Table Manners

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Background

I would like to write a little bit about norms and courtesy that I have encountered in my limited experience within the music industry using the hospitality metaphor of Table Manners. Table manners (manners) come from the ground rules for being hosted by other people as a guest. The counterpoint of table manners is having people over as a host. The goal of both is to make people’s lives easier – both host and guest. Hosting is most enjoyed when your guests behave and the best events are done when the host appropriately accommodates their guests.

• As such, the foundational table manner and my core tenant is to be easy both as a host and a guest: make things less difficult for other people and make it easier for others to do the right thing
  • Example: If a chair or table is slightly in the way of a walkway, you can get upset at people for bumping into the chair or you can move the chair out of the way so people stop knocking it over. It’s probably just easier and more productive to move the chair out of the way.

• Much of table manners is about attitude: choosing to do things that will make other people’s lives easier in stressful situations. I have heard that you can’t teach attitude but you can do things to help control your own attitude. Sharing my strategies is my way of getting the chair out of the way.

• The second tenant of table manners is to be excellent to each other or just be excellent. This means you should treat other people with empathy, kindness, and respect. The social landscape of the music industry is complex but defaulting to behaviors that are friendly and welcoming make it a better environment for everyone.

• Being easy and excellent is ultimately about being mature. Some people take time to mature and others take to it naturally and quickly. There’s the old adage of having to sit at the children’s table should you lack the tact with others requisite for being among adults – this too is what this article is about, extending the way you present yourself into how you interact with other people. What about the company you keep? Are you finding yourself at the children’s table? Trying and helping others in this situation learn how to sit with the adults while allowing them to feel respected can be the role we play by setting a good example.

Being easy and being excellent are two sides of the same coin: one half is how you bring yourself to situations (being an easy guest) and the other is how you treat others (being an excellent host) so let’s start there using this model.

Table Manners and the Music Industry

Being hosted is pretty much what you’re doing when you are playing out or engaging with other people in the music industry. Conversely, when you are working in the music industry in situations like having someone visit your studio or are working a performance gig as a stage manager, artist relations lead, engineer, and so on, you are hosting other people. You should treat it as such and come as your best self in order to have a good time and to ensure that others do too! At events where our industry hosts and guests are having a bad time, audiences are having a bad time. When your team works well together, your events and performances are more successful. To be successful in this industry, you should learn how to behave around others and avoid adding more stress to an already high tension environment.

Why do this?

You might be saying, “This sounds like doing a lot of work for the benefit of other people and it won’t get me ahead. Why should I do this?”

• To do things bigger than what you can accomplish yourself, you must cooperate with others and this means having common ground for behavior and attitude.
• You are setting examples for other people and will set the tone for those around you – putting this work in comes back around to you eventually. Good manners is a virus and if you persist in demonstrating them and everyone starts having a better time, that virus will spread. Demonstrating bad habits is also contagious so try and show folks the best way to be by starting with yourself.
• People prefer to work with other people who are easy and rewarding to work with. Usually the best people you work with have already adopted their version of good manners and learning this helped them get to where they are. Working with the same people over time is much more likely when everyone is having a good time. This will help you to keep working with folks and not having tensions that can break down relationships.
• Industry leaders are paying attention to your attitude and you should aspire to have a good reputation regardless of your ability.
  • I don’t like bringing up cancel culture but it is relevant to this topic and with people paying attention to how we behave; you should have a strategy to protect yourself against making avoidable mistakes and getting cancelled but don’t be so extreme as to feel you should be paranoid about everyone trying to cancel each other.

Maybe we all have to fake it until we make it in this domain. Eventually it becomes fun to try and see what you can do to make things go smoothly through the power you have as an individual. Treat this like a game: we win by having events and sets go smoothly and have the team working like a well oiled machine.

Ground rules for table manners

Nothing here is hard and fast and you’re free to pick and choose what works for you. I’ll apologize ahead of time for breaking my own rules in this post about being concise. My guidance here is not to give you a set of behaviors you must adhere to but to help you create your own internal program for shifting the world to the way you want it to be. There is context behind these strategies and in many cases you may find contradiction between what works for me and doesn’t work for me in a specific situation. There is also a cultural aspect to table manners, these practices are to some degree localized to where I am from in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and even in the Southern and Eastern regions of the US there may be nuance to expectations of behavior and mannerisms.

• These are not rules to be imposed on other people, these are strategies and approaches that you make for yourself. Additionally, these are examples for what I do in my own interactions and should be adopted and extended to each individual based on how you want to be. It is of paramount importance that you not use this guidance to shame other people’s behavior (it goes against being easy and excellent):
  • We are all adults here, to assume you know why someone else operates the way they do is a violation of their boundaries.
  • All of the ideas shared here are context-specific and almost none of these ideas is absolute.

Table manners within the context of teams and working with new people

Anytime that you are not working alone, you are working on a team. On the small teams end of the spectrum you could be working on a collab with another producer. On the larger end of the teams spectrum you could be throwing an event involving promotion, production, performance, marketing, and other staff. On the extended definition of the teams spectrum if you are renting CDJs to someone else to play their house party, you’re on a team. All of the team members beyond yourself are out of your control but you as an individual can do your best by setting an example for others to follow. When influencing others on your team you must find the balance that allows you to be assertive while still preserving the autonomy of other team members so try to be aware of yourself in these circumstances.

To have a team that works flawlessly right away is extremely rare. You must be patient while the group dynamics develop. In the Tuckman stages of group development, these phases of productivity and conflict are categorized as forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Tuckman’s model explains that as the team develops maturity and ability, relationships establish, and leadership style changes to more collaborative or shared leadership. Know where your team is at and maintain realistic expectations so that the team can grow together to effectively share leadership and other responsibilities.

Oftentimes individual abilities are not able to shine in the environment you’re in and it looks like they’re constantly making mistakes. If you assume someone is going to do a terrible job, you will not be surprised. Conversely, if you hold people to high standards, you will also not be surprised at what they’re capable of as they grow and become autonomous.  There are many types of personalities (see also HSP – those with higher emotional and sensory sensitivity) and sometimes the environment, style of team communication, or external tensions can set an individual up for failure.

