118BPM · Warm-up, early rooms, bars
What the first two hours of most nights should be, and what almost every warm-up plays too fast. If you have booked an opener and the floor is empty at midnight, this is usually why.
DJ · house and techno · Detroit, MI · Taking dates from eight weeks out
The rider is for you, not at you.
A DJ in Detroit. Most nights that go wrong go wrong on the technical list, not on the music — so this page publishes the whole rider with what happens when each line is missing, three click tracks so “something upbeat” can become a number, and what a night actually costs.
The rider
11 lines. 4 of them are required.
| Line | Need | What it is | Without it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two players, same model | Required | Any current club standard. Same model on both, not one of each. | Mismatched players means every transition is done by feel with different controls under each hand. It is doable and it is not what you booked. |
| Players linked | Required | A network cable between the units, or a switch. | No shared beat grid and no waveform on the incoming track. Adds about a second of guesswork to every mix, all night. |
| A booth monitor that works | Required | One speaker aimed at the booth, on its own level control. | Beatmatching to a room delay. This is the single most common cause of a set that sounds loose on the floor and fine to the person playing it. |
| A working mixer channel per player | Required | Tested before doors, not at changeover. | A dead channel discovered at 1am costs the first ten minutes of a set and all of its momentum. |
| Set times in writing | Asked for | Who is on before and after, and the actual close. | A warm-up plays peak-time, or a closer gets cut at 1:40. Both happen weekly and both are a text message to avoid. |
| A booth light | Asked for | Any dim light, gooseneck or otherwise. | Phone torch on the mixer. It works, and it looks exactly as good as it sounds. |
| Water in the booth | Asked for | Two bottles. | Nothing catastrophic. It is on this list because it is the cheapest possible signal that somebody thought about the night. |
| A named person on the night | Asked for | One phone number that will be answered after 11pm. | Any of the problems above take forty minutes to solve instead of five, because nobody knows who has the key to the cupboard. |
| Load-in details | Asked for | Door, parking, and whether there are stairs. | A record bag carried the long way round a building at midnight. Minor, avoidable, and it sets the tone. |
| Confirmation that the sound is signed off | Asked for | That somebody has run the system that week. | A limiter set for a live band, discovered during the first record. |
| The deposit, before the date | Asked for | Half the fee, on booking. | Nothing on the night. Everything afterwards — this is the line that decides whether chasing an invoice takes a week or five months. |
Four of eleven are required and the rest are asked for, which is the difference between a rider and a list of demands. A rider where everything is a must teaches a promoter nothing about what actually matters, so when something has to give they guess — and they guess wrong, because nobody told them the booth monitor was load-bearing and the water was not.
Tempo
“Something upbeat” is not a tempo.
"Something upbeat" is not a tempo and neither is "house". These are three click tracks, generated rather than recorded, so a booking conversation can be about a number. Press play on the one that sounds like your room at midnight.
126BPM · House, peak time
Where most of my sets live. Broad enough to cover disco-leaning and stripped-back in the same hour without the room noticing a gear change.
138BPM · Techno, late
After 1am, in a room that has already committed. Booking this for a 10pm slot is the other half of the warm-up problem.
None of these is a mix and none of them is trying to be. They are metronomes, which is why they are on a page that otherwise has no audio: the sets on this site are fictional, and a fabricated mix would be inventing a product where a click track is just a click track.
Recent sets
Where, how long, and what the room was doing.
- Bramble Hall Detroit, MI Jun 2026 3 h Peak time, 400 capacity, no booth monitor for the first twenty minutes. See the rider.
- Corktown Social Detroit, MI May 2026 4 h Open to close, small bar, 118 to 124 the whole way. The most fun kind of night and the hardest to record.
- The Wharf Rooms Chicago, IL Apr 2026 2 h Warm-up before a headliner. Left the room at 122 and got a thank-you from the person after me, which is the whole job.
- Pallet & Pine Columbus, OH Mar 2026 2 h Outdoor, ended early for weather. Half the set is on this list because the other half did not happen.
