Advice for getting slots in clubs

Propane Nightmare

Hey, ive been learning to dj for the past year and have got a few gigs through my college that went well, but am looking to try and get a weekly slot in a club or bar, or anything really. What advice do you have for people looking to do this? Ideally id love to get a slot allowing me to play hard electro and house music (deadmau5, boys noize, Justice, afrojack etc.) but id say its near impossible to in Ireland, going by alot of the clubs. But id take playing chart music also.

Do you just go into the bars and leave in a sort of cv or what do you do? Thanks in advance.

electrogrimey

Said this before in another thread. This is my step-by-step guide to becoming a superstar DJ.

Obviously it changes from situation to situation, but here's a general guide to becoming a club DJ.

1) Spend a while building up your equipment and music collection. Whichever way you want to go, CD/vinyl/digital.

2) Keep making mixes, 10/15/30 minutes, and post them places like this for advice on mixing. We've a thread to post mixes and we'll give you advice.

3) When you've got your mixing down to a decent level, start working on a promo mix. An hour long, with about 20 tracks that show your taste, and go well together in a mix, with ups and downs etc. Keep practicing it until it's perfect, and then record it and put it up on Soundcloud.

4) While this is happening you should be heading out to the venues/nights you like and getting to know the DJs and promoters. Don't pester them during sets, but get to know them and ask if they're looking for warm-up DJs.

5) If you've done enough networking, and your mix is good enough, you should start getting some warm-up slots around the place. Do a good job as a warm up DJ, get the crowd warmed up, and make a good impression.

6) Wait until you get offered your first peak time set.

7) Celebrate.

You can also fast-track this process if you're a producer. Produce one decent track that gets on blogs/airplay on Radio 1/played out by big enough DJs, and you'll be getting slots all over town.

milltown

I clicked on this expecting tips for picking up chicks.
Flagrant breach of the trades descriptions act imho.

brianc27

learn that electro and electro house are 2 completely different genres of music, once you get your head around that the rest is easy

electrogrimey

brianc27 wrote: »

learn that electro and electro house are 2 completely different genres of music, once you get your head around that the rest is easy

To be fair, different genres can have the same name. i.e. people call future-garage just garage, because it's simpler, even though it's very different to the original garage.

Also, what a lot of people call 'electro' isn't actually electro-house, it should be called indie-dance, but I've never heard anyone call it that except Beatport.

BaZmO*

electrogrimey wrote: »

...future-garage...

:rolleyes:

Where will it end!?!?

ianuss

Couldn't agree more Winnie - it's not talent, dedication or hard work that'll get you gigs - it's nice new shoes.

electrogrimey

BaZmO* wrote: »

:rolleyes:

Where will it end!?!?

What? This is Future-Garage/UK Funky/Post-Dubstep stuff is going to be huge, I'd say in a year or two it'll be as big as dubstep is now.

seannash

electrogrimey wrote: »

What? This is Future-Garage/UK Funky/Post-Dubstep stuff is going to be huge, I'd say in a year or two it'll be as big as dubstep is now.

im gonna agree with bazmo and say this genre **** is getting ridiculous.

its called future garage because it doesnt sound like the garage from yesteryear yeah?

house music doesnt sound like house music from yesteryear but we dont call it future house.what will happen in 20 years when future garage doesnt sound like the future garage of today,will it be called super future garage?

if someone said to me in conversation that they played future garage my estimation of them would go down a hell of a lot

electrogrimey

seannash wrote: »

im gonna agree with bazmo and say this genre **** is getting ridiculous.

its called future garage because it doesnt sound like the garage from yesteryear yeah?

house music doesnt sound like house music from yesteryear but we dont call it future house.what will happen in 20 years when future garage doesnt sound like the future garage of today,will it be called super future garage?

if someone said to me in conversation that they played future garage my estimation of them would go down a hell of a lot

It's called future garage because it's nothing like original garage, so you can't call it garage, or people like Brian27 above will give out that it's not garage.

Call it post-dubstep or UK funky if that helps, but it's a new genre, not an evolution of an existing genre.

seannash

electrogrimey wrote: »

It's called future garage because it's nothing like original garage, so you can't call it garage, or people like Brian27 above will give out that it's not garage.

Call it post-dubstep or UK funky if that helps, but it's a new genre, not an evolution of an existing genre.

so does house music from the early 90's sound like house music now?
this genre **** is ridiculous and to be honest grimey it seems like your just using buzz words

people can call music whatever descriptive terms they want but they might just look like a **** when they do.
i can just imagine the sort of conversation that would make someone when asked what music do you play say future garage,post dubstep etc

anyway none of this will hel you get gigs so i guess its irrelevent.
im off for a bowl of future cornflakes.:D

Jev/N

The 'Electro-House is not Electro' tune is wearing thin at this stage. Yes, we all got that 5 years ago but pretty much everyone knows that when someone mentions "Electro" these days in the context of being 18-24 years old, they probably mean Electro House. It's more a shorthand colloquial expression than anything.

I own both Electro and Electro-House vinyls but I still call the latter Electro when talking to most people as they know what I mean, whether they're a fan of the genre or not.

