DJ James Bowers

I always take my controller so first-time gigs – You can never predict their equipment, and I did one bar where, like yours, their CDJ’s beat counter was off which can really panic you. Of course you can still mix by ear but that’s easier said than done in some environments/set-ups – you always want to aim to be comfortable, so if that means mixing with your own kit then so be it!

Just brush off that ONE bad experience as a learning curve – it sounds cliche to say ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ but in the DJ world it really does ring true. I’d go as far as to say that a few mistakes are actually good for you – you now know how to avoid them again! 🙂

Hey Kendrick 🙂

Don’t over-think it – just play what you think they want to hear. At the end of the day, the crowd probably couldn’t give a toss about the mix (as heart-wrenching as that might sound)! If you need to drop the BPM down then there are several ways I do this:

1) Easiest – Choose a dance track at your current BPM which doesn’t have an extended outtro – use a radio edit (either mix in with club edit & sneakily switch them over halfway through, or just mix in the radio edit). Just press play on the lower-BPM track at the end! This works best in bars and commercial clubs. Especially if you play something like Crazy In Love by Beyonce to get the girls going crazy lol!

2) If you’re playing high-BPM trance etc. (though this also works for some old-school dance too, say, 135-140BPM?), then slowly tease up the tempo fader so that it’s at around 140BPM. Then find your slower track (preferably around 70BPM), double the beatgrid to match the faster track (if you’re in Traktor) or just mix by ear, and mix as usual – It lets you skip the whole way down the spectrum. It’s ALL about the choice of songs you use in order for this to work, slightly more-so than usual.

3) ‘Snake’ your way down the BPM range – I tend to do this throughout my sets anyway, as I get fed up of DJs who stay at 128BPM all night! It’s a really easy way to add variety to your set. Simply just play slightly slower tracks and adjust pitch, until you’ve worked your way to where you want to be. You can work your way down from 128BPM to ~90BPM in 30 mins without anyone noticing, to be honest! This technique is underrated because if done right, can really send the crowd crazy 🙂

4) Get transition tracks – There are some tracks out there (especially on DJing music portals) that transition from 128BPM dance beats, into trap or RnB beats a LOT slower (70-90BPM). I don’t personally like many of these because the beat grids don’t work in Traktor and I think they can sound a bit rubbish – especially if they limit you to only 3 tracks which you can use to travel up & down the spectrum!

It depends entirely on the venue, crowd, music type, whether or not you want to the slower track to be a ‘DROP’ etc. – but for my commercial audience in bars, I use 1 & 3 the most!

Hope this helps 🙂