A set is not a playlist. A playlist is a list of tracks you like. A set is a decision about what a room is going to do for the next two hours.
Read The Room Before The First Record
How full is it, how drunk is it, what did the last person do, and how long have you got. Those four things change everything. Turning up with a rigid plan is how you end up playing your best material to eleven people and a bar staff member wiping down a table.
Pressure Over Peaks
Constant peaks are exhausting. If everything is the biggest moment then nothing is. The interesting part is the pressure that builds between them, the eight bars where nothing obvious happens and the room leans in anyway.
Repetition does a lot of that work. Give something long enough to become familiar and then move it slightly. That small move lands harder than a drop.
Leave Before It Sags
Knowing when to stop is most of it. Better to leave a room wanting more than to play the extra twenty minutes that everyone politely forgets.
