Is it unprofessional to stop touching the mixer for more than 8 seconds?
I’ve noticed that during long blends there are sometimes 15-20 seconds where I’m not touching anything, and I can physically feel the crowd beginning to suspect I’m a fraud.
Last weekend I made eye contact with a guy in the front row during a breakdown and he folded his arms like “this dude pressed play.”
At one point during my set everything was perfectly beatmatched and phrased, so I stood there enjoying the music for maybe 10 seconds. Immediately I saw two people whispering to each other while one guy shook his head. This really shook me in the moment.
Since then I’ve started doing things like:
- aggressively turning EQ knobs that aren’t assigned to anything
- tapping cue buttons randomly
- leaning over the mixer and nodding seriously
- unplugging headphones and plugging them back in mid-transition
- pretending to search for tracks while the next 4 songs are already queued
I even started fake typing on my laptop during drops because it looks technical.
What do you guys do during the parts where the music is already handled but you still need to maintain the illusion of labor?
