Mental Models, the nightlife and the deejay
Mental Models, the nightlife and the deejay
You want to know how to deejay? You like geeky theories? In this text you find both!
I am a DJ for more than 20 years now. Now, it has become a hobby only. A hobby I live for. But it is not the only hobby. My other hobby is reading.
On my reading journey I stumbled across a certain way of looking at the world and business. This perspective is about using general thinking concepts that can be applied to any situation — especially when decisions have to be made. These are called mental models.
In this article I will connect mental models with deejaying.
The structure of the text follows the timeline of an evening and night chronologically. The point of view will be from a deejay who plays in a bar with a dancefloor (~100 people).
This is why: A dance bar is like a club — but in a micro version. Clubs seldomly have deejays playing all night deejay sets.
Let´s start.
Ah, one more thing. At the end of the article there is a bonus pro deejay hint.
Preparing a nightshift / a deejay set.
As a deejay I really like to go with the flow of an evening. But in order to be flexible and go with the flow you have to prepare.
That means, buy records and sort them. You need to be able to access them in an instant. What I do, is that I buy them on beatport and create playlists in iTunes. Each quarter gets it´s own playlist (named like i.e. 202001_TUNES, 202002_Tunes, …). In those playlist I tag the tracks with the associations that come into my head. Exemplary tags are deep, house, melodic, hymn, push, groove, roll, afro, and so on and so forth.
I give each track a star rating. I give one star for tunes I play very early on in my warm up. Two stars is for tracks that get a few people to the first slight hipshaking on the dancefloor. Other people still might not care. Three stars is for tracks that make people move and throw their hands up. With four stars I am closer to talking techno and five stars actually is techno (or crazy weird five o’ clock stuff).
For deejaying, I use Pioneer Recordbox. You can easily integrate iTunes and Recordbox. Enough has been written about this. See here.
In Rekordbox, my tracklist now might look like this:
Now I have dinner and have a first drink. You gotta get in the mood. Do you need to drink for that? No. Does it help? Yes.
Deejaying is a left and right brain activity. Left half of the brain works in rational and logic mode. Searching for a track you have in mind or adjusting the pitch of tracks are left brain activities. These are tasks that require your focused attention. If you do not know what pitching is you will find basics of deejaying here.
Right brain activities are said to be linked to creative and intuitive tasks. This means that an idea of which track to play next pops into your mind out of nowhere (not by looking at the playlist).
Tadaaaaa! This left/right brain logic is our first mental model. But: Do not take it literally. The brain is way more complicated than I describe here. It is just a metaphor that helps thinking about deejaying.
Another theory, that relates to that way of thinking, is Theory U. It says: Listen to your mind, listen to your heart and let the will emerge.
So: Prepare and organize! Not because you are a boring deejay. But because you want to enjoy your evening and get into the flow state.
Flow state is a model from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and means to feel like being effortlessly engaged in performing a task. That feeling only occurs when the task is neither too boring nor too hard. When you are in that state, the work you do (here: deejaying) flows right through you. It does not even feel like work and time flies by.
Ready? OK, let´s enter the club
Beginning of the deejay set
How does the club evening start? People are gathering somewhere (not in the club yet) and start drinking. Alcohol hits the reward center of your brain by jacking up the dopamine levels. This makes you feel great.
Shift of perspective. You, the DJ go into a club, or in my case, a bar with a dancefloor. Some people gather around the bar and have a few drinks. The music is quiet, the air is filled with expectations. You drop your stuff into the DJ booth and say hello to the staff. You grab a drink (again!) and start plugging in your devices. Fingers crossed there is no technical problem, not tonight!
Everything works. You select a track. Push play. Turn up the volume. It´s 10:13pm. It´s gonna be a while till people start to crowd the place. You play another song, and another. Nothing happens. No feedback from the crowd. Oh, except that one guy, who looks around the corner, takes a step on the dancefloor, recognizes his mistake and disappears. OK, time for another drink.
How could one describe this situation on a meta level — with a mental model? I suggest using speed vs. velocity. This is about not to rush somewhere. Don´t work work work. Don´t push push push. Rather, keep an eye on the direction. Applied to a deejay set: Do not play the hits yet and do not play the hard stuff yet.
