11:04
A twenty-first in London
On YouTube this video is called Gig log 21st Birthday London
What this lesson teaches
A long drive down the motorway and back at six in the morning, and three things worth taking from it.
Double the time you think you need
His first piece of advice, stated as a rule rather than a suggestion.
If you think it will take an hour, allow two. Because a breakdown or a flat tyre makes it longer, and arriving late is the thing this whole stage says clients never forget.
It is the same advice as the first gig log in this course, which tells you how firmly he holds it.
Why gig logs exist
The best explanation of the format, and it is worth reading if you have wondered what twelve of these are doing in a DJ curriculum.
It is history. Great to watch in two or three years and see what you were doing and where you were.
And then the real argument: if you work Saturday nights, you cannot go and watch another DJ work on a Saturday night - because you are working.
But on a Monday morning or a Tuesday afternoon you can sit down and watch somebody else's night, anywhere in the world: how they set up, what they took, what went wrong, how they handled it.
That is a genuine problem with learning this trade and the gig log is a genuine answer to it. It is also his reason for asking other DJs to make their own, which he does in most of these.
The rig, and the monitor-as-backup idea
Four 15-inch cabinets and an amp, a selection of lighting, players for both audio and video.
And one detail worth copying: he takes a powered monitor speaker, and the reason is explicitly redundancy.
If the amplifier goes, you still have something with power in it. If the monitor goes, you still have the main speakers. Either way something works.
The same argument as the nerves lesson in this stage, arrived at from the other direction: one small active cabinet turns a catastrophic failure into an inconvenient one.
The failure, and the lesson
The night before, he prepared properly: a whole set of tracks loaded onto an SD card, ready to go.
At the gig, the card would not work. He copied the files off, reformatted it, copied them back - still nothing. In the end the client's son lent him a USB stick.
And the conclusion: test everything before you go out. Not just that the files exist - that they work on the equipment you will actually be using.
That is the specific failure mode. The card worked on his computer. It did not work in the player. Those are two different tests and only one of them counts.
And a word about driving
He is tired on the way home, stops when he needs to, and advises the same: if you get tired, you stop.
Which leads to a long and genuinely angry complaint about being fined for parking at a service station overnight on an earlier trip - having pulled in, as the signs instruct, because he was too tired to drive safely.
His point, stripped of the swearing, is a fair one: a driver who follows the advice to stop and rest should not be penalised for it, and the alternative is somebody continuing while exhausted.
For a trade where everybody drives home between two and four in the morning, that is not a trivial complaint. Finishing at two means the most dangerous part of the night is the part after the work.
Contents of the video
0:01 Of advice is if you think
Hi guys, another gig log for you and today I'm on my way to London to do a 21st birthday party. And I'm on the M4 and so far so good. No traffic jams, nothing like that. Just a nice, hopefully easy ride. Given myself quite a while to get there, it's a long journey. And my first bit of advice is if you think it's going to take an hour to get to your event, then think again because if your car breaks down in your vehicle or you get flat tyre, It's going to be slightly longer, so always allow yourself at least double the amount of time to get there. So if it takes an hour, give yourself two hours. Right, big shout out to all the people who are doing gig logs. Thank you very much. Keep them coming. The whole idea of a gig log is a bit of history and it's great to watch in two or three years. See what you were doing, where you were. Also, it's very good for other people to watch.
Because they get tips, tricks, see how other DJs work around the world. If you are a DJ and you're working Saturday nights, it's very difficult to go and see someone else work on a Saturday night because guess what? You're working. It's very easy on a Monday morning or a Tuesday afternoon while the kids are running around everywhere and your missus driving you up the wall, say that mine does, to sneak off somewhere and watch someone else's. Yay! Well, today I've got... The Wolfdale Delta 15s, I've got four of those, rocking with a cam amplifier. I've got a Wolfdale Titan active 12-inch speaker as a monitor. Also, I like to take on the odd occasion a monitor speaker, powered especially because you never know if your amp goes, you've always got some form of power or if the monitor goes then you've got your other speakers so you've always got something that works.