Finally, let’s talk about being easy to lead and being easy to follow. If you are leading a team, you must be easy to follow and if you’re a team member you must be easy to lead. Having a leader who is difficult to follow or teammates who cannot be led will prevent a team from meeting its potential.

The following characteristics illustrate leaders who are easy to follow:

• Clearly communicate what you need done and when it needs to be done.
• Clearly communicate and share a vision instead of keeping the vision only in your mind.
  • Be patient with your team and avoid punishing them for not meeting your expectations. You must take responsibility for clearly communicating tasks and if your team is not meeting your expectation you most likely are not communicating your tasks well enough. Asking the question, “Can you tell me what you think you should do?” can illuminate miscommunication early and help you understand how you can improve your instructions.
• You must be flexible and calmly respond to feedback about your vision and plan.
• You must also accept and integrate feedback into your vision and plan when appropriate.

The following characteristics illustrate team members who are easily led:

• Ask clarifying questions when a task is ambiguous. A helpful strategy for this is to reflect back when you’re given instructions.
• Accomplish tasks on time meeting the communicated guidelines.
• Are easy for other team members to work with.
• Can work independently when appropriate and can solve their own problems without escalation and pushback.

A final note for being a charismatic and admired leader: when something goes wrong, say “it was me” and when things go well, say “we did it” – at the end of the day, your team knows how much everyone else did and what they contributed – to even hint at taking credit for the work of others can come across as megalomanical or narcissistic if you are in charge and to blame others when things go wrong can make you look like an egomaniac.

Example Table Manners

With these foundations in mind, I’ll give some general guidance to help you adapt to your own table manners.

Party fouls

This is what to do when things go wrong and I want to start here because it.

• It’s helpful to think of mistakes as opportunities and not as failures. In individual situations, these are teachable moments that you can learn from. In team scenarios, these moments expose broken process, communication, and planning and should not be a reflection solely of the person who made a mistake.
• When you mess up
  • Take responsibility, apologize early, and communicate how you will prevent the same mistake from happening again.
  • Next, don’t be hard on yourself; learn from your mistakes but don’t dwell on them. This also does not mean excuse yourself from what happened, but you must also forgive yourself.
  • Move on and do better next time. Maybe even set up a system (like a checklist) to ensure you just make mistakes once.
• When other people mess up
  • Communicate your perspective of the experience without judgement.
  • Communicate how they can do better next time and how you can support them.
  • Empathize with them on what went wrong: mistakes are rarely intentional!
  • Forgive them and let it go – keeping grudges is a recipe for destroying relationships and setting others up for repeated failures.
• When a team member messes up
  • Document what went wrong and avoid singling out the individual in the process. This can prevent new team members from making the same mistake.

Being easy 

When I talk about being easy, I’m referring to being easy to work with, easy to make decisions with, easy to get along with, and easy going. Whatever the opposite of difficult is, you want to be THAT. Easy people are low maintenance.

• Show professional courtesy in your own behaviors
  • Be punctual. Show up ready and on time to prevent others from wasting their time waiting for you and waiting for you to get ready. In extreme cases such as studio time, this translates directly to saving money – many studios can cost hundreds of dollars an hour regardless of whether everyone is there so it’s extremely important to be on time. Engineers in the studio were there the night before you came and long before your appointed time, show them the respect for their hard work. Same with performances – give yourself and the stage manager plenty of time during sound check and when your time slot begins. There’s an adage, “if you’re on time, you’re late” that applies to when you should be coming on stage and also when you sound check, don’t show up at the last second and communicate if there’s an issue early. If you find yourself consistently being late, create a system to improve your punctuality – this can be either creating a false deadline before the actual one or, in extreme cases, doing something like setting all your clocks ahead of time to ensure you’re not late.
  • Be flexible. Similar to letting things go, don’t dwell on minor details if they are not very important. There is give and take in decisions on tracks, branding, team process, and so forth so choose the things that are important and stick up for them but also be willing to compromise on things that others feel strongly about. Flexibility will allow you to get things done more efficiently and will not bog down others working with you in process. It can also be helpful to keep track of things you want to change later so that you don’t get stuck in process while things are flowing.
  • Be predictable. When you say you will do something, do it. When you can’t do something, communicate early that you will be unable to do it so that the task can be delegated to someone else without it landing last minute on someone else. Set expectations for others as well so that they are not surprised should you not have your own expectations be met.

• Prefer a positive attitude
  • Approach things with a novice mindset. If you act like you know everything and are better than everyone, you can come across as pretentious and can close yourself off from learning and improving faster. Everyone who makes it to a certain level of success deserves to be there and you will quickly be humbled when you learn that the person you’re talking down to actually knows a whole lot more than you on the subject you’re explaining to them.
  • Be aware of your mental state, are you feeling a bit grumpy, nervous, overly excited? Are you dealing with stress or personal challenges? Let people know this if they’re trying to engage with you and you’re not at your best and set expectations for how you will behave should you feel excited or talkative so that others around you can let you know if you’re being too over-the-top.
  • Be aware of your HALT signs – hungry, angry, lonely, tired – and know how to curb them
    • Hungry: Physical hunger can lead to irritability, low energy, poor focus, and sometimes mimic cravings or emotional distress.
      • Strategies: Maintain regular, balanced meals and keep healthy snacks on hand to avoid severe hunger.
    • Angry: Unprocessed anger can cloud judgment, heighten frustration, and lead to impulsive actions or unhealthy coping mechanisms.
      • Strategies: Acknowledge anger and find healthy ways to express it. Take deep breaths, step back from heated situations, engage in physical activity to release tension, or talk to a trusted friend, sponsor, or therapist.
    • Lonely: Feelings of isolation and disconnection can lead to emotional distress, sadness, and vulnerability.
      • Strategies: Reach out to your support network, whether it’s family, friends, or a support group. Engage in activities that bring you joy and connect you with others, like joining clubs or volunteering.
    • Tired: Exhaustion (physical or mental) reduces resilience, patience, and the ability to cope with stress.
      • Strategies: Prioritize sleep and establish a consistent bedtime routine. Practice relaxation techniques like meditation or deep breathing to recharge mentally. Melatonin, Valerian Root, vitamin D, and full spectrum light exposure can help to regulate sleep.
  • Take the solution-focused mindset instead of doom and gloom. Things will go wrong pretty much every time there’s a live event. When this happens it’s much more helpful to think “Sweet, that was the thing that was going to go wrong” instead of “It’s over” – take obstacles and black swan events as opportunities to learn and enjoy the process of adapting to the chaos when things fall apart.

