The DJ Set Energy Planner allows you to plot eight key moments in your set and then drag the nodes to shape an intentional arc. Simply click on any point and drag it around widget. You can do this directly with your mouse, or input precise commands to adjust points via your computer keyboard.
This will give you a clearer picture of when your set is building energy and when it’s letting up, allowing you to hear where things are starting to get jarring or where the audience lag behind. Eight moments is labeled on the main chart for Doors to Last tune. These moments has an energy-level point in gold with a value of one to ten. You can adjust each node’s intensity by dragging it up or down. A higher number will increase brightness. It will also increase the kick weight and density in the simulation.
How to Use the DJ Set Energy Planner
Your planned path of energy is represented by the solid blue line. When you project the inertia of crowd, this create a dashed yellow line. The dashed line represents how audience reacts to your adjustments. It tends to lag a little behind sudden changes.
Selecting a moment highlights it and displays its details on the right. The Floor language are selectable from House/Disco/Techno/Breaks, these alter the rhythmic nature of the sound being simulated. Base tempo can be adjusted here to align to your set speed. The room master monitor slider controls music volume. Room response style selects how quickly crowd responds to changes in energy. A longer warehouse response cause more delay in the crowd curve.
Below the chart is the transition lane where you can assign specific pieces of transition material to each of your moments. From here you can choose options like: Percussion tool, Breakdown air, Vocal hook or Groove carry. The lane is full of buttons that you click on when you want to select a moment, and then change simulation based off the material you intend to use. Also, by adjusting the Set duration from either 60, 90, or 120 minutes, you’ll see the minute markers appear within the transition lane, allowing you to gauge how long until your drops and peaks occur.
Hit the Simulate the room ride button. The audio engine use those settings and energy points to produce a sound profile as the cursor travels along the chart. With crowd inertia turned on, it shows not what you intend, but what would of actualy happen if the crowd’s delayed response follows your build. This lets you see how it sounds for real as audience has time to respond to your builds. You can pause audio at any point, restarting the ride or killing the feed.
The widget is controlled by the keyboard to help you get around quickly. To select a node in the chart, just tab to it. Use the left and right arrow keys to move your selection forward or back between moment. Use the up and down arrow keys to change energy of the currently selected moment. To set the energy to 10, hit end; for one, hit home. To play the simulation, hit R. To turn the crowd projection on and off, hit C. To pause the sound, hit X. If you want to see how your handoff would go from the current moment to the next, hit H to practice this. Hit A to audit your peak spacing. Another button is the recovery valley which dips energy between two peaks for automatic contrast. This means it can contrast well with the next peak. The other is sketching a late-peak arc and seeing if there’s a structure that saves most intense for the end.
The note area will alert you if the jumps in energy are too extreme. It might not sound like an abrupt transition, use all these to even out the curve before you go into the booth.
The widget will scale to fit your screen size. On bigger screens, you get full controls on the chart by directly dragging around the nodes. On smaller ones, it will switch to a button-grid of moments + a separate fader that lets you control current moment, so you don’t need to wrestle with tiny touch targets when planning out your set from your phone.
Try it on various types of rooms and settings. It sounds like techno, but when it has the same energy as house, it will feel heavier. A more intimate club setting also react faster than a festival crowd. So you can play around with this to get your sets flowing and change your pace to match. Begin by drawing out a simple arc with the nodes then tweak from there using the keyboard controls and the audio simulation.