Jan222010
Playing An Acapella Halfway Through Your DJ Set
I get very flattered when people ask me for advice. It makes me feel like I actually know what I’m doing when people look to me for help.
Recently, I received an email which went along the lines of this:
“I am going to be DJing a Funky House event and I want to drop an acapella in the middle of my set to get the dance floor even more pumping then it already will be..
“I wanted to ask you have you ever stopped your set and dropped an acapella… with no beats just purely the song itself? Do you think it’s too risky? I don’t want to get boooed!
“My aim is to make a really good impression with the promoter… but this could go both ways.. !”
Have I ever stopped my set halfway through? Yes. But there was always a reason. Sometimes I needed to switch the style of music from Soulful House to Funky House or from Funky House to more of an Electro sound where I’ve had to do it quickly without transitioning between records.
Most of the time the reason is that a certain stlye or genre just isn’t working on the dancefloor for whatever reason.
You’ve got to ask yourself why you want to kill the music mid flow. Usually, reasons are not premeditated like this and stopping the music mid set is more of a tool to get you out of trouble.
Theres no chance of you getting booed AS LONG AS you dont kill the vibe by stopping the music when the crowd are peaking. Building a momentum and a relationship with the crowd in a set always takes time and you don’t want to ruin the last 20 minutes of hard work building the crowd into a frenzy just to bring them to an anti-climax.
If you feel you must drop this acapella then perhaps it would be best to try and do it over the last few outro beats of the preceeding record. Then you can smooth fade into the acapella and let it run as you intend. This way there is no sudden stop to the music and you can still acheive what you want to do musically with your set.
You will get more respect from the crowd doing this rather than a simple stop/start. For extra kudos, you could follow up with a “live” mash-up by fading in a different instrumental track underneath the vocal as it plays.
If you are doing this to impress the promoter then simply don’t bother. The promoter will not (most of the time) care how good your ability to mix is or even your accurate tune selection. The main priority for the promoter is to get people through the doors.
Perhaps the acapella would sound best at the start of the set rather than halfway through. I think it would have more impact this way. At the end of the day, it’s your set and we wouldn’t get anywhere in this world unless we experimented with things from time to time.
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