This seems obvious, but I have seen enough deejays stepping over the speed limit way to early. Keep in mind that there are hours and hours ahead. Save yourself some space to increase tempo, hit factor and volume of the sound you play. Start with a low profile.
Play as slow and boring as possible, but not slower!
“Your job is to peel people away from the bar and keep building upon that small nucleus of early dancers that will eventually become a packed dance floor.” (Christian Martin)
Pay attention. As Christian Martin continues:
“It’s important to pay attention to the mood of the floor and adjust the direction of your set accordingly, without going overboard too early.”
Way up
You now have to (actively) wait for the venue to become crowded.
Did you ever wonder why clubs keep people waiting outside even though the club is empty? They want to make it look like being the hype.
But what is the concept behind? This model is called social proof. When people see other people liking something (or someone) they want it, too. That is why if you see a bunch of people looking into the sky you will quite likely also look up. This is also how (fashion) trends emerge.
Combine that with the Matthew effect. It says that “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” or that “a small advantage will result in future major advantage” (Muvendra Kumar Singh). So, the more people go to one club, the more will go there and the more successful it will become.
Back to the evening at hand and the club we´re in. To build on the Matthew effect it helps when you have a starting advantage like having friends with you. Better: A birthday party that gets some people there early.
The systems thinking theory says that stocks (here: people) create feedback loops (here: more people become aware of the party) that further increase the stock (here: more people).
In order to let a stock create a positive feedback loop you need to achieve a critical mass. A critical mass is achieved once a stock is big enough sustain the change itself (here: more people coming in).
But this also works into the opposite direction. When it is too crowded (the stock became too big), people will leave. That is a negative (or balancing) feedback loop.
Systems thinking is a meta theory. “Systems thinking helps to structure our assumptions and mental models” (Peter Senge).
Now, it´s about midnight.
Peak Time
It is now crowded? Solid movement on the dancefloor? Good. But what to do now? Hits, hits, hits? No! You still should respect speed vs. velocity (see above). Only play selected hits.
If you play to many hits, you might increase the amount of people, mood and movement for the short term, but then people will want more and more. And you do not want people leaving and letting a negative feedback loop start to kick in. This means you did harm by trying to do good. Nassim Taleb calls that iatrogenic intervention.
As a deejay your job is to please people but also educate them. This follows the logic of gravity. If you only play hits, you will attract people that like hits. If you play cool stuff, you will attract cool people. But do not play too cool. Then no one will come. You need to find the right balance. And trust me, this is the hardest. At least for me, after all these years. It even feels therapeutic sometimes to balance the needs of the crowd with what comes from inside of you, what you like, what you stand for.
A general rule: Always act from the inside to the outside, not the other way around. As a deejay and in life! That means you should not follow what other people expect from you. Rather you should follow your intuition.
Also, hit tunes have their effect especially when dropped rarely. It is like a limited offer. When only a few items are left (when they are scarce) people are more likely to buy it. This is the scarcity effect.
Why do people like hits or music they know? Our brains are pattern recognition machines. And out brain loooooves patterns. Pattern recognition was and is essential for our survival. Imagine our hunter collector ancestors: “Ah! That berry again. That is delicious and safe to eat. Let´s grab it and put it into my mouth! Aaaawhuuu!”
So if a brain identifies something it has seen before, it fires dopamine and thereby strengthens the pattern recognition. And that feels good. The same applies for sound — and therefore music. That is why we like to hear songs over and over. That is why the crowd freaks out when you drop a hit record.
The article would not be complete without addressing one of the most embarrassing things in deejay life. And that is people mistaking the deejay for a jukebox and trying to influence him. This could mean to ask for a complete change in direction of genre, tempo, happiness level or wish for specific tracks.
But why does that happen? Why do people try to intervene? It is because you as a deejay are a kind of authority. People can increase their status in the circle of their friends (due to social proof) by influencing the figure of authority. This is valid for any kind of request.
Sometime the request is specific. People ask for certain tracks. If you do not have it, they ask for another. And another. And another. Watch out, they might not want to show off in front of their friends but maybe impress you. This can become embarrassing.