Something that can really help with attitude is gratitude.

• Express gratitude freely and genuinely
  • Gratitude is a hack to both help you feel good when working with other people and to help them feel good while working with you. 
  • Find reasons to appreciate the things that other people do and communicate that appreciation: it is its own reward as you will both be acknowledging their actions and reinforcing good behavior.
  • If you demonstrate gratitude it creates a positivity chain of others matching that behavior – if you don’t feel appreciated enough, make the first move and see if others can pick up and start doing the same. Also, contradictorily, showing gratitude for others can make you feel better about yourself by reinforcing positive emotions, reducing stress, and fostering stronger relationships.
  • It’s important that you are genuine with gratitude: don’t blindly tell everyone they did a good job every time you see them out – actually tell them when you mean it and have a reason to recognize their work. With gratitude and positivity, it’s important to not go overboard because it will come across as facetious – a good segue to the next topic, matching other people’s energy.

• Match other people’s energy
  • In conversation, sometimes one person keeps talking quieter and quieter and the other talks louder and louder. The first person is talking quieter in a subconscious effort to get the second to talk quieter and conversely the second is trying to get the first to talk louder creating a mismatched energy spiral. Learn to pick up and respond to social cues such as these so that you can meet in the middle with other people. Don’t feel embarrassed if you in reflection realize this is you: practicing reading the room and matching the behavior of the herd is a skill that we all should work on and improve. Another example of this is talking during music performances – in some genres of music such as rowdy jam band shows, this is expected and acceptable but in other situations such as sunrise sets for Tipper or Supertask sets, the crowd listens quietly so they can pay careful attention.
    
  • Another example of matching other people’s energy is being overly positive when someone else is struggling – e.g. toxic positivity. If you are on a team that has a grind mindset or are working with people who have a more utilitarian workstyle, it can be distracting or unnerving to be extremely chipper all the time and complimenting and noticing every little detail that is working. There’s also a temporal aspect to this – some folks do not like being talked to in the morning or late at night so be responsive to these types of cues from others.
    
  • Try and gain awareness of other folk’s preferred social modalities as well, some introverted people will speak up for themselves but do not like to be put on the spot in social situations while others want to be put on the spot to be encouraged to speak. Don’t hesitate to ask people you’re with whether they would like to be included and introduced to others or if they want to save their energy for when they choose to speak up. It’s nuanced but this type of distinction is critical when assertively being inclusive of others, discussed later on.

Examples and Scenarios

Again, being easy and excellent is about being kind, respectful, and positive in your interactions with others. You never know what someone else is going through and should be empathetic to their internal struggle should it be going on. People don’t intentionally make mistakes or behave badly, there is always a larger context for what you see from them so give them the benefit of the doubt.

Privacy and other’s creative works

It’s of paramount importance that you respect the privacy of others in the music space (creative space). This is very familiar territory for me because I came from a background where I was working on secret products and was under NDA to never disclose any information I was not certain was public. Even having my laptop open in the wrong place could result in accidentally leaking something that should not get out. In the same way, you should always error on the side of caution with other people’s plans and art and obtain permission before even hinting at what others are working on to allow them to announce and release on their own schedule.

• Respect the privacy of your peers and protect their secrets
• Assume everything exciting and interesting that other folks tell you is private. Announcements should come from an artist’s press team or the artist themselves and not from people they’re trusting with what they are working on.
• Don’t preview collabs without the approval of your collaborator.
• Ask before playing out IDs from other artists.
• Ask before releasing mixes with IDs from other artists.
• It’s bad manners to pry about schedule and release dates for WIPs, EPs, or albums that others have shared with you. This is because many other people are pressuring artists to release their unfinished work and that pressure can be outright frustrating. Have empathy for the in-progress works of others and let them release when they are comfortable.
• If a colleague is proposing a new podcast or other social media project, let them announce it instead of leaking it before it’s ready.
• Avoid taking or posting photos backstage at events, many events have policies around this and taking your phone out backstage or onstage can be grounds for getting kicked out. I have seen stage managers pull people out by their collars for violating this rule.
• Ask before taking photos with people and avoid posting photos with larger artists without their consent. Most artists are carefully trying to control their branding and the photos you take with them may not be how they want to be seen publicly. Leaking the identity of an artist who is building their brand around secrecy could completely destroy their brand strategy.

Teams

When working on teams and in groups, you must have patience with allowing the team dynamic to build. To assume that things are falling apart early in a new team or group because of individual behavior is a recipe for creating a toxic team environment mired with blame. Apply the following strategies to help.

• When things go wrong: take responsibility early to avoid creating a downward spiral of people blaming each other for things going wrong instead of solving the core issues at hand. Nothing kills a team dynamic worse than a culture of blame.
• Create a culture of gratitude and support so that people will feel acknowledged and will ask for help when they need it.
• Celebrate success and learn from failure – apply Kaizen to iteratively refine your team and product (music performances and events).
• Document and communicate team practices as you go so that new members come up to speed easily and so that when you must replace a team member their knowledge and experience can be transferred. This also makes it easier for team members to participate when they have difficulty seeing, hearing, or paying attention during in-person meetings.

