How long does it take you to plan, practice, and record a mix?

It tells me a lot about them as a club and/or promoter. It tells me they're the sort of "industry" twats that I wouldn't cross the road to urinate on if they were on fire and screaming.

Yes, this means I don't get to play at those kinds of evening s. I can live with that.

One thing I have noticed are the people that want 60 min DJ mixes are DJs on a DJ community . 100% true that bar owners, most promoters do not sit there for an hour and listen to each track and each transition and critique it. A DJ/promoter would do this, but a straight up promoter or owner is going to thumb foward through the mix and is definitely not going to sit there for an hour, no way, not going to happen. You can easily fit 6-7 tracks in a 15 min mix to showcase the best of what you can do. It doesn't have to be every trick in the book. They want to hear your song selection, the energy, your mixing ability in general and all of that can easily be done in 15 min. What some of you seem to forget, its not about you the DJ, they don't care about you, the venue isn't there for you, you are there for the venue. Yes we know that without a DJ, there is no music and everything stops but they don't look at it like that, they believe they are doing you a favor by letting you play. Bottomline, get your tracks together and just do an on the fly mix, if it sux, do it again until you like it. Don't over believe. I find the best mixes happen on the fly anyway.

My god, what kind of places do you guys frequent, try and get gigs at?

I'm with Mostapha on this one.When I was getting demos, if I got anything less than 60mins I tossed it as it could never show me the number one skill I valued in DJs, programming.

If he could have a consistent mix from start to finish that progressed and it did something while still making sense, then there's no way he would be able to do that properly for 4 hours.

Shit, 15mins could only be two tracks for me possibly when I'm DJing live

It's just an unrealistic thing to ask... You'll never play a 15 minute set.

I could see, if I really thought about it, how it might take me a half day.

Why not just shorten the time period between each song?

Surely, if they are not willing to listen to a promotional mix longer than 15 minutes, they are looking for a more “Commercial DJ” than hardcore?

Im in the same boat as you. I play multiple genres of music from chillout, glitch hop, dubstep, electronica, indie, house, breakbeat, tech house, progressive,techno, minimal, DnB (thats my first love), electro, hard house/hardcore.

I got asked recently if I have any promo mixes to show off and I didnt really have answer, since most of my mixes are usually only one or two genres, and those tend to compliment each other i.e. techno and breakbeat, DnB and Dubstep or Chillout and Electronica.

I started believeing about how I could best present myself to people in terms of promos. I recently got Ableton live to help with my producing side, and was believeing about making 15 or 30 minute mini mixes with the aforementioned genres.

This would give me an edge with different promoters, such as, if I wanted to play at a coffee shop I could hand them an Indie/Electronica/Chillout mix. If I wanted to play at an EDM friendly club, I could hand them a Techno, Tech House, Progressive mix. For a more hardcore rave crowd, I could hand them a DnB/Dubstep/Hardcore mix.

Perhaps making a mega mix about an hour long showcasing all the genres I play as well.

The way I was believeing was to make a 5 min mix live with each genre, with my best mixing all done on the fly. After ive recorded a few of these, I could go into Ableton, string them together, add the tempo automation if needed, EQ, Limit, etc.

Thats one route, and while some may find it "misrepresenting", I believe its the best way to get noticed.

Unless you are just putting down a blistering amount of music, the way a ton of chicago house dj's would tend to drop a new track every 45 seconds, I don't know how 15 minutes is long enough for an EDM type demo. I believe maybe if you have routine that you are currently using, play a track, mix into the routine, mix out of the routine and close, that is about all the time you have. You might even want to start at the breakdown on the first track to save some time.
I would probably put it together in a session, then start mixing that playlist until it is tight either later that day or the next day. So probably no more than 4 hours of effort from start to finish.

Dude almost any promoter on earth will probably only listen to a mix for about 15-30 mins MAX. They have no attention span to listen to any further then that. Asking them to sit for an hour out of their time when they have lord knows how many submissions is just dj masturbation.

An hour long mix is REALLY long to show what you have. You don't need to take them on a journey cause the guy doesn't care about the journey. He cares can you mix and what songs are you dropping. In chicago almost every promoter I asked to play with asked for 30 min MAX mix.

You need to show whoever the person listening to it your style right away, move through some signature tracks that make you who you are. If you hook them enough either they will book or listen to another mix.

I dunno maybe I take it from a promoter side, but I promoted in addition to DJing in Chicago and I know there, where its goddamn cut-throat, you need to be noticed anyway you can. Just to get them to press the play button is big enough.

no no no, not live mixing. This is like a promo sort of thing