What else have I got? I have got the Pioneer 900, the 2000s. A lot of the modern day music now is on video so I've brought the SX. I'm going to plug that in to a third channel on the 900. Lighting, I have got a whole bunch from Chauvet and Cam. What else have I got? Me, a van that finally works and a long road.
2:48 Does he like black by any chance?
Does he like black by any chance? Does he like black? Andy. It was a very good gig, a lot of fun. Party time, party time all the way. Big shout out to Andy and his mates and his family and friends. You've got a nice group of people there my man. Very good group of people. And some advice to you Andy alright, listen. Follow your dream, follow your heart mate, do what you want to do. Don't let anyone ever stop you. I know I say this all the time but it's true. There's too many people out there who just continually say to you, to me, ah you can't do it, don't bother, forget it, you're wasting your time. You're not wasting your time. I'm not wasting my time and you're not going to be wasting your time, go for it. Anyway, I'm on the M4 now.
5:32 Sorry, traffic road, having laugh
Just passing soon junction 38 Paul Talbot and I'm going to go home to bed. It's now 6 o'clock in the morning, I have stopped a little bit but well you've got to, if you get tired you stop. And listen, if any police watch this please pay attention, this is really important. On my way to when I was flying out from Vegas a while ago I decided to drive very early sorry start again very late at night um to get there early in the morning one to miss all the traffic less traffic on the road at busy times and two the weather was bad so you know loads of traffic on the road i didn't want to hit lots of traffic with lots of weather yeah it makes sense but anyway so you get you're halfway there you get tired you pull in
To a service station. It does actually say, you know, if you get tired, you bloody pull in. Well, I did. Bloody well pulled in. And, bugger me, I got one of these tickets for staying in a place for more than two hours. Well, you know what I say? Fucking bollocks to it! I'm not paying that shit. Fuck that. Who the hell do you think I am? I'm sorry, but, you know, I'm really sorry, but I'm not paying £100, alright? For parking in a place, God knows what time in the morning, when there's no one else there, virtually no one else there, when you are advised to stop and pull over and have a rest when you're tired. Now, I'm sorry, but you're having a laugh there. Not the police, because I don't believe it's nothing to do with them. But you're having a laugh if you expect people to pay money just because...
8:05 Pull over on the hard bloody shoulder?
They are keeping within the law. So, that's bollocks. And anyone who watches my videos, I don't normally swear. Not really. I think probably a handful of times. I've probably sworn more in this video than I have in videos for the past couple of bloody years. But there's no way. I mean, that is just an absolute joke. Absolute joke. So if anything, what you should be doing is you should be saying, well, you know what, maybe... Daytime up until 9 o'clock at night, sort of like, I don't know, 6 in the morning. But at like 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning you cannot give people tickets for pulling over and having a sleep. What are we supposed to do? Pull over on the hard bloody shoulder? I don't think so. Anyway, that's my whinge over and done with. I'm now doing the 50 mile an hour thing and I'm not holding the camera.
I've got my hand there, but it's actually quite happily just sat there on the dashboard. So, today, tonight, last night, whenever it was, it was great. It was good fun. And I know I'm sort of tired now. I don't really want to pull over now. I've done it enough. I'm in that sort of mood, that wake up, fall asleep kind of mood. Hello? Ah, there you are. So, advice is when you are tired... Also, advice, night before last I got a whole bunch of tunes ready, put them on an SD card, got it all ready, fantastic. Got to the gig, Andy will tell you, bloody SD card wouldn't work would it? So I took all my files out, put it on my laptop, desktop, reformatted the SD card, still wouldn't work. Luckily, got a hold of Andy, he brought me a USB stick.
So, my other bit of advice, dear, is test everything first before you go out. Make sure if you're going to put files on whatever, make sure they work on the items you're going to be using. Also used the cam amp last night for the first time at a gig and I'll tell you what it rocked. It never lost its fidelity, never lost its sound, it kept churning out. Thank you very much. Thank you.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
This video is part of
Related videos
-
How to Get a Better Fee for Your Mobile DJ Services
He disclaims it as not financial advice and notes that everything depends on where you are. Taken as a checklist of what justifies a higher…
