I'm playing a closing DJ set next week. I wondered if anyone has any particular tips they can give me?
What I'm struggling with is, if I should build up my set with a regular (potentially dark and a bit murky) intro that isn't necessarily going to be "banging", but build up to the more heavy stuff? (If that makes sense?)
Depends on the crowd, the energy in the room, and how the guy on before you has left it. Only advice is to take a broad selection and read the crowd. Plus a couple of vocal lead cuts never go amiss if people have been on it all night to dark instrumental stuff.
depends what time the nights finishing. if its around 3 or 4 am, generally you want to go out with a bang and keep people in the room rather than going home, so fast mixing towards the end of the set and more familiar tunes that ppl will know and party vibes towards the end
Its towards the end of the night so ppl will have been dancing to standard murky stuff all night so you need to build up the intensity again. maybe start around 130 and bring it up gradually to 140 so the excitement builds. then for the last 15 mins change it up a bit. give everyone a high to go home on
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What sort of night is it? I'd go with something completely unexpected as your first couple of tunes, work your way to what you'd normally play. People normally wanna go home before the last set but will give it a couple tunes to get a feel for it.. so catch them off guard. I'd go with garage depending on the night, crowd pleasers.
One of my favourite sets was a 4am Jackmaster set, I was shattered and was gunna go home but wanted to catch a couple tunes from him first.. stayed til the very end, as did a lot of people. The crowd about 4:30 all singing along to Addison Grooves remix of Jimmy Mack.. probably the most energy of the night.
If you try go in with the same stuff thats been playing all night its likely, depending how late it is, people will taper off.
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For a closing set I would never look to start low energy and build. If you think of how a night 'usually' rolls. Just an example:-
DJ 1 - low energy
DJ 2 - Low - mid energy
DJ 3 - Headliner mid - high energy (this is essentially the peak here)
DJ 4 (closing set) - the natural feel of the night dictates you keep at the same high energy that the DJ had before you. You can push the energy up higher, get more experimental with style or just end on some feel good less banging but anthem'y style tracks
Obviously that overly simplifies things quite a bit and the night could be totally different but that's generally how I"ve found things.
Read the crowd play what they want to here. People at this point are pretty drunk and don't want anything too "intelligent" just want to hear something they know and/or can sing along to
