The Track That’s Secretly Running Your Sets
5 simple fixes that stop one track running the show
Hi there grid gangsters,
I was combing through my notes the other day, looking for an interesting topic for today’s newsletter.
As I scrolled down further and further something caught my eye. My mouse cursor moved over tentatively until I eventually clicked on it.
Turned out I’d written an entire Rekordbox course last year and forgotten about it - oops. I’d spent bloody ages on it too.
But for whatever reason I’d subconsciously let go of the idea. And I’m glad I did.
It would have been a massive time sink and taken me away from other things I wanted to work on.
In my library I had tracks similar to this course. Ones I’d put tons of prep effort into and spent time carefully curating. They felt personal and formed part of my very DJ identity.
But they were actually dragging down my whole library just by being there.
In this newsletter I’m going to show you how hunt these tracks out and stop them stealing attention from tracks that deserve it (I think I pulled off that tenuous segway pretty well).
Plus I have some exciting news..
Who is Colin?
You know that guy - he is always at every party but always has something negative to say. He’s normally called Colin.
“This house is pretty cool”
”Yeah but I bet it doesn’t have underfloor heating”
“I love this song”
”Actually his first generic tech house album was much better”
I have tracks like this guy. Showing up in almost every one of my sets just because it feels like he should be there or is a familiar face. I’m looking at you Sub Focus - Alarm.
To be fair Alarm is a tuna. But I was relying on it so much for an easy double that even I was starting to hate it - and myself a little bit.
Importantly, it meant I was playing it instead of giving other tracks that might have actually even worked better a chance.
Alarm is Colin. Colin is Alarm. Is Colin Alarm? Yes.
It took me way too long to figure out how to spot a Colin, but it turns out there are 5 simple ways, and 5 simple fixes.
5 ways to find Colins
Colin is a slippery character. But he has a few tell tale signs that can help you find him in your library
Burnout - Are you sick of the track? If you can’t bear to play it for longer than 30 seconds before getting bored then it’s a good sign it’s being overplayed (or you are just a D&B DJ)
👉 The fix: Set up a ‘cool off’ tag, add it to the Colin and exclude this MyTag from your intelligent playlists with a rule. If you don’t miss it after a month or two then you may have ended the cycle of dependence
History - Does it appear in > 25% of your last sets? Check the ‘is in this playlist’ function above the browser in Rekordbox to see how many history playlists it appears in
👉 The fix: Often Colins are chosen by habit rather than intention - especially when freestyling. Consider mapping out your playlists more in advance, purposefully excluding the Colins.
Overplayed - Check your DJ play count. If that number is higher than 2% of your overall library track size it might be a Colin (e.g. in a 1000 track library, 20 plays)
👉 The fix: Try the no play challenge. Every so often only play tunes that haven’t seen the light of day yet. It’s a great way to rediscover gems and get out of your comfort zone
Follow ups: Look at what happens after you play the track. You can use histories for this too. Do you always feel trapped into a couple of safe or obvious follow ups?
👉 The fix: If you are using my track role method (and if you aren’t you should give it a go) then once you know what role Colin was playing you can easily swap him out (or the follow ups) with something else that fulfils a similar purpose to lead your set in a different direction
Anchor: Do your sets always revolve around this track without you realising? Same energy flows, same track orders? Does Colin always appear at the same point in your set? Deliberately move the Colin earlier in your set. If your set still ends up going the same way after that’s proof it has gravity
👉 The fix: . You can lean into it by giving the track an ‘anchor’ tag - turning it from an unconscious influence into something you are actively choosing to do
Shut up - what’s the exciting news?
For the last few months I’ve been building the DJ tool I wish I had before my library got so bloated I had to delete the whole thing - librarydojo.
It’s been through several rounds of beta testing and early access with real DJs and their libraries and it’s now just about ready to launch 🚀
I’ll be sending another email soon with full details and a special launch offer just for Hot Cue subscribers 👀
In other news
librarydojo has taken a ton of my attention the last few months so I’ve not been able to put out as many videos as I’d have liked to. But I’m currently working on a big update to one of my most popular ones with new learnings, hacks and systems to share
Is your name Colin? Let me know in the comments
See you next time