- Union Vault Detroit, MI Feb 2026 3 h Late slot, 132 upward, the one room in the city where that lands before 2am.
- Northline Festival Grand Rapids, MI Aug 2025 1 h Festival stage, daylight, and a completely different job from a club. Shorter, brighter, less patient.
- Bramble Hall Detroit, MI Jul 2025 5 h Open to close after a cancellation. Five hours is a different skill and I would not claim to be good at it yet.
- The Wharf Rooms Chicago, IL May 2025 2 h Second time. Booth monitor arrived because it was on the rider, which is the entire argument of this page.
No mixes on this page. There is a set list, because where and how long and what the room was doing tells a promoter more than a two-hour recording they will not listen to — and because the sets on this site are fictional, so a recording would be a fabrication rather than a portfolio.
A 250-mile booking, offered "for exposure"
Playing free costs $395.
- Fuel and tolls, return $96 Five hundred miles of driving. Not negotiable and not reimbursed on an exposure booking.
- A room, because it ends at 3am $85 Driving four hours after a five-hour night is the part of this job that actually hurts people.
- Food $34 Two meals on the road. Small, and it is real money.
- The day after $180 A shift not worked, at what an hourly job in this city pays. This is the line every "exposure" conversation leaves out.
- Total cost of playing free −$395 Before a single record. This is not a complaint about small promoters, most of whom are also losing money — it is the number that makes the conversation honest.
I do play for less than the rate, fairly often, for rooms and people I want to be part of. What I do not do is pretend the number is zero. If your budget is small, say the number and I will tell you whether it works — that conversation takes one email and it beats the one where "exposure" is offered to somebody who is already four hundred dollars down.
“She sent the rider with a column for us to tick and a note about which four lines actually mattered. It was the first time a booking made our production job easier instead of harder.”
Promoter, 400-capacity room — after a second booking
Rates
Itemised, never bundled.
Club, 2–3 hours, local
$450
Detroit metro. Half on booking, half on the night — see the last line of the rider.
Open to close, 4–5 hours
$700
A different job, not a longer one. Priced accordingly and worth discussing before you book it.
Warm-up, 2 hours
$280
Deliberately the cheapest line, because the warm-up is the slot that most needs somebody who will not overplay it.
Out of state
Fee + costs
Travel, a room if it ends after 1am, and the fee. Itemised in the advance, never bundled into one number.
Festival or brand
Quoted
Different insurance, different tech, different day. Quoted from the actual spec rather than from the club rate.
Cancellation inside 14 days
Deposit retained
Standard, and it works both ways — if I cancel inside fourteen days you get it back doubled.
Common questions
Including the one about exposure.
Why publish the whole rider?
Because most nights that go wrong go wrong on this list rather than on the music, and because a promoter who reads it two weeks out can fix four of the lines for free. A rider that arrives the day before is a document nobody had time to act on.
What if we cannot meet a required line?
Tell me and I will tell you honestly whether it changes the booking. Two of the four have workarounds; the booth monitor does not, and I would rather know in advance than find out during the first record.
Are those real mixes?
There are no mixes on this page. The three audio players are generated click tracks at three tempos, and the sets on this site are fictional — this is a website template. If you are using it, put your real mixes here and delete this answer.
Will you play for exposure?
Sometimes, for rooms and people I want to be part of, and never on the pretence that it costs me nothing. The subtraction on this page is what a 250-mile night actually costs. Say your real budget and we will find out in one email whether it works.
Vinyl or digital?
Digital, on club-standard players. I will bring a USB and a backup USB, and I will not bring my own mixer unless we have agreed it, because a DJ arriving with a mixer at 11pm is a production problem you did not ask for.
Can we hear a set before booking?
Come to one, if you can — a recording of a room is not the room. Failing that, tell me the tempo band and the slot and I will tell you honestly whether it is a night I would be right for.
Book a date
Date, room, slot, budget.
Those four in the first email and I can answer in one. Fields marked with an asterisk are required.