Inclusivity

Inclusivity is about ensuring that everyone on the team has a say. It’s one of the core tenants of being excellent and requires special focus for people who are disadvantaged within the context of groups.

• Sometimes the best ideas come from people who are never given the chance to talk. Be aware when you are dominating a conversation or decision and give others a chance to speak up. This frequently happens with sexism where men in the room dominate the discussion and don’t create space for women to engage. A great strategy for this is to take turns when speaking and be aware of folks getting interrupted – stand up for others when they’re not being heard but also be aware that some folks would prefer to not be put on the spot in group settings. 
• Be mindful of marginalized groups as these folks can be isolated in the music business world and elsewhere in their lives. This mindfulness can manifest in various ways but we should take language into consideration and be respectful of feedback and sensitivities when they are expressed. Being sensitive and giving extra care to those who are different creates an environment where they can feel safe enough to share their perspective and empowered to contribute to the best of their abilities.

Communication

If someone is volunteering their time to do something on your behalf, respect them enough to clearly communicate what you want done. Take responsibility for clear communication: if other people are consistently failing to correctly execute your instructions, the problem is probably not them.

• Say less. Be concise. When communicating, take the time to write short correspondence so that the recipient can focus on the specific task at hand instead of having to determine the important information. Everything said aside from the task to be executed will distract the reader from their responsibility. Revise your communications to be more concise repeatedly during your writing process just like you would occasionally mixdown and level a track while producing. (Sorry again, for breaking this rule and the next on this post).
• Order your information by priority. People tend to forget the things that are not right at the beginning and end of correspondence, it may seem insensitive but don’t waste these valuable moments on platitudes if you want people to pay attention to critical details.
• Filter information to recipients to exclude what is irrelevant to them. This also means protecting others from communicating to a group what should be 1:1 communication. You can achieve this in email by using the BCC field for requests that go out to a team – e.g. sending out rider requests before a show and bcc-ing the artists to ensure they don’t have to read each other’s riders.
• Review your communications at least once before sending them out. If your communication has mistakes in it, people will lose trust and will not take it seriously.
• Create checklists for pre and post conditions of tasks:
  • Ex: Before you start, make sure that you have gathered x,y,z and gotten approval from <stakeholders>. 
  • Ex: After you have i,j,k working you are done.
  • Ex: Please revise your solution and until it works every time, we need for it to be able to work every time it’s set up.
• Set expectations for when you want the task completed, preferably with a specific date and time or period of time that the task needs to be repeated. This will allow your recipient to prioritize what you’re asking of them amongst all the other things they are doing and will also allow them to let you know if they can’t accomplish it in time.

Letting things go

“I’m at the stage in life where I stay out of arguments. Even if you say 1+1=5, you’re right. Have fun.” ~Keanu Reeves

• If you want to be an easy person to work with, don’t sweat every detail for correctness and allow the little mistakes to slide. This is especially true in cases where there are little to no consequences for them being wrong. I have encountered many people in my life who are insistent on arguing with someone when they’re wrong over every single thing simply because the other person is wrong and not because being corrected is necessary. People also don’t like to be wrong, so pointing out every single thing that someone says or does wrong can create conflicts and distract from the task at hand. These types of interactions can leave the person who is wrong with the impression that the person (who is right even!) is inflexible. 

• Strategically choose when to correct others and they will be more responsive to your feedback. I tend to assess whether the scope of being incorrect when deciding whether to correct someone by asking: does it just affect me, does it affect the team, does it impact the experience of attendees to the event or situation? If it just affects me, then I’m much more lenient in letting things slide but if it’s going to hurt the team or the event, then is the right time to step in and get others on the right page. Most of the time it’s completely harmless to let other people be wrong; if there are consequences to them being wrong and it’s impacting your team, see “when other people mess up” for how to handle it. You get special secret easy-to-work-with bonus points for fixing their mistake without telling them and seeing if they figure out on their own that you were right.
  
• Be quick to let the things go that are now out of your control so that you can resolve the issue at hand instead of dwelling on the situation. If your headliner twisted their ankle in the airport and missed their international flight, there’s nothing you can do about that person and you will have to find a replacement and conjure up some messaging around what happened to save your show. In this situation, don’t focus on your headliner falling out and instead shift your attention to what you can do about it – finding a substitute and getting resolution for your attendees. Note also that when things go wrong, it’s a great time to take responsibility for the situation so that stakeholders don’t dwell on blaming each other – the time for assessing what went wrong is afterwards and not during a crisis.

Sensitive subjects: pets, substances, and romantic encounters

I’ll conclude my table manners spiel with some sensitive subjects that I nearly considered avoiding altogether because opinions on this can get heated and I don’t want people coming after me with pitchforks. Remember these are not rules I judge others by but rules that I have made for myself.

Pets

Your pet’s behavior is a reflection of you. Keep an eye on your pet in social situations and pay attention to their emotional state as much as you are doing this for yourself. The times where things go poorly with a pet in a social situation could be avoided should you notice something is wrong early on.

• Remember that you are responsible for your pet – if someone doesn’t like dogs and you brought your dog over to their house, it is your fault if they are having a bad time. If someone else lets your pet out of your house at an event, that is your fault. If your pet bites or scratches someone, that is your fault. If your pet is loud and the neighbors get called, that is your fault. If your pet bites another pet, that is your fault. If another pet bites your pet, that is your fault. Communicate risks about your pets (she’s a biter) and see the section on when you mess up for what to do when you make a mistake.
• Don’t bring your pet to a party where it’s not fun for your pet or other guests.
  • Ever have a friend bring a dog to a party and then lose the dog? This is the most vibe-killingest and frightening thing to happen so take this into consideration if you have poor control of your pet or are uncertain how your pet will behave in an unfamiliar, noisy, and high stimulation environment. If you can afford it, throw a tracker on your pet (AirTag, SmartTag2, etc) – these can be a lifesaver if your pet wanders off.
• If you can’t control your pet, don’t bring them. If your pet will be disruptive, they should stay at home where they’re safe and happy. Although you might be enamored by your pet’s barking or jumping it could be distracting or unnerving for others in the studio, community meetup, or other social function. A helpful system for bringing small pets to social situations is to have a backpack or other carrier that you can place them in should the situation become stressful for your pet or others involved.
• Don’t judge other people for bringing a pet, it could be a service animal or they could have extenuating circumstances relating to the safety of their pet (like a recent medical operation) that you are unaware of that requires their pet to be there.
  

