How to prepare for that special set?
By Bjornsane on Wednesday, 7 April 2010, 13:00. Viewed 369 times. 
Preparing an upcoming DJ set is always hard to do. You have no idea how the crowd will respond to your music, you have no idea what they are expecting. You need to guess a bit and rely on previous experience. It comes with the job.
But what do you do when you're asked to play a style you do not really have much experience with?
My experience
I've been in this situation several times myself. I have been asked to play more housy, happy kind of music. While my style is defined by deep, dark and underground tech house. I have played a lot of house in my early days when I just started out DJing. Heck I even played alot of the more harder styles of electronic dance music like hardstyle. But switching is difficult. You will need to retrieve these old tracks, perhaps even find some new ones that the expected audience might like. There's more to it than just downloading the latest top 20 and start playing it.
I started digging. Through my old collection and through the tracks I like(d) to play alot. I just selected everything that sounded accessible enough and I was getting a bit more nervous than normally for this performance. Yet it excited me, to see if I was capable of putting a great set.
How it end?
In the end. It all came down to my preparation. I felt confident because I knew I had a lot of different styles in my bag, which made track selection a bit harder but more fun. It gave me the opportunity to experiment and even try out of some darker tracks to see if the audience liked it. It was a great set. Afterwards people came up to me and thanked me for it. It was a great succes.
If you happen to find yourself in such a situation, just remember: It's all in the preperation of your DJ set. Bring everything that might be liked and just have fun! Go for it.