Now we are in the middle of the night. Time does not matter. It feels just right. The dancefloor is crowded, but not too crowded. People are dancing. Somebody is shouting with joy. Some people whistle. But you know what is unlikely? That people will completely freak out and you have a five hour stretch of euphoria. Rather it will shift around a normal state.
The reason here is the regression to the mean. That means that extraordinary outcomes will get back to normal. Examples are: An ordinary soccer player who starts scoring game after game will at some point in time experience an end of this winning streak. A player in a casino also might have a winning streak but in the end loose everything.
So, an euphoric dancefloor will calm down at a certain point. You as a deejay can use that logic proactively. Play with the contrast effect. Have the courage to drop a boring track during peaktime. And then drop a bomb. This probably will let people freak out more than two bombs in a row.
But sometimes, sometimes it happens. The upward spiral gets out of control. I have seen all kinds of crazy stuff. People freaking out and (with good intentions) destroying the glass dancefloor of the club or people sitting in bright daylight at 7am alone on a chair in the middle of the dancefloor and raving.
Way down
It is late. Or early morning. People are getting tired. So am I.
I do not really want to address the fade out of a night. One more thing: You might want to avoid the mistakes of how to ruin a night, use the mental model of Inversion. That means thinking about what you could do to mess everything up. Examples are: The bar is empty, music stops or light is switched on.
Like Leo Tolstoi would express:
“Happy raves are all alike; every unhappy rave is unhappy in its own way.”
That´s it. That is the article.
Ah, the bonus pro deejay hint: You can use your headphones as a microphone. Plug the headphone jack into the microphone input and speak into the speaker. Enjoy — but please don´t talk too much!
If you are interested in the application of mental models on seemingly unrelated topics, follow me.
I wrote one article about an app that is a soccer manager (German only, sorry) and how one could look at it from a mental model point of view. (Link). There will be more in the future.
Also, feel free to connect and discuss. You find me on twitter @SirRendipity or LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-schmidt-550bb820/
Sources and Links
Author, books and articles
· Robert B. Cialdini — Influence
· Steven Covey — Seven habits of highly effective people
· David DiSalvo — What Alcohol Really Does to Your Brain (https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/10/16/what-alcohol-really-does-to-your-brain/#639df48c664e)
· Ravi Kumar — Influence — The Psychology of Persuasion — A Book Summary (https://medium.com/power-books/influence-the-psychology-of-persuasion-a-book-summary-7ae0ebf8950f)
· Donella Meadows — Thinking in systems (http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/)
· Carlos A. Paladini et al — Dopamine controls the firing pattern of dopamine neurons via a network feedback mechanism (https://www.pnas.org/content/100/5/2866)
· Otto Scharmer — Theory U (https://www.presencing.org/aboutus/theory-u)
· Peter Senge — The fifth discipline
· Muvendra Kumar Singh — The Matthew Effect: Do Businesses and Economies use it? (https://medium.com/matthew-effect-do-businesses-and-economies-use-it/the-matthew-effect-do-businesses-and-economies-use-it-7ec3cfad5e07)
· Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Antifragility
Mental Models
· Contrast effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_effect)
· Critical Mass (https://fs.blog/2017/07/critical-mass/)
· Flow state — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_flow_the_secret_to_happiness?language=de)
· Gravity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity)
· Iatrogenic Intervention (iatrogenic intervention)
· Inside out approach (https://steemit.com/mind/@pbgreenpoint/the-inside-out-approach-by-stephen-covey)
· Inversion (https://fs.blog/2013/10/inversion/)
· Mental Models (https://fs.blog/mental-models/)
· Systems thinking (http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/)
· Regression to the mean (https://fs.blog/2015/07/regression-to-the-mean/)
Other links
· Beatport (https://www.beatport.com/)
· Christian Martin — The esoteric art of the opening DJ (https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/1095)
· How to deejay for beginners (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzjasvooSG8)
· Headphones as a microphone (https://djtechtools.com/2015/02/22/how-to-use-headphones-as-a-mic/#:~:text=To%20use%20your%20headphones%20as,voice%20and%20increase%20the%20highs.)