I'm guilty of it as well though when I say I play "House", referring to Deep House mainly, some of the younger generation think I mean AfroJack/Steve Angello four-to-the-floor kinda stuff.

I have to agree with Sean though, this categorisation and pigeon-holing of music is gone way over the top these days.

seannash

double post

jtsuited

I dunno, I think post-dubstep and UK funky are fairly distinct genres that sort of need their own name.

seannash

i think its a term coined by people who werent into garage until recently and as such dont know what the hell it sounded like back then.

theres nothing new about it really its just that all people can recall from the garage era of the past is the chart nonsense.im sure to anyone whos been playing garage for years this wave of garage isnt too far removed from what they have heard already it just wasn't too popular

i think people are taking tracks are a little bit different and copying there construction and calling it a whole new genre.
it happened with "dutch house"

post dubstep to me is just deep breakbeat.

but instead of calling it that they have tried to shoehorn it in with another emerging scene so they can appear to be on the cusp of whats new.

can you imagine the looks on peole faces when they say they play post dubstep,future garage or uk funky.

i dont know its just an image thing i think and were eventually gonna get down to every track thats got a bit of originality to it being labeled a new genre

any how can i get a slot should be addressed i guess.the poor OP must be lost ha ha

jtsuited

you might be right there sean.

However, I think one of the reasons so many genre names pop up is because of the negative connotations that get associated with a genre over time.

I actually experienced this first hand when I started doing 2-step/garage stuff. People who hadn't heard it were all 'wtf, UK garage? jesus!'.

Call it post-dubstep, Uk funky, avant-garage or whatever but essentially it's UK Garage and Dubstep without wobbles, rewinds, or any of that other stuff.

To be a bit more cynical about it, it's another appropriation of black corporeal music into something cerebral and white, just like what happened with rock n roll, house, techno, etc.

seannash

yeah thats true about the stigma.i actaully was working last year with an english lad who was well into his garage.
now when i first heard this i scoffed at him but i took a listen(had no choice really) and it was alright.

im was guilty of prejudging it but it didnt take away from it ,when i listened to it, that he was calling it garage.

i can just imagine someone telling an exerienced garage dj that they play future garage or a breakbeat dj that hes into post dubstep.

i can understand that people new to it will just acceept that this is what its called and be a bit confused by all this debate.

if i was making garage id be a bit annoyed if all that people thought of is the artful dodger or craig david but lets not try dress it up.

someone should start a thread on this anjd maybe itll descend into a debate on how to get gigs:)

electrogrimey

seannash wrote: »

someone should start a thread on this anjd maybe itll descend into a debate on how to get gigs:)

I was thinking we should start a thread just listing all the genres, and a link to a fairly definitive tune in that genre. Just to clear up the genre debate stuff.

To be honest, I don't really see a problem with pidgeon holing genres, I just see it as a more descriptive way of telling people the kind of music you play. You could say 'I play house', and get booked for a chilled out deep house gig, when you actually play much heavier techy stuff.

seannash

electrogrimey wrote: »

I was thinking we should start a thread just listing all the genres, and a link to a fairly definitive tune in that genre. Just to clear up the genre debate stuff.

To be honest, I don't really see a problem with pidgeon holing genres, I just see it as a more descriptive way of telling people the kind of music you play. You could say 'I play house', and get booked for a chilled out deep house gig, when you actually play much heavier techy stuff.

no youd get booked for a deep house set.

i think if you play house you basically have an interest in most of the house genres.i have warm up stuff and that will generally be deep house.if im booked for a house set i wont play banging **** in the begining.its common sense

the more you pigeon hole yourself the less adaptable you become.

there are necessary genre names but not to the extent its hapening now

JT made a thread

jtsuited

seannash wrote: »

no youd get booked for a deep house set.

i think if you play house you basically have an interest in most of the house genres.i have warm up stuff and that will generally be deep house.if im booked for a house set i wont play banging **** in the begining.its common sense

yeah tbf house is house. It might be good house or it might be sh1te but it's still house. IMO you're either a good house dj or a sh1te one.

Propane Nightmare

Thanks for all the help lads :P

electrogrimey wrote: »

Said this before in another thread. This is my step-by-step guide to becoming a superstar DJ.



You can also fast-track this process if you're a producer. Produce one decent track that gets on blogs/airplay on Radio 1/played out by big enough DJs, and you'll be getting slots all over town.

I was talking more about getting to play the small clubs around the city (Waterford, thats where im located) but I didn't think you'd need to do all that. I thought you'd just need to talk to the manager/owners of the clubs and give them some info on yourself with what you play, your rates etc and they might give you a kind of try out or something.

TBH, I don't know how some of these "djs" in these places can even call themselves one, when they don't even know the very basic counting bars and beats in music let alone how to beat match (you know when you hear them switching to the next track, its just a mess), yet have massive set-ups of cdjs + laptops but I often wonder how they get in there in the first place. Any ideas on how I should go about it? Or anyone here know of places around waterford/kilkenny letting young djs play?

brianc27

networking

most people get gigs by getting to know the people they want to play for.