SwingDJs

There's always a tension between wanting to play what you know and wanting to extend your repertoire a bit, I think. I have sets where I really try to extend myself, and the dancers, a little and play quite a lot of stuff that's more unusual, or that I haven't heard played. I guess this naturally ha...

Marcelo, DJ-1800 does look great. I'm going to give it a try and will report back when I can. I may just try to use this while I'm on the road instead of previewing with an iPod and playing with iTunes (my current plan).

I also like Jimmy Smith's 'Sunny Side of the Street' from the wonderful and famous 'Back at the Chicken Shack'. I got onto Jimmy via the Beastie Boys version of 'Root Down'. Jimmy's CD of the same name is well worth getting, IMHO (although not for Lindy Hop purposes). I do, however, quite like spinn...

Promised I'd post here once I had tried iTunes BPM Inspector for a while, and I have. It's now undergone a couple of quick and useful updates, including considerably more accurate counting and the addition of key tapping as well as mouseclicks to count beats (that last feature was a suggestion of mi...

Mike, that "Everyman's Guide to The Lindy" thing is hilarious. Thanks for posting it.

Heh... Well, I'm not a Vegan, but I'm also more into the group hug idea than battling to the death. I'm looking forward to it, nonetheless, because I know I will learn a lot from everyone. Remember, I won't know many people (I live a long way away) so please introduce yourselves. There will be a sma...

I don't know if the list has been finalised or officially announced, but I guess some of the names have already been mentioned on Yehoodi. The list of names invited, I believe, was: Jesse Miner, California Manu Smith, New York Reuben Brown, California Andy Reid, New York Lucy Faulkner, Canada Matthe...

Hi all,

I haven't seen a post about this anywhere else, so I thought I would mention the Battle of the DJs contest at the Harlem Jazz Dance Festival. Who's going? What do you expect it to be like? And the most important question: how can I win?

http://www.aivjd.org/hjdf/events.html

The Aussie swing scene has not evolved to a point where DJs are recognised much at all. If you are DJing, it's because you really want to do it. DJing for a big event might pull you in a few dollars, but certainly not a regular salary. There are, of course, plenty of professional DJs in Australia. I...

Melbourne has a couple of female DJs, but a few more male DJs. You're right, it's weird that it's not more even, but I honestly don't have the answer. I certainly don't think there is any sign that men have better taste than women in music. No way. Perhaps it's just that guys are more pushy about it.

Maybe even AAC? Can we hope?

Oh wow, I just checked, and it looks like there is a new utility for iTunes 4 which lets you set BPMs with mousetaps directly in iTunes. Perfect. iTunes-BPM Inspector 0.9.1 Installs into ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts I will try it out and post my experiences here. download here: http://www.blacktree.com/...

Macintosh users might be glad to learn that there's a utility for MacOS that does an excellent job: http://diwww.epfl.ch/~zenger/macbpm/ One particular feature I like is the stabilisation measure, which tackles some of the problems mentioned above in this thread by giving you and indication of wheth...

My excitement about the new Apple music store was dampened somewhat by the fact that it is only available to US residents. It's difficult to understand that they are launching a service with all the hype about making music more readily available on the Internet, when what they really mean is "o...