SwingDJs

fredo wrote:gemzombie- It just sounds to me like you have a fairly grim view of "most swing DJs", perhaps from some horrible DJ childhood trauma.

Not really, these discussion tend to sound that way. But for the most part, I'm optimistic... I'm just championing *better*. Nothing wrong with that is there?

I won't argue that professional DJ software is ultimately superior as a DJ tool, because it's designed for DJ purposes rather than casual listening. I think others have pointed out, however, that most of the bells and whistles aren't really necessary for swing DJs.

Most definitely true... I guess i'm a puritan. I like single solutions versus mulitple/hacked things. The long-time geek in me loves the piece-meal approach, but the professional in me does not at all.

Your argument seems to be less about whether swings djs CAN do a good job with itunes/winamp/media player set ups, and more about what, in your estimation, the "average" swing DJ is actually doing. Either you're basing this on personal interactions with less than average DJs, or you just perceive most swing DJs as brainless oafs.

None of you here are brainless oafs, but there are a ton of people who don't bother obtain the level of knowledge that you folks do. These are your standard iTunes junkies who download free (and often mislabeled) tunes. iTunes is the aol of the Djing world for that reason. It gets a whole lot of people online, but is that good? Truthfully this doesn't really matter for my "argument"... it is what it is.

Most swing DJs can figure out how to press stop on a track, wait a few seconds, then press play on the next track.

Sure. Have you tried BPM Studio and it's highly customizable cross fading feature? It's extremely easy to set up, and makes one button cross fading (with extended silence... i just give 1-3 seconds of silence between songs depending on the situation). It's a very sweet feature. It's probably not noticeable to dancers compared to someone using iTunes proficiently, but it makes my job a bit easier.

That's funny, most swing DJs that I know that DJ on a regular basis have an external sound card. I see those turtle cards everywhere these days.
...
--re: previewing: "For the average person's technical ability, they can't figure out how to do it. So there are a lot of swing DJ's who don't bother."

Most swing DJs get an external sound card so that they can preview while tracks are playing. see previous response.

Ya, tis true... those are becoming quite the popular item (I have one that replaced my SoundBlaster MP3+... I love that little thing). The average iTunes user doesn't have a clue that they can do that though.

Most swing DJs must not be as knowledgeable as you. I usually search by coolness-factor, I use my jank-ometer for that one.

I don't think so. I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but let's assume your not. Compared to many of the fellow DJs here, I know I'm no where near as knowledgable as them, however for any song I know I can roughly tell you the BPM within 10, so I've never found the need to search by BPM. I tend to look for style/feel versus tempo anyway. I guess this is one of my problems with the iTunes approach. I know a lot of people who do search for BPM as if that's the best way to approach your song choice. This is probably a whole other discussion, but suffice it to say that I think searching for music in this way on a regular basis could be bad for the music selection. I doubt the folks here are doing that.

*this discussion is amusing to me. I dont really care that much, I just like a good argument about nothing. It's amusing to me because when listening to other DJs, I'm usually listening to what music choices they make, not to the quality of their software navigation-- but to each their own.

I wholeheartedly agree. I don't really have that much vested in this... it's just a time killer, so please don't think I'm sitting here in my chair getting all red in the face over the fact that most of you are diggin' iTunes, and think I'm being lame It's a given to me that most of you are playing good tunes... so why not have a little technical discussion on the specifics.

Let's put it this way. If my BPM Studio software stopped working today, I think I could do *just as good* of a job with Winamp or WMP. It would just *feel* like more work to me, and I wouldn't be happy.

(On another note, I read where iTunes is offering higher quality non-DRM (but with named watermarking) downloads for 20 cents or so more. That makes me very happy, and would be the only reason I'd install iTunes software again... just so I can download something I realy wanted).

fredo wrote:Most swing DJs must not be as knowledgeable as you. I usually search by coolness-factor, I use my jank-ometer for that one.

ha ha i love my jank-ometer. I can set it for "low jank" or "high jank".

