How to structure a DJ set

Structure is the shape of the hour: where it starts, where it is loudest, and how it ends. Keys and tempo are how you get there. Neither one is the shape by itself.

Warm-up

Open lower than you wish the peak were. The room is still arriving, and you need tracks you can talk over, restart, or cut without wasting the records you came to play.

A useful opening is a short run of neighbouring Camelot codes, tempo barely moving. Same key or one step, which Sonata calls In key. Leave the energy boost for later. If you need air, the relative major or minor changes the colour without a clash.

New sets in Sonata take a warm-up shape quietly. There is no control for it on the page. Tempo weighs more than that shape, so the suggestion will not throw the BPM around just to draw an arc. The order is still a suggestion. Drag a track and it is yours. The longer version of this, including the listen-through and the export, is how to plan a DJ set.

Peak

The peak is the tracks you actually came to play, not every track you like. Put them where the room can hear them, and leave space between them. Two anthems in a row often waste the second one.

Arrive there on purpose. A run of one-step key moves and small BPM steps (120, then 122, then 124) is easier to mix than a jump from 118 to 132. Those steps assume the number on the track is the tempo you mix. A half or double reading is a different fault, covered in Why is my Serato BPM wrong. A +2 key change can mark the arrival. Sonata flags that pair as a key clash, so hear it before you depend on it. Pairs more than about 10 percent apart in tempo, or with an unclear beat, do not get a locked blend. They get an echo out or a plain fade, which can be the right cut into a peak and a bad surprise in the middle of a warm-up.

You do not need a clash to make a peak. Energy in the record, the vocal, and the arrangement do that. The key flag only tells you whether the handover is harmonically close.

Close

Know the last track before you head to the gig. The last few minutes are a poor time to invent an ending.

A close can stay at the peak and stop, or step down. Stepping down is the warm-up in reverse: one Camelot step, or the relative key, and a tempo that eases rather than falls off a cliff. A clash on the way out is a choice, the same as on the way in. Is harmonic mixing necessary? is the note on when to leave the wheel.

If the night is running long, cut from the middle of the plan, not from the ending you already trusted. You can always add a track you held back. You cannot un-play a closer that arrived too soon.

Check the shape with your ears

Read the keys on the wheel or in the checker, then play the set once. Sonata's overview is drawn from the real audio, so a row of breakdowns shows up as a row of low stretches. The default blend is 32 bars when the tracks have room.

The suggestion does not know the room. If the warm-up shape fights the slot you were given, reorder it. Then hear that order before you export. USB export is the checklist for the stick, after the set sounds right.

Sources

The key and tempo limits are Sonata's, the same ones as the planning guide and the checker. The warm-up shape is what a new Sonata set follows. The +2 move is written out in the energy boost guide. Sonata has no separate control for that move.