SwingDJs

CafeSavoy wrote:

Eyeball wrote:

CafeSavoy wrote:
So why are you slumming? None of the high class types want you around?

Why are you personally insulting me? Does the truth hit too close to your home?

Let's recap what you said.

Eyeball wrote:What bothers me about DJs editing anything is that they are so very low on the artistic and user rung of the creative ladder of recording. Only the dancer is lower then the DJ. When you are that low on the user chain, you shouldn't be 'touching up' anything - especially for those even lower then you are.

I think you were the only one doing any insulting. You insulted both djs and dancers. I merely asked why if you had such low opinions of both dancers and djs, you choose to associate with them. The question stills stands.

As to whether I feel insulted, I don't have good editing skills so I normally barely edit beyond trimming songs to get rid of dead air at the beginning and ending of songs. But I do think there are songs that could benefit from edting and I would like better editing skills worthy of the songs. But I can also respect those whose theology keeps them from editing songs. I think it's a matter of personal choice. So what kind of DJ are you? Do you dj for the dancers or do you preach to them?

Well said, Rayned.

I agree completely with respecting those who don't care to edit themselves, and agree with their right to share that opinion. (I also certainly don't think those who don't edit (for whatever reasons) are fools who are missing out: their choice entirely.) It's the preaching and the self-righteous demands that OTHERS must not do it that annoys me: without any basis, standing, ownership rights, or other such grounds for making such demands. They presume to defend something that most musicians, themselves, would not deign to defend. Who appointed them the universal protector of all original, official versions of musical recordings?!?

(BTW, God bless the new "Ignore" function on this Board.)

Yahoo.

editing is a tough thing to do well, but some tracks need it. occasionally, there's some dumb intro or outro that could be cut. i've heard one guy cut the last bit of "wake up easy" to the yells of experienced dancers and to shrugs from new dancers. that's not the reaction i'd want.

my favorite dj right now (michael gamble) made a badass cut of "daddling" by Jay McShann--blew me away at ATLX. he cut a few phrases and put the best sections of the bass solo together as well as doing some pop/click and noise reduction.

i haven't edited it yet, but i want to mess around with Earl Hines' "rock and rye" because every time i listen to the song, i want to hear the band return to the theme in the first phrase. plus i could go without some of the soloing and the wimpy outro.

meadtastic wrote: i haven't edited it yet, but i want to mess around with Earl Hines' "rock and rye" because every time i listen to the song, i want to hear the band return to the theme in the first phrase. plus i could go without some of the soloing and the wimpy outro.

Dude, I really hope you're joking. I can understand wanting to take out sections to shorten a track, or to eliminate long intros of talking, but adding in extra bits to eliminate "wimpy outros" is really playing with fire. Do you really think your version will be better than Earl Hines'?

trev wrote:

meadtastic wrote: i haven't edited it yet, but i want to mess around with Earl Hines' "rock and rye" because every time i listen to the song, i want to hear the band return to the theme in the first phrase. plus i could go without some of the soloing and the wimpy outro.

Dude, I really hope you're joking. I can understand wanting to take out sections to shorten a track, or to eliminate long intros of talking, but adding in extra bits to eliminate "wimpy outros" is really playing with fire. Do you really think your version will be better than Earl Hines'?

now now.... we shouldn't be so judgmental. He has every right to screw up a great song if he wants to.

Doesn't every edit-maker think he is improving the song?

Obviously, yes.

And perhaps most telling of all is that people/dancers managed to dance to all of these 'deletions' back in the day, but today's dancers can't? Or is the 'dj' simply exercising his own vanity and ego as he Monday morning quartetbacks the giant talents of the Jazz and Swing world decades after the fact as he attempts to improve on what they laid down 60 - 70 years ago?