Seriously although I think I know my collection fairly well I depended a lot on my * rating factor and my comments that I had on notes with each CD I carried. I'm pleased that jriver uses * for ratings, somehow that makes me happy that I don't have to use a new symbol. I also can sort by genre [jank being one of them] so I'm going to be interested to see how my sets will improve by being able to sort on different factors such as rating, bpm, genre, comments etc.

There is a DJ in Seattle who IMHO became much better once he switched to a laptop; I think it made it easier for him to organize his music and he was able to open up his collection, he plays a much wider range of music now.

As I'm loading my CDs to my laptop I'm finding a bunch of songs that I never play; I'm looking forward to re-rating them and either dumping a bunch of crap or finding some new gems.

AND if someone has some really poor quality rips to their laptop you can tell; I was at a dance last night where I wanted to pass the DJ a note to rerip his material, you could tell the difference compared to anyone else who played that night.

I've switched to laptop DJing. I can come up with pros and cons for both digital and CD but the benefits are certainly worth the switch.

I did do sort of a hybrid part CD, part digital while I was still in the process of ripping everything, as long as I had a couple of stereo lines into a mixer, I could just use my portable CD player in tandem with my laptop. There was no real need to provide a CD player although it was nice to have. A good multi-channel mixer was more helpful.

I'm not sure I agree with Jesse's assessment of using iTunes/WMP/WinAmp/etc. That software was all designed with music listeners in mind, I'd describe it as the analog of using a home stereo style CD changer.

I still haven't settled on software yet. I've tried various combinations players. I'm currently using WinAmp for DJing and iTunes for preview. I've found iTunes is really fussy about mousing so I really don't like it for the live feed. I found I can easily drag from iTunes to WinAmp, combined with the fact that WinAmp lets me easily change the output device, it works well.

I'm still stewing over better software. I've found BPM studio is more resistant to me doing something stupid to mess up the live feed, the demo version seems quite reliable. On the other hand, I like many of the UI elements of PCDJ however it's s little less idiot resistant and it likes to skip, at least on the two different systems I've tried it on. With pro software, there is sometimes the option of a control unit that emulates CD players so there's less excuse for the CD die hards to stick old media.

The business case for switching from CD to PC is maybe a little less clear. It takes a boatload of time/attention to rip everything for any non-trivial sized collection when care is taken to get good quality rips. When size/space is important, digital is great but the effort takes a while to pay off for a DJ who only spins a couple hours once a week and a free or nominal pay gig.

I will agree with Reuben, et. al that there is no reason not to switch or at least be preparing to switch in the near future.

SoundInMotionDJ wrote:The capability to cross fade implies that two songs can be played through a main channel output at the same time. (Perhaps I should have phrased it that way). The CD equivalent of this is "Two CD players connected to a mixer." Are there any CD based DJs who prefer a single CD player to dual CD players? Maybe you can "get by" with a single CD player...but is that the setup you would prefer?

But with CDs you need two CD players to preview and play because you can't instantly switch CDs on the deck that you're playing the current song. With a computer, that's not an issue.

If this thread was about the "minimum" necessary to just "get by" with as a Lindy Hop DJ - then from the sound of things, a single CD player with no headphones would seem to be the answer. That is the equivalent to the software setup that people seem to be pushing for...but with a slightly longer pause between songs.

Umm, no. The standard setup that all of the laptop DJs have here pretty much involves a dual soundcard setup that allows for previewing and output. So it would be a two CD deck with no crossfader.

GuruReuben wrote:What's interesting is there have been a number of times now that I've been given on music files instead of a CD... and at the last Showdown Skye handed me his freakin' iPod.

True. Actually, I had thought you were going to say that events that go all digital would just require contestants to provide an mp3 or their cds early enough to be ripped and tested.

CafeSavoy wrote:True. Actually, I had thought you were going to say that events that go all digital would just require contestants to provide an mp3 or their cds early enough to be ripped and tested.

