Sunday, July 10, 2016

One Thing You Should Never Do Right Before A DJ Gig..


i fell into a trap that meant not only could I not use my laptop to DJ... but even a reboot couldn't help me. Find out what and how this happened in this article...
OK, so here at Digital DJ Tips, we teach all the best practices in DJing to help you get the most out of your digital DJ gear and avoid the pitfalls that await the unwary. So it's a bit embarrassing when we end up making massive, gig-stopping errors ourselves. I committed one of the biggest I've ever made recently, and I wanted to share it with you.
(Spoiler: You should never ever try to switch laptops days before a gig, let alone an entire operating system. What follows is a warts-and-all recount of what can happen when you do...)
OK. So I had a big festival performance a month ago, and leading up to it the unthinkable happened: My MacBook Pro Retina display cracked, so I didn't have a laptop to DJ with. I would've been game to use a pair of CDJs, except that I was performing a few songs live with a vocalist and we needed Stems playback and control, so I needed my Traktor Kontrol S8, or the Kontrol D2 at the very least. Either way, a laptop was essential to my set-up.
I decided to just pick up a cheap Windows laptop while my MacBook Pro was in the shop. I got one five days before the show to give me enough time to get familiar again with the ways of the PC and to transfer all my files. Piece of cake, no sweat right?
Wrong.
At the show, I was getting ready to go onstage because I was up next in 10 minutes. I checked my gear, double-checked my Traktor playlists, closed Traktor to make sure the playlists got saved, and thought I'd restart my laptop to give it a fresh start. This was because I had an issue with this Windows laptop the day before: I had the laptop on sleep by closing the lid, and when I turned it back on a few hours later for practice, Traktor froze a few minutes into my session, prompting a restart. This is the stuff nightmares of extra anxious people like myself are made of, so I didn't want to take any chances duringmyperformance.