ScottoRobotto

I love lighting effects so I think you could use a little more. To my mind there are four areas that need to be filled with lighting:
1)The back/side walls
2)The dance floor
3)The air/ceiling
4)The area behind the DJ

Back/Side Wall
Depending on the venue the walls can be very boring, lights and color can be used to break this up and create texture on an otherwise plain wall. You can use uplighting or a projected lighting effect like your laser. I this case I think you should set up your laser about 10 feet high and aim it over your crowds head to hit the back wall.

Dance Floor
The dance floor is another area that tends to be relatively plain, you can use a projected effect like a moonflower, a gobo, or moving dots. Depending on the rest of the setup you may be able to use the reflect or diffused lights from other effects to light up the floor without adding anything for the floor specifically. This might be a good spot to use your gobo.

Air/Ceiling
If you have fog going, it’s pretty easy to fill the air with beam type lighting effects. If not you can use projected effects to light up the ceiling instead. You can use the fog machine and the laser you already have for the back wall for this.

Behind the DJ
You want to create interest behind you or on your both as well. You can use uplighting or effects on the wall behind you or on your booth scrim. If you have fog going the beams from your lighting can create interest on their own. If not you can use chases on your lighting or strobes. This is the area where I think you need lighting.

You have a projector that changes color, I assume a static gobo, and a laser. The laser has some movement but it sounds like it’s probably slow and won’t really show up unless there is fog. Some kind of chase and strobe effect would probably work well.

The Chauvet 4Play CL is four moonflower effects linked on a rail with clear casing. They project dynamic effects on surfaces, they put beams in the air with fog, and the clear casing lights up which works well when it runs a chase or strobes. They run about $230 new on Amazon.

The American DJ Jelly Dome is a rotating mirror ball effect with a translucent casing. It projects dots in a wide area, throws off beams with fog, the casing rotates, and it changes color and strobes. I want to pick up one of these as a centerpiece and for slow songs, you could shut off the other effects, change it to a static blue/purple/pink, and put it on a slow rotation. They run about $170 on Amazon.

Part of the reason I’m recommending strobes is because too many effects will add too much ambient light which tends to kill the mood and reduces the impact from effects because there is less contrast.

Another reason to use a lot of effects is so you can cycle them, if you have the same effects playing for all the songs they may not match well and eventually it gets boring. Change it up the same way you change up music.

It helps to be familiar with the music you’re playing. I have about 4 hours of music that I’ve heard a million times so I know exactly what it sounds like, it makes it easier to think of something else on the fly.

I’ve found that it also helps to familiarize yourself with the music as a DJ. I practice alot where I’ll mix in a song, skip to the ending and immediately mix in another song, I’m changing songs every 30 seconds or so. The point is to try out lots of different transitions and song sequences so you have more options. Another thing I do is I play with the bpm and pitch alot. Some songs sound good after a massive bpm shift. I make a note that I can use it at the original bpm or at the shifted bpm. For example:

This is the original, it’s okay but a little slow, I bump it up a touch when I play it.

Here is a remixed version someone made that’s bumped up alot, there is long 30 sec intro you can skip past. I heard this version and liked it so I up the bpm to replicate it. Sometimes I use the high pitch, other times I’ll turn key lock on to keep the original pitch.

Tag him and ask him to reciprocate and no hard feelings if one of you gets the gig.

Sound board as a second input.

This is a mashup someone else did of the same videos. I think he went a little overboard with the transitions but essentially this is what I do. Basically the group consists of Korean and Chinese speaking members so they filmed the video twice, one for Korean and one for Mandarin.

I pick up CDs from garage sales while hunting for guitars. The last thing I got was a Sinatra 3 disc collection for $5. I’ve heard audiophilles hunt thrift shops and garage sales for CDs because they are cheaper than digital downloads and they can rip the songs themselves to get high-fidelity lossless files.