Reply to First club gig and setup, what advice may you guys help a novice with?

Hi guys...

My friend and I have our first club gig in a month, pretty nervous to be honest. We have played in the club twice now just to test out the gear and sound system. The sound is fantastic! On the contrary the setup, CDJ 1000s and a Xone 62 with one shitty filter is pretty limiting for both of us. We play individually and together sometimes. We learnt djing on a controller (mixtrack pro) so our style of player is more performative and interractive with the songs. Using the CDJs was not a problem as we upgraded to a mixdeck.

The setup in the club was very limiting as we could not utilise some of the features in traktor. Well keyboards short cuts only work for so long before its seems like you are blogging in the booth therefore this was/is not a viable option for us. We enjoy creating and recreating songs on the go switching things up for the patrons dancing or sitting. Most of the time I play with a laptop but I can also go retro with just usb or CD, is it good to occasionally switch between the two styles and strip down to basics sometimes even though I believe that going digital enhances the performance and delivery?

To bridge the gap we got an x1 which is pretty awesome! We have been playing at house parties in the last year but i fear the club scene is quite different from the house party scene. The residents djs of the club are cool guys pretty decent at what they do as they have a following i would say but their sets are pretty much standard in my opinion so is it advisable to switch things up and just perform like we do any other day opposed to this drag and drop business.

Our new set up will be Traktor A6, 2 x CDJ 1000 MKIII, Xone 62, Traktor Pro and a Laptop and sometime the Twitch Itch.

And if there is any other advice just fire away, after all it will be food for thought.

Regards
Tonderayi