After years of DJing as a guest artist or being resident in clubs where I played twice a week tops! I moved to Dubai and changed my entire profile. I started attending guest gigs only from time to time and playing 4 -5 times a week in the same venue.
After a few years here, I realized recently how tiring this kind of job is if You want to make it good and want to deliver a fantastic music experience to your crowd.
Firstly, it’s not always easy to entertain people in high quality places those that are not meant for dancing, jumping around and heavy drinking. Your music selection is different, You must observe Your guests even more, You focus more on mixer levels, clean transitions and all. Not to mention balancing between background and building an atmosphere while keeping a positive energy level high enough to not put people to sleep.
Secondly, the important thing is to change Your playlists every single day. Keeping Your music library very fresh, trying to not repeat often Your favorite tracks or at least same versions of these songs. We do it not because of the same guest/s visiting again or frequently – we do it because of poeple we work with, who share with us 4-5 hours almost every day doing their job while DJ is doing his.
If You like Your colleagues and You want them to like You back – don’t torture them with the same songs served daily.
Last year I played 288 sets as a resident DJ, 1152 hours of music (it’s like djing continuously for 48 days) – plus some extra gigs which makes this number even more crazy. If You only add the daily driving to work and back, hours and hours to find new music, organize Your songs – in this moment I realized it’s not such an easy job anymore. Big up for all resident DJs, respect! (only if You are not playing same playlist almost every day and I was there and I caught You LOL)
Timo Higgs / DJ + drumming / Event Management 