2:15
Keeping people on the dance floor
On YouTube this video is called How to keep people on the dance floor, DJ Advise.
What this lesson teaches
Two minutes, one scenario, and the right answer is counter-intuitive enough to be worth the whole lesson.
The scenario
You are playing, the floor is full, and people start leaving - before the track has finished. Maybe they have had enough of it, maybe they have had enough generally.
The instinct is immediate: stop this, put something else on, quickly.
Do not do that
His rule: let the track play.
The reasoning is about what the room sees. Cutting a record off the moment people start walking away announces that you noticed, that you are worried, and that you are reacting. It looks, in his words, as though you do not know what you are doing.
Letting it finish looks like a decision. The same forty seconds of a half-empty floor reads completely differently depending on whether the DJ appears to have chosen them.
Then change
Once the track has run, change the genre or the style - not just the next record in the same vein.
If they were dancing to house and left midway, another house record is likely to produce the same result. The information the floor gave you was not "that particular track was wrong"; it was "this is not working any more", and the response has to be bigger than the next item in the same box.
The part underneath
The audience is reading you as well as the music, which is not something most beginners factor in.
A DJ who looks composed when the floor thins has not lost the room - they have simply got a quiet moment. A DJ who visibly panics has told everyone that something has gone wrong, and the people still dancing now know it too.
Composure is a technique here, not a personality trait. The specific form it takes is: finish the record, then act.
And he asks for yours
He puts the question back to viewers for their own tips, which is worth noting. This is one of the parts of the job where nobody has the complete answer and everybody who has worked a floor has a piece of it.
Contents of the video
Alright folks, Jonathan here. Now this video is all about sharing information on one subject. I'm going to give you my little bit of information and then if you've got some tips, some ideas, some what you should and shouldn't do, then please either leave a comment underneath or do a video response giving your tip on this subject. And the subject is this. Right, you're doing a disco, you're the DJ. The dance floor is full in front of you and all of a sudden the people start to disappear from the dance floor because maybe they don't like the music anymore or maybe they've had enough. What do you do? Now this is my tip. First and foremost, let's say I am in front of a crowd of people and all of a sudden they start to disappear and they leave the dance floor. And they leave the dance floor before the actual song that I'm playing.
This is what I will not do. I will not panic and think, wow, quick, let's stop that particular track and quickly put another one on. I will let that track play. The reason being I'll let that track play is because if I stop that track as soon as I see the people leaving, it makes me look as though I don't know what I'm doing. And here's the cat again. So this is my tip. If the people are moving away from the dance floor, don't panic and stop that music there and then and put something else on. Let that music play. It's a lot more professional. Then I would change the genre, change the style of the music. So if people are dancing quite happily to say house music and all of a sudden halfway through the track they leave the floor, then I would let that track play to the end.
Then I would stop it and then bring something else in. That's my tip. What's your tip to keep the dance floor happy, to keep the people in the mood and to get people back on the dance floor? Losing me words, I'm not going to edit this video, what the heck. Practice and enjoy.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
