Opening DJ Sets
The foundation to your DJing career
Opening sets or ‘Warm up’ sets have been the topic of discussion of late. The saying: An opening set can make or break the night is indeed very true. A lot of DJs do not fancy playing the first slot due to:
– A lack of crowd in the first half of the night
– Little crowd but an empty dance floor.
How can opening sets contribute to your success? How can it help you further your skill and crowd reading prowess? Read along to find out:
Everyone wants to play to an audience and packed dance floor, but that does not happen overnight, how are you going to play to a packed dance floor when you do not know what it takes to work for a crowd. Let me tell you this, with over decades of DJing, there is no better way to start than to start playing opening sets, this is where you learn what it takes to work a crowd and take full control over the dance floor.
Even up today I get nervous whenever I get the opportunity to play a warmup set before a DJ, even though I love doing it, it still pushes me to do a lot of research about the artist I m warming up for, music is pretty much available of all artist online, and I’ve probably already heard of the artist, International or Indian, but I make sure to listen to their DJ sets on Soundcloud on what they are playing lately, I scan through the set a few times, to get a feel for how the set progresses, it’s even important to know where you are playing as in the venue and the time, a DJ set can vary from venues and slot timings as well. Then, I start researching and digging for music and looking for music to build my warmup set to create a vibe up to what the Headling artist is playing after me. Honestly, it’s an absolute pleasure to play opening sets I feel, even to this day.
You have probably seen a lot of established DJ in India these days playing open to close DJ sets so that they can work for the crowd from scratch and build the night. I would make it a challenge. Whenever I played a warmup set or the main slot, and I saw fewer people or no one dancing, It would be a challenge to me to make people dance. I would look at the few people standing around and keep seeing how they reacted to each track I played, and the minute I would see the audience move, I would already know the kind of music they like and from there on I would start to select tracks from my folder accordingly coaxing the audience toward the dance floor not forcing them, or driving them away. It takes patients and practice and a lot of digging and knowing your music beyond the usual Beatport top 100 or a playlist or Artbat or Charlotte to open for an artist that plays a similar sound, that’s probably the worst thing one can do as a DJ.
They are so many different ways of playing an opening set, you can open like Adriatique opened for Solomon or the way Joran Van Pol would for Richie Hawtin. Whether it is an established Indian artist who’s playing before an international artist or a beginner DJ playing before an Indian artist or just playing an opening slot, in general, the rule is the same even if there is one person dancing or 100 people dancing.
A warmup set or opening set is one of the most important sets. The more opening slots you play the better you get. Which then results in you building your name as a DJ.