There’s a lot that goes into planning a great DJ set. Some DJ’s like to plan out an entire playlist, some prefer to read the crowd and pick tracks as they go, but most DJ’s fall somewhere in the middle. No matter what your approach to planning may be, there’s one area you’ll always want to consider: opening DJ songs. Sometimes your opening song is your only chance to sell yourself to an audience, especially as an upcoming DJ who will be unfamiliar to a lot of the audience. Opening DJ songs are your chance to hook the crowd and give them a reason to get on the dance floor.
Choosing Great Opening DJ Songs
The key to choosing great opening DJ songs is to find songs that are familiar, but not hits; hype, but not peak hour bangers; hard enough for the guys, but with enough groove for the girls. Essentially you want to find a comfortable middle ground. If you play the most high energy song in your library as soon as you go on, then your set has nowhere to go but down. Conversely if you open with your very minimal deep house you might not have people storming the dance floor. Opening DJ songs dictate the direction that your mix will go, so if you’re not planning your set out too much it’s especially important to pick a leading song that will give you a lot of options based on the crowd’s response.
The track you open with is what everyone will assume your set will sound like, so in a lot of ways opening DJ songs are one of your best chances to really make a statement about your style and personality as a DJ. When you’re starting out it’s good to play something that people will recognize, but not something that they will have heard in every club for the last month. Once you start to book headlining gigs, opening DJ songs are a great opportunity to play brand new tracks that you’re excited about. In these cases many of the people there will be established fans of you already. You don’t need to hook them, they’d much rather hear you opening with something fresh and new, knowing that you’ll get to the hits later.
This brings us to another important rule of thumb. If you have a successful single that you know your fans are expecting to hear, it should NOT be one of your opening DJ songs. You’ll run the risk that people will lose interest and leave after they’ve heard the song that they may have gone there to hear.
Picking strong opening DJ songs may seem tricky, and there’s definitely a fine line to walk, but if you know your library well it’s not as hard as it sounds. If worst comes to worst and the crowd isn’t feeling your opening DJ songs, you can always mix out quick and try something else out. That’s the beauty of DJing.
Above: Diplo still trying to decide what to drop first.
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