.
[ link ]