DJ Mistakes

I once accidentally pressed the ’45’ button while the tracks were in perfect sync through the house speakers, the result was so bad that no amount of backspin could save the embarassment

Yeah, I’m pretty much guilty of all of the above too. At least once a night too.

The worst, however, was when a friend and I were going head to head one night. It was snowing and we didn’t want to risk our records, so just brought our laptops and used iTunes for a giggle. Aside from the mates laptop constantly crashing (though thankfully with a count down so I could crack out something long to give him a chance to reboot) he kept playing really long songs, which were really frustrating for me, as I’d nowt to do until they finished. We’d been drinking (relatively heavily) so, as a form of revenge, I stuck on a Xiu Xiu live track, that was actually pretty heavy and dancey. Thing is, I’d forgotten that the quality wasn’t so good, especially when played on a proper rig.

Not to be outdone, he decided he was going to REALLY annoy me and played something from These New Puritans. It’s a cracking track, but it’s like an 8 minute long Trip-Hop affair, that ends with vast clouds of sound effects and choirs. Determined not to be out done, I stuck on this cracking track by a guy called Sonic Area. The best way I can think of describing it is Industrial Dubstep. That shit is HEAVY!

Alas, unbeknownst to us, the owners girlfriend wandered in during the Xiu Xiu track, and he followed right at the very end of the These New Puritans track, just in time to hear the bizarre choirs and me mixing in this Industrial track. He came over and gave us a very stern warning about how short our DJ careers would be if we drove off all the customers in his bar. It was just bad timing really. The night had gone really well up until that, we just got a bit carried away and he and the misses happened to walk in at EXACTLY the wrong moment.

Also, I’ve been DJing when the singer from the Sultans Of Ping FC arrived (he’s a friend of the guy who owns the bar). I started playing a bit of Punk and 90’s Indie stuff to win him over, but he was having none of it. For some odd reason (I’m blaming alcohol) my friend managed to convince me that playing Where’s Me jumper? would be a good way to endear him to me.

He left before the end of the song.

personally….sometimes beerand mixing dont mix…. well, too much beer…. cause then i have my channels all mixed up and i end up cueing thru the master out….. u know that can get messy

i’ve been dj’ing on traktor and the laptop has froze and gone to a blue screen of death while making a loud buzzing noise which was quite embarrasing as you have to restart the computer! i’ve also knocked a pint over the laptop whilst dj’ing which isn’t advisable lol (laptop was ok though amazingly!)

1. In the middle of a perfectly beatmatched 1:30 mix, I go to grab the next tune from my CD case, and my friend leans over and pulls the pitch on one of the decks waaaayyy down. Cue a complete trainwreck of a mix, even worse cause I couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened.

2. Had a house party cranking at about 11, and went to grab another track. Unfortunately, my powerboard has a very large, very easily pushed off button, so when my foot kicked it, I took down the whole system! Music, lights, everything. When I got everything back up, I muttered something about a scratched CD into the microphone, then continued as usual

Dropp wrote:

1. In the middle of a perfectly beatmatched 1:30 mix, I go to grab the next tune from my CD case, and my friend leans over and pulls the pitch on one of the decks waaaayyy down. Cue a complete trainwreck of a mix, even worse cause I couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened.

I used to do that to my mate all the time when he wasn’t looking… fortunately never while he was live on air, broadcasting from a club… on a real (not internet) commercial radio station!!

My least favorite mistake is when when your building up the song with delay or filters and drop it too early or too late!

Everybody makes mistakes so don’t be too hard on yourselves!

My worst was going to complete silence after hitting the cue button on a a CDJ-1000 while jumping around like a madman behind the decks haha…

At that point though, somebody rushed the booth and started yelling rewind (thank god for that punter) so that helped to relieve the awkwardness of the moment but i was def pretty shooken up having to restart the track from the intro… super embarassing!

using the crossfader for quick cuts and forgetting to re-center it hahaaha

Mine is not paying attention,…. and the song finishes… but I play it off by adding atmospheric sounds after, like it was an intentional break to transition into a nice chill song, ……which then I play a chill song……… but in reality I just f&#@ed up.

Syncing acapellas to another song with an offset of 1 or 2 bars.

Also going into the red on their mixer because they want to sound louder. NEVER do this.

My low was fully down and i didn’t know it for a minute

back in the day = taking the needle off the wrong record / today = loading on the wrong deck on my laptop