The energy of the room was lacking and it was hard to keep the floor busy. A couple of tracks got NO dancers
![Sad :(](./images/smilies/icon_sad.gif)
I understand that there are many outside influences that contribute to how inspired a room of dancers feel (temperature, condition of the floor, lighting, gigs on previous nights, etc) but I'm thinking the music selection was the main problem. I DJed the same event 2 months ago and it went off in a big way (spontaneous jam sessions, full floor at diverse tempos etc)
The night got stuck in the "135bpm Zone".
This is obviously a simplification, but I find generally any decent track between 130bpm and 140bpm will fill the floor, and so if things are looking grim, a popular track in this range will get things going again, which was working.
The problem was that anything outside of this was met with little interest.
The other factor was that I was alternating DJ duties every 10 tracks or so with another DJ. He has different taste and tends to favour 50s/60s stuff, and since we were having trouble getting things inspired he played lots of popular & novelty tunes. I tend to prefer 30s/40s stuff, but i was playing things like 50s basie and transitioning to earlier stuff.
My theory is that the gentle tempos with the swing rhythm and more modern sound are easier to dance to, and if the floor gets used to it, it just seems like hard work to dance to something at 170bpm, let alone a 30s stomp! Perhaps if we'd had 2 hours a piece it would have allowed us to create an individual flow and it would have been different.
Anyway, Help! I'm still kind of new at this. What are people's thoughts on controlling the "vibe"?