I'd hard enough getting their CDs 2 seconds before they go on.

GuruReuben wrote:

CafeSavoy wrote:True. Actually, I had thought you were going to say that events that go all digital would just require contestants to provide an mp3 or their cds early enough to be ripped and tested.

I'd hard enough getting their CDs 2 seconds before they go on.

Ain't that the truth. I keep waiting for someone to bring up an 8-track.

CafeSavoy wrote:

GuruReuben wrote:

CafeSavoy wrote:True. Actually, I had thought you were going to say that events that go all digital would just require contestants to provide an mp3 or their cds early enough to be ripped and tested.

I'd hard enough getting their CDs 2 seconds before they go on.

Ain't that the truth. I keep waiting for someone to bring up an 8-track.

My laptop has a cd-player, I can easily play a cd given to me. I can also rip it quickly (while DJing other music) if need be as well.

I can't imagine anyone not being able to do the same thing.

Not that I'm recommending it, but a venue or organinzer not providing a CD player is not the same as actively preventing someone from using CDs. It would be just as easy for CD DJs to carry two discmen in case of this situation as it is for me to carry 1/8", 1/4" and RCA adapters for my laptop.

Good point. I DJ'd events at some near-ish scenes where they'd basically have a home CD player or a 100 CD jukebox. I ended up bringing my own CD players and mixer.

Well, yeah. I'm aware that the question is whether it's a good idea, scene by scene, to have only whatever connections to speakers are necessary (and related equipment, such as a nice equalizer, if you feel like it) as a venue manager, and make DJs bring their own mechanisms for playing music, or if it's a good idea to provide a decent playing mechanism at the venue.

The biggest thing is to make it clear before soliciting/booking DJs what is provided and what is required of the DJ. If I know in advance that I'll need to bring a laptop then I can prepare if I want the gig bad enough. Even if that means ripping all my music and buying a laptop.

It would suck to show up at an event CD's in hand to find out the only interface is a pair of RCA jacks.

Toon Town Dave wrote:The biggest thing is to make it clear before soliciting/booking DJs what is provided and what is required of the DJ. If I know in advance that I'll need to bring a laptop then I can prepare if I want the gig bad enough. Even if that means ripping all my music and buying a laptop.

It would suck to show up at an event CD's in hand to find out the only interface is a pair of RCA jacks.

I don't know if that's really the "biggest thing" in the debate. I would hope this whole debate is actually over the circumstances under which it's a good idea to get rid of the CD player, not over etiquette once it's been decided to get rid of it.

When we're organising MLX we see about 2 DJs using CDs from a pool of 10 or 12 DJs. It's not a problem to hook up a CD player (or 2) for these guys - we're already bringing in all the sound gear and lighting and furniture and...
We want the DJs to do the best job they can, so we're happy to fascilitate that. It's not in our interests to make things difficult for the people who're going to be pleasing the punters. And we only use DJs we know are good at what they do, so we know it's a wise investment.

Plus, we ask them what set up they use when we sign them up, so it's not a surprise. I know I'd be happy to see a vinyl DJ on the program as well, and I'm sure we could easily find the right gear for them.

It's really not a big problem - or any problem at all. And it's worth it if the DJ rocks!

It's situation dependent.

Regular event: If you don't have the rig to support DJ's who need CD's then it's both a monetary and logistical issue. But if the DJ booth already has this or you have a rig at your disposal, then by all means, CD DJ's could be encouraged.

Smaller non-regular event: These often have small budgets, and renting a CD rig can definitely be an issue if there are plenty of Digital DJ's available.

Big non-regular event: Again, budget can be an issue, but likely not. This type of event will likely support CD DJs. Also consider the DJ: If I asked Reuben to DJ at an event, and he said he could only use CD's (his laptop died or something), I certainly wouldn't turn him down. But if you ask me to DJ, and I say I can only use CDs... you can give me the boot

And that's generalizing... in general I would say it's time to encourage non-Digital DJ's to make the move (again, this is in the swing dj scene)