Substances

Before getting into this, I want to remind you that these are strategies for yourself and not rules to impose on other people. Many of us have experience with programs such as AA, NA, Al-Anon, have ourselves or had someone close been through rehab programs, and are trained in substance abuse counseling. However, individual guidance should be handled professionally and I for one am uncertified to diagnose or assess whether someone should make a change. Nudge, but never force: the affected party has to take the first step and if you’re going to intervene, bring a professional who has an objective perspective.

Disclaimer: Much of the advice here is just adages, I am not a professional and will not pretend to be, so please consult more authoritative sources if you have concerns around substances for yourself and others. Options are available to everyone who needs to talk to a behavioral health professional online and through community clinics, do not take this advice as your only resource in this domain. Dance Safe is a great resource on this subject with resources for responsible consumption and risks.

• In general, it’s a good idea to be sober most of the time if you can swing it. You will have a more stable mood, be more consistent in task performance, and will have an easier time with life. The risks of substance abuse are substantial and can destroy your career and relationships if left unchecked. If you are in the business to do this professionally, you will find yourself at parties several nights a week and to partake at every party is not going to be sustainable in the long run. It’s a good practice to learn to take it easy before the endless party catches up to you.
• Being intoxicated is never an excuse for bad manners. If you mess up, you should never blame intoxication for what happened and should take responsibility for what happened.
• There are benefits to consuming party drugs but these benefits taper off very quickly when you take too much. Taking smaller amounts (e.g. microdosing) and spreading out your consumption is the best way to maximize the benefits without incurring the social risks.
• There’s a rule about being on dates where you don’t drink more than your date. Similarly, you should try and match and never exceed what other people around you are doing. For me, this also goes for sobriety. If I’m around someone who doesn’t drink or partake, I will oftentimes do my best not to let them be the only one not drinking and can take the night or weekend off in solidarity. When you throw parties, it’s a best practice to offer non-alcoholic options so those who choose to be sober to feel included.
• Enjoy performing sober
  • Unless you’re someone like Deadmau5 you can’t get away with this – oh wait, even Deadmau5 got burned for being too lit while playing.
  • You will perform better while sober and will learn more than while performing under the influence of any substance.
  • Some performers confuse the high of actually performing with the consumption of substances – the act of performing itself is its own thrill to be enjoyed.
  • Consuming near performance gear is an easy way to damage the gear and partying while you’re playing is a bad look and sets a bad example; if you must, at a minimum keep your drink, etc, away from the equipment and don’t broadcast that you’re doing it by keeping it out of sight.
• It’s not even a good idea to get more than buzzed at shows you’re just attending, if you get cut off at a bar, you can establish a bad reputation at a venue you might want to be involved with in the future and it’s generally a bad look to be remembered for being wasted at a show.
  • Have a trusted group of friends who make sure everyone stays in check when you’re out.
• Different substances have different risks, changes in behavior, and changes in inhibition. Be aware of the social risks of your respective substances, a few examples accentuating some risks with specific substances to illustrate although these risks realistically apply to all substances.
  • Some can make you think you’re being smooth and cool when you are not, can lower inhibitions and lead to social mistakes, and can make it difficult to remember clearly what happened. Alcohol also makes you need to go to the bathroom frequently and can affect sleep, making you tired and grumpy should you be lacking in sleep (watch for those HALT signs).
  • Some substances can make you think you are connecting with other people when you are not and can make it difficult to pick up on signals folks don’t want you around. Overconsumption of molly and related substances can cause serotonin syndrome (brain zaps) which can persist and is a stressful and disruptive experience.
  • Some can make you think you’re doing great things and coming up with brilliant ideas when you’re not and can make you slow, sluggish, and irritable should you become dependent on it.
  • Substances can give you delusions of grandeur and also can make you unresponsive and disconnected from reality believing in insights and beliefs by taking you out of touch with reality.
  • Some substances can make you overconfident and entitled, loud, and obnoxious and make you a yapper.
  • Others can make you think you’ve made some profound realizations and can give you a gnarly mood hangover from lack of sleep.
  • Some substances can make you giggle when there’s nothing funny going on, cause paranoia, and trigger strange social behavior. In rare cases, things like mushrooms can leave you with persistent hallucinations (HPPD).
• Be aware of the hangovers after consuming substances and how to recover.
  • Substances can have extremely negative effects on sleep, make sure to pay attention to whether you are tired – if you’re irritable or angry, be sensitive to other people.
  • After partying hard at a festival it’s easy to come home and get mad at your friends and peers – make sure to give everyone and yourself space for a few days or a week while you decompress. 
  • Similarly, your hangover could trigger depression; be easy on yourself and patient if you are having feelings of loneliness or sadness and trust that these feelings will pass given time and through taking care of yourself.
  • Take vitamins such as vitamin B, 5HTP, and St. John’s Wart to improve your mood after depleting your “happy neurotransmitters”.
  • It can be a good idea to take multivitamins all the time to prevent vitamin deficiency from harshing your attitude; even if you’re sober. A great example of this is seasonal affective disorder, which is just depression during the fall and winter, and can be combatted with supplementing vitamin D and 5HTP.
  • If you’re consuming Nitrous, you are depleting vitamin B from your body; supplement with chewable B-12 and Vitamin B complex to replenish your body and avoid vitamin B-12 deficiency and related neurological risks. If you are experiencing any side effects of Nitrous, stop consuming it.

