Question for Ableton DJ's: How to keep crowds interested?

[pedroschki]

The idea of specific 16 bar transitions seems pretty formulaic I reckon. Unless you're planning everything specifically (which sort of defeats the object of djing), you'd be better off just playing things by ear, if you excuse the pun.

I don't think I've ever been aware of actually doing a '16 bar transition', although I don't use Live to dj, so can see how you're more aware of the bar count....

Either way, best mix it up - whether you're dropping tracks in, creating long transitions, short transitions, simple fades, whatever, it doesn't really matter so long as it's varied and the tracks are good. As others have mentioned, this is surely the critical part. There's nothing worse than a dj choosing a tune on the basis of it mixing well from the last tune, regardless of the quality of the track....