It strikes me that it is the rampant egomania that the marvels of the computer chip has put in the hands of 'musical bloggers' - anyone can be a musician now, so why not take this work of art and re-work it to suit not the desires of a perhaps greater art (unlikely to be achieved anyway), but to suit the needs of 'Swing joggers' on some faux dance floor in Texas (or elsewhere).

as an edit maker, i never think of improving a song. i'm making it suit a specific purpose that may only be useful once or not at all. sometimes i just want to hear what it sounds like. it's just remixing. and it's a fact that most remixes are atrocious, but people still remix music anyway.

i'm not sure it's always right to edit tracks. awkward sections of music are great sometimes.

to edit an old work of art is to make new art. i think it's totally cool to use a song as the basis for something slightly different. plus, who's to say that these musicians wouldn't have done something similar in front of an audience instead of in a recording studio? a band director could easily call for a return to an earlier section or switch the order of some stuff around right before a show and pass out new charts or have people write stuff in.

songs have endless variations and versions, and for the vast majority of swing music, dancers won't hear a difference as long as the edit is seamless.

plus if you want a song for a routine that has to be under 2:30 or 2:45, you pretty much have to edit no matter what the song is.

Eyeball wrote:...as he Monday morning quartetbacks...

Pun or no pun? Hard to tell. I thought we were talking about big bands here, not small group combos.

fredo wrote:now now.... we shouldn't be so judgmental. He has every right to screw up a great song if he wants to.

You only risk screwing up a great song if you permanently edit all copies of the recorded version.

Haydn wrote:

fredo wrote:now now.... we shouldn't be so judgmental. He has every right to screw up a great song if he wants to.

You only risk screwing up a great song if you permanently edit all copies of the recorded version.

No, b/c you create something new that enters the concious and subconcious mind; i.e. hack recordings of "In the Mood" which have ruined the song for many people.

Eyeball wrote:

Haydn wrote:

fredo wrote:now now.... we shouldn't be so judgmental. He has every right to screw up a great song if he wants to.

You only risk screwing up a great song if you permanently edit all copies of the recorded version.

No, b/c you create something new that enters the concious and subconcious mind; i.e. hack recordings of "In the Mood" which have ruined the song for many people.

I don't think you can blame hack recordings of "in the mood" on swing djs.

CafeSavoy wrote:i

I don't think you can blame hack recordings of "in the mood" on swing djs.

The analogy was of inflicting botch jobs on the public consciousness

CafeSavoy wrote:

Eyeball wrote:

Haydn wrote: You only risk screwing up a great song if you permanently edit all copies of the recorded version.

No, b/c you create something new that enters the concious and subconcious mind; i.e. hack recordings of "In the Mood" which have ruined the song for many people.

I don't think you can blame hack recordings of "in the mood" on swing djs.

Nor can you blame the overall campiness of the song, itself, on Swing DJs.

I don't know how many people I have needed to open their eyes that "Swing" is NOT AT ALL adequately represented by campy pop songs like "In the Mood." It is not as bad as many consider it to be, but it certainly is not one of those glorious works of art that merit preservation by the righteously-self-appointed preservers-of-original-audio-recordings police. If THAT is the example of songs we may not edit, then I feel even more silly for engaging in the debate, in the first place.

"In the Mood" is not a "pop" song.

Anyone who can't see the art in "In the Mood" has no vision and has failed to even make their own point if editing improving something. The final version of "In the Mood" is a well edited version of what had come previously. The banner, quintessential Swing recording that defines the era should also be serving as the 'let's go edit a tune' backwoods dj's banner Swing recording of what editing can accomplish. Not surprisingly, though, it remains unchosen as such while plank pounders on the third coast go wade in the water instead.

Yahoo - you will never understand. The difference in what Glenn Miller did was that he *was* an artist and you are not.

Eyeball wrote: Anyone who can see the art in "In the Mood" has no vision and has failed to even make their own point if editing improving something. The final version of "In the Mood" is a well-editied version of what had come previously. The banner, quintessentail Swing recording that defines the era should also be serving as the 'let's go edit a tune' backwoods dj's banner Swing recording of what editing can accomplish. Not surprisingly, though, it remains unchosen as such while plank pounders on the third coast go wade in the water instead.

I have read, and reread this paragraph a number of times.
And still I have no idea what it means, or what you are trying to say here.