Romantic Encounters

Most of the industry cancellations that I am aware of were a direct result of romantic encounters at shows and parties. Before engaging in these situations consider the consequences should there be a miscommunication. In general, I avoid these situations altogether and keep to myself regarding such engagements with other folks from industry and event attendees. At the core of what goes wrong in these encounters is consent. I would hardly consider myself an expert on consent so please do what you can to educate yourself with resources such as WeLoveConsent. 

• Should you choose to engage, the following ground rules will help you avoid messing up.
  • Consent should be arrived at mutually and should be clear. “Are we good to [what is happening]” is a simple way to start this conversation.
  • Consent is mandatory in all steps of the situation. At any point where there is an escalation of what you’re doing, get confirmation from the person you are with to ensure that you are on the same page.
  • Consent when someone is intoxicated does not count: if someone might not remember what happened, they did not agree to what happened.
  • Consent is verbal, you should not assume that vibes, actions, or other interpretive cues are sufficient. Get verbal consent before moving on in your situation to something that someone may not be opting in for.
  • Error on the side of caution regarding consent: getting close to someone or touching them is in many contexts a boundary that you should get permission on before proceeding.
  • There’s no harm in waiting until the next day should you have doubts about someone – don’t move forward if you have any shred of doubt. If it can’t work the next day, you are probably not doing the right thing.

Scenarios and Strategies

Getting more specific, let’s discuss situations where you can apply your table manners to create strategies to be your best self. I’ll try and illustrate how both being easy and excellent are two sides of the story when thinking about industry scenarios.

Being excellent in cyphers and giving track feedback

• Feedback sessions with aspiring producers are a great opportunity to help grow others through providing objective changes that they can easily make. It’s easy to fall into the trap of giving feedback to an individual that is devastating to them and may instead hinder them from improving. To avoid this pitfall:
  • Ask the level of severity the recipient wants – do they want it soft or brutal? Scoping brutal feedback as intentionally harsh can be helpful in allowing the person being analyzed to take the feedback in stride.
  • Criticize the work, not the artist and emphasize that you are presenting your perspective. Saying things like “compared to my references, your subs are too loud” instead of “you make your subs too loud” helps contextualize why you’re giving the feedback.
  • Provide specific solutions instead of just pointing out issues and avoid giving open-ended feedback that can’t be acted on without further guidance. “Your drums are bad” is not as useful as “add a fill every 8 bars to give stronger phrasing to your drum sections” – it’s difficult to always give this degree of specificity but for newer producers they are hungry for simple feedback they can act on.
  • Understand the context of where a track is at and the right type of feedback to give. What phase is the track in, is it just a superloop they want to tighten up before arranging or is this an arranged track that could use some swapping of sections? If someone sends you a finished (to their ear) or a released track – usually you should avoid giving them feedback on that track and let them be happy they put it out. If they’re sending you an unreleased master and you don’t like it, ask if they have other pre-masters to compare with – sometimes the right thing to do in this circumstance is to suggest how they can retain what you liked in the pre-master on another go at mastering.

Being easy in the studio by protecting your setup against misuse and disaster

• Retain backups so that you can recover should someone break your setup. Not everyone uses your computer the exact same way that you do so be prepared for other people sharing your studio with you. Don’t let someone else’s misunderstanding of your setup create a massive headache for them and yourself, having a good backup strategy is a core tenant of this.
• I generally try to stick to default mappings on my computer and music software to make it easier for others to use. For example, if you reverse your mouse buttons or use a non-standard keyboard mapping (e.g. DVORAK) then you will create friction for others driving a project on your computer.
• When using your DAW, if you are being clever, you are setting yourself and others up for problems in the future. Using things in the way they were not intended to be used like making tricky project routings and taking advantage of hacks will lead to confusion for project collaborators and even yourself in the future when you leave and resume work on your project.
• Take the time to organize your computer so that it’s easy for others to use. In my studio, I keep documentation on hand for the synthesizers, outboard gear, and so forth for when people unfamiliar with my setup want to produce with my modules and outboard gear. I organize samples in folders so that you can browse through them and not rely on searching in the DAW.
• It’s easy to get into situations where small changes to your computer’s file system or attached drives will break project files and DJ software configurations. I take an approach that helps to defend against this by incorporating backups and careful library organization. In extreme cases you can do things like:
  • Preferring “lowest common denominator” file formats such as AIFF or MP3 that will play in virtually all players and store metadata.
  • Keeping DJ files sorted by folder, chronologically into key/bpm within the filesystem
  • Retaining actual folders of pre-configured sets so you are not dependent on your DJ software’s library and database and which files are in which sets
  • ID3  tagging files in case the DJ software database breaks – this also allows you to seamlessly use files across different DJ software
  • If your library is sufficiently resilient, nothing in the DJ software database will matter, usbs are nails, mp3s are whatever, you can drag and drop a folder onto a USB and it will play in just about ANYTHING (denon, pioneer, rekordbox, Gemini, Temu CDI etc)
  • Prefer audio interfaces that will have standalone power and mixing so that should your computer shutdown or reboot it will not have a power on/off transient. Some examples:
    • The PCI-e RME RayDat uses a digital (ADAT) interface and will never generate on/off transients.
    • The SSL interfaces have internal mixers that allow you to turn down the mixer volume when disconnecting from a computer.
      
• USBs
  • Label your DJ USB appropriately in your DJ software so that it’s easy for others to identify which is which in 3 and 4 player B2B2B situations. I won’t get into a deep dive on this right now but you should at a minimum label your disks on your computer with an accurate and meaningful name and include your performance name in your DJ software.
  • Having a massive keychain with heavy or sharp attachments can damage gear. It’s helpful to use a quick-release keychain so your keys don’t dangle onto DJ equipment.
  • It’s really easy to forget your USB when DJing or confuse it with others USBs. Attach a sticker, label, or trinket to make your USB easily identifiable should others have the same brand and model USB as you and to make it easier to get your USB back should it get lost.
  • When asking someone else to grab your USB, clearly communicate how to identify the correct usb both on your hub as well as the system disk label for the USB. If your “show day” usb has the label “production” and you also have a “DJ” USB on your computer, they might disconnect the wrong one if you ask them to grab the “DJ” USB with your logo on it.
    
