Guides · Warm-up sets

How to build a warm-up set

The room is empty, the lights are up, and the person after you is who everyone came to see. This is the slot that decides whether you get asked back.

What the job actually is

A warm-up is not a small headline set. The job is to make an empty room feel like somewhere worth staying, get people moving without noticing they started, and hand over a floor that is ready and has plenty left. If the headliner walks on and has nowhere to go, the warm-up went wrong, however good it sounded.

Start lower than feels comfortable

Find out what the next DJ usually opens at, and plan to arrive a little under it. Then start well below that. For a house night that might mean opening around 118 to 120 and handing over at 124. The numbers change with the music. The principle does not: leave room above you.

The same goes for energy. Deep, spacious tracks with room in them. Save the big vocals, the long build-ups and anything everyone knows.

What to leave out

• The headliner's own records, and the obvious anthems of the night. They are not yours to play.
• Your biggest track. If it is the best thing you own, it does not belong at half past ten.
• Sudden moves. Keep the joins smooth: neighbouring keys, small tempo steps. A warm-up is where a clash is heard most clearly, because nobody is shouting over it.

The shape

A steady climb, not a straight line. Let it rise for three or four tracks, ease off for one, and rise again a little higher. The floor fills in steps as people arrive, and the dips give them a moment to get a drink without the room emptying. More on shapes in how to shape the energy of a set.

Bring more than you need

Warm-ups run long. The headliner is late, the doors opened early, the slot before you did not turn up. Work out the number with the set length calculator, then bring half as much again at the same low level, so that filling an extra thirty minutes does not force you up into peak-time records.

The handover

Your last track is a gift to the next DJ. Pick something with a long, clean outro, at a tempo and in a key that is easy to mix out of, a notch below where they will start. Tell them the tempo if they ask. Then get out of the way.