DigitalJunkiie

A stuffed pikachu….. just in case the power cuts out at the venue im playing at I can grab my pikachu and yell “Pikachu I choose you!” In the silence of the music cuts out. I have yet to use this tactic but yet I carry the pikachu around so its now like a good luck charm but if that moment ever does happen ill be ready.

Great great thread to start up Phil!

I still remember pacing back and forth for honestly 2-3 hours before my first set at Klub OMFG #49 club in the world on DJMag Top100 club I do not know if these “top 100’s” are worth anything but just the thought of knowing they are 49 made me freak out even more. So I’m in my apartment pacing back and forth before my set and my mind is just racing towards the worst possible scenarios that could happen to my set that night, I was with some friends who noticed I was really nervous about my first gig, so one mentioned to me practice playing a set for them to get me less nervous and such. I thought It was a good idea so I went on with it.

Everything was going fine until 20 minutes into my practice set my laptop shuts off like it was a power outage, 1 hour before my set and I figure out my laptop is shutting down every 20-30 minutes just randomly could not figure out what was wrong with it, so here I am freaking out, a bad situation did just happen on my first gig. I had no spare laptop, my software cd wasn’t even on me to switch over to a different laptop. So I had a defective laptop which shuts down 20-30 minutes and I have to be on stage to play for my first crowd of 200 people within 45 minutes… I didn’t know what to do. I was so nervous at that point I just told myself what ever happens happens, I progammed my laptop so that if it did shut down the maximum start time from starting the computer to start menu only took 45 seconds-1 minute and in that time I told myself if it happened Ill tough it out for 45 seconds to a minute…

So 5 minutes before my set I’m scanning the fully packed floor now, and seeing that the crowd was hungry for the next DJ to come on and play some more greasy songs for them to lose their face too, at this point I’m practically Shi**ing my pants because of whats going to happen during my set, as I go on stage, the manager and the dj that was on before me asked me if anything was going to be wrong on my laptop, then and there I felt like a prayer inside my head was answered so I quickly explained my situation that had happened at home to the DJ and manager, they asked me if I noticed the base of my laptop would get hot, and just by them mentioning that it all clicked in to me over heating laptop. The previous DJ lent me his cooling pad for his laptop told me it would fix my problem, so being at that point i wasn’t going to object any suggestions/ideas I was just going to do it and prayed that this cooling pad would prevent my laptop from crashing.

As I start my set something interesting happened, I quickly and i mean quickly forgot about my problem, forgot about my nerves its almost like the moment I went on stage stood behind my controller and laptop and starting playing sounds/tracks which made me happy and then being able to see the crowd with the same reaction was like a cure for being nervous. I played banger after banger and next thing I knew I already played an hour not even realizing that I have only couple minutes before the closing DJ comes on.

Even to this day I don’t know what it is but the moment I get behind my controller and laptop and start playing and manipulating the crowd its always the same;

nerves are gone, I am care free and happy, the irony of it is I live for this moment.

congrats on your first paid gig! Wow you are already doing better than majority of bed room dj’s! Better than me as well I still have yet to be paid for my gigs 🙁

Hmm if you are running windows try windows movie maker!

Greetings to the forum mate! My best advice I can give you is just go out and have fun try and get a first gig and go play it and trust me you will be nervous as heck many many days before and even when you think you can’t be any more nervous or freaking out the final hours really make it worse, but at the very moment you start setting up and you see the crowd just be the story teller for the night have fun and even if you screw up chances are the people will be too intoxicated to even notice.

Here is my face book page! Great to finally meet with people outside my area!
http://www.facebook.com/digitaljunkiie