• Outboard gear, interfaces, and routing
  • If you are using outboard gear, document the routing to make your own life easier should a cable get disconnected and so that others in your studio know how to route your hardware should they need to change something and put it back.
  • As a general rule, if you have to troubleshoot something and it’s not apparent how to fix it, you should take this as a signal to document the issue you encountered.

Being excellent with other people’s gear

Make sure you’re using other’s gear respectfully and are especially careful with things like making changes to their audio configuration including master volume, treatment, speaker position, and mixing chains. It can be devastating if you clip into someone’s expensive studio monitors or obstruct the calibration that they have done to treat their room for their own ears.

Using other peoples speakers and monitors:

• Ask first before manipulating other people’s gear and let them handle it if they’re sensitive about it.
• Power on speakers last – when turning on many audio interfaces and mixing boards, you can trigger pops and other transients that can damage speakers.
• Power off speakers first. Before turning off a computer or disconnecting an active audio interface you should powering down the speakers first.
• Be careful when disconnecting audio interfaces.
• Turn down input gains before attaching microphones and other outboard gear and turn down inputs before turning on powered gear.
• Learn how to properly wrap cables – if you’re around studio gear, there will be a LOT of cables and properly handling them is essential.
  • The Over Under Method
    • Alternate between putting the cable into your hand OVER the loop being produced and UNDER the loop being produced
  • You can gently twist with your fingers to identify the way the cable needs to coil in the manner of the cable’s “natural tendency”, some additional notes on this:

In cable handling, the “natural tendency” refers to a cable’s inclination to revert to the shape it was originally stored or wound in. This can manifest as twists, kinks, or a general reluctance to lie flat if handled improperly. Understanding this natural tendency is essential when coiling cables. How to “feel” a cable’s natural tendencyRelax the Cable: Allow the cable to hang freely or lie loosely on the floor for a period before installation to help it release any internal stresses from storage.Observe its Natural Set: Notice the direction in which the cable naturally wants to curve or coil, according to Iewc.Gentle Handling: Don’t force the cable into a shape it doesn’t naturally want to take.

• Don’t drink around gear: getting any electronic equipment wet can destroy it
• Don’t use powders around gear: powders can clog and damage things that slide and turn.
• Don’t smoke around gear: resin from smoke can clog up things that slide and turn, can leave sticky residue, and can leave undesirable odors. Ash can damage gear and will cosmetically damage gear exteriors.
• Don’t eat around other people’s gear: crumbs can get inside and damage the gear or attract an infestation of ants or other pests.

Being easy at shows

This is a topic that deserves it’s own section because it’s critical to your music career and live performances to give a positive impression on your stakeholders and peers. I’ll group the scenarios by different phases of the show.

Sound check and performance times

• Show up on time and ready. “If you’re on time, you’re late.”
• Be as kind as you can to everybody – these folks are all there to help you and make you look good. Make their job easier by helping them like you off the get-go. You also may not be aware that the person you’re engaging with is also in charge of more than just helping you (e.g. is the owner who is also doing engineering).
• Show gratitude and share in the success of things going well. You could not have done this on your own so be sure to give credit where it’s due for AV, Engineering, and all Production staff.
• If you’re working a club, be friendly to the wait and bar staff, they are also helping to create the atmosphere for your show.
• Same with promoters and booking, these are the people who you want to like you and who will give more opportunities to folks who are easy to work with. Respond quickly to their requests and be professional in your communication and the requests you make of them.

After the show

• Follow up with the folks you have met and show gratitude for positive experiences. Communicate sooner than later before everyone has moved on to the next show while your new connections are fresh.
• Avoid saying negative things about other people. Not everyone is going to be on their top behavior all the time and the experience that you had with someone may not be reflective of how they are with other people. For example, someone could be fighting a bad flu and they needed space so that they can save their energy for performing – you can’t understand the entire context around someone’s behavior just from a brief interaction in a high-stress environment. Furthermore, most people interpret what you say about others as much as a reflection on you as they do about whatever you have to say about someone you met. If you’re venting to another performer, remind them not to repeat things that are said. The safest thing to do is to “be lavish with your praise and hearty with your approbation.”
• Avoid repeating negative things others have said about people at an event. Similarly to saying negative things about an individual, what you say is as much a reflection on you as it is on the person you’re talking about. Spreading rumors by repeating hearsay is bad form.

Being excellent at shows

• Show up ready and prepared
  • Keep your head clear and save the celebration for after you have played.
  • You should show up ready with your own headphones and make sure to bring an adapter just in case one of the jacks is not working properly. If you sweat a lot while playing, please bring your own headphones and don’t soak up someone else’s.
    
• Transitioning with other performers with open decks and time slots
  • Stages can be extremely crowded and in many cases are unstable or rickety. Be aware of other people on stage and obstacles while you move around.
  • When you are DJing, you are pretty much stuck behind the decks. If someone’s been on for a while it can be helpful to grab them some emergency supplies like drinks or snacks.
  • In general, people do not want to take requests and do not want an impromptu B2B. Adding a track in the middle of a set can ruin a performer’s flow so avoid trying to jump in unless someone is asking for you to come up. Experienced DJs are cultivating a vibe and do not just play bangers ceaselessly, if it feels like the energy is low the DJ could be doing this on purpose to create tension and contrast. If someone is playing and is clearly in flow and it’s not open decks, it’s extremely rude to ask to play or to “Jump in for just one track”. 
  • In situations where there are open decks, sometimes a DJ runs out of energy. Pay attention in these situations and ask if someone is starting to look tired on the decks. A polite way to breach this is to offer to get them anything they need while they’re working – this can give them a chance to communicate they want a transition out. Conversely, if you are tired, there is probably another DJ who is just itching to play a track to match what you’re playing so signal to them if they’re close when you want them to take over.
  • It seems a little crazy that I have to point this out but if someone has a slot of time allotted to them, don’t try and interrupt them before their time slot is up. If someone is playing after you, don’t go over your allotted time into their slot. In situations where there is a stage manager, they should be enforcing time slots but you won’t always have a stage manager there to help. If there isn’t a stage manager, it can be a chill move to step up and keep folks in line without creating tension between performers.
  • Renegades are usually not open decks; showing up with your USB and expecting to play on the rig that someone took the planning and time to bring out to an event is not the move if there is a solid crowd built up around the decks.
    
• Approaching decks while someone is playing before you and transitioning on to the decks
  • Stay out of their way and make sure they can tell that you’re coming to get ready to play while staying out of the limelight on stage. You can ruin the perfect photograph by intruding while someone else is playing so be considerate that they’re the focus and not you.
  • Insert your USB and quickly communicate how long you expect them to keep going until you come back on; if there isn’t a free USB slot in the decks, be careful not to remove it if the USB is active.
  • Always press the STOP button before ejecting a USB to avoid potentially damaging the library.
  • Set up your headphones out of the way and leave to let the current player finish.
  • Be conscious of the track the player is finishing with; if you hard cut right before the drop the DJ wants to finish with you could be stepping on how they wanted to close.
  • If you’re setting up live equipment on the mixer, make sure you’re plugging into an unused channel and turn the channel volume down before plugging in to avoid power on/off transients which can completely kill the vibe of the current performer’s set.
    
• Handing off decks to the next performer
  • Communicate how much longer you expect to perform while they do their initial check-in and let them stay out of the way while you keep working.
  • When they come back, make it easy and seamless for them to take over
    • Let the next player know if anything is not working such as unresponsive faders, cues, and mixing settings.
    • Tell them which deck is playing and give them your BPM / key for transitioning out
    • Wait for them to be fully engaged and be ready to give them a 8-16 bar loop to transition from if they have trouble finding their opening track.
    • Press the stop button on decks and eject your USB once you’re sure they’re in and wish them well on their performance once they’re going and get out of the way and don’t leave anything around because space is extremely limited.

• How to correctly eject a usb
  • Press the stop button on the USB that is not playing.
  • Wait for the light to stop blinking.
  • Snatch that USB and get out of the way!
    
• How to make sure the person after you has good mix in options
  • Communicate bpm / key / and where the mix out point is so they don’t jump in before the track is fully rinsed.
  • Have a loop point ready should the next player run out of time before selecting their first track.
    
• B2B etiquette
  • It can be hard to have a back-to-back set flow well for the audience so make sure to have realistic expectations when playing with someone you haven’t played with before. It’s a good idea to practice with B2B DJs beforehand to understand each other’s dynamic.
  • 1’s vs 3’s – in most back-to-back playing formats you are expected to play a few songs before the next DJ comes and takes over, especially if you haven’t played with each other very much. Communicate with your team to set expectations for how many tracks each player is running before switches. If you are playing 1’s it’s a good idea to set some constraints so that you’re not fighting over genre and BPM.
  • A few examples of constraints that have worked well for me:
    • All 140 bpm dubstep / 130 bpm midtempo / 120 BPM house
    • “Tropical” music for poolside gigs, e.g. tropical house, downtempo, etc.
    • Progressive DnB B2B starting at 150 and finishing at 170
  • As mentioned before, in a B2B you want to set up the next DJ for success; communicate if there’s anything funny going on with a player and help them get into set when they take over.
    
• Reading the room and opening vs headlining
  • Please note that there is a tremendous amount of nuanced context in this scenario that I’ll try to communicate here and this is a controversial take. I feel, especially for DJs, that you should curate a set and vibe appropriate for the setting and bill you are on, be it a house party, renegade, club night, or festival. For producers, this is less strict as you may be getting booked for your original work regardless of setting.
  • You should try to play music that fits the vibe for the venue and ticket in order to match the expectations of the audience and curators for a show. If you’re playing a downtempo show and everyone on the ticket is playing downtempo, at least try to meet the expectations of the show’s curators and avoid startling the audience with hardstyle or dubstep. If you’re booked for a show and don’t think you can play a set that is the vibe for it, let the curators know what your intention is and consider passing on the opportunity if it’s a bad fit.The “don’t play the wrong music” strategy is especially true if you are just a DJ and are not trying to share your signature music – most people expect DJs to be able to perform in different styles.
  • When you are playing for a touring headliner, which is frequently referred to as support, you should define success for your set as creating the atmosphere for the headliner and support them in providing the audience with a blow out finish. I personally would be disappointed if I felt I had upstaged the headliner on a show that I was invited to play because it would mean I did my job improperly. There are exceptions to this, for example if you’re playing a “bangers” night, the point of the show is to give the crowd all you’ve got and meeting that expectation and setting the headliner up for a challenge.
  • When you are headlining, be grateful when support sets you up for success and evaluate their performance with this in mind because your support may be intentionally showing restraint to let you shine. A little tip for if your opener is upstaging you: change the vibe before going into your set – I once saw a performer during a bangers night open with house music to create space for when they got into their trap bangers and it worked perfectly.
    
• Resources for DJing and B2B
  • Adam Meow (9lives) shares a lot of tips related to DJing and DJ etiquette.

Resources

• Miss Manners – Real-world examples of how best to deal with nuanced social situations.
• Dance Safe – An excellent resource for harm reduction and related topics.
• How to stop being toxic – Guide to foster self-awareness, to cease manipulative behaviors, to halt the cycle of hurting others, and to cultivate healthy, fulfilling relationships.
• Non-violent Communication – Separating observations, needs, feelings, and requests to compassionately communicate.
• How to be an adult in relationships – a modernized pop-psychology text on maturity, communication, and wellbeing.
• How to win friends and influence people – The canonical text on being likeable, this program can be a helpful resource in making yourself easier to work with.
• The 48 laws of Power – A retrospective on influence throughout history – also good as counter-examples aka “The 48 Laws of being an asshole”.
• The Highly Sensitive Person – this personality type is less common but requires special consideration for communication and expectation setting.