Riding the wave

Tips and techniques of the trade

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Lawrence
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Re: Riding the wave

#16 Post by Lawrence » Sun Jan 01, 2006 9:33 pm

Skippy wrote:What, in your opinion, is an acceptable bpm jump - either up or down, when building the wave?

do you go up in lots of 10bpm or some other approximate figure?

how low do you start and how high do you peak?

do you have a high frequency of shorter waves or a smaller frequency of longer waves?
There is no set answer to any of these questions. Sometimes riding a smooth wave of 10 BPM increments is the answer, whereas others you need to break the wave sharply to change things up or keep things at the pace they are going. The answers will depend on your judgment at the moment of what will work at the time given how many people are dancing, how many people appear to be grumbling, how many are about to leave unless you shake things up immediately, or how many people are just fine with you leaving it exactly the way it is.

That's not just true of BPMs, but of any element of the music you play, incluing the "energy" of a song or the style of a song: vintage/groove, Blues/Jazz, big-band/small-band, soft/hard, push the envelope/standard, etc. Sometimes a completely random change is necessary to search for and find what the people want that night.
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Austin Lindy Hop
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Bob the Builder
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#17 Post by Bob the Builder » Mon Jan 02, 2006 12:32 am

Yes I would 100% agree with Lawrence.
I think the BPM wave idea is "nice", but it is just one of so, so many different influences that effect your song selection.

Brian :D
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Racetrack
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#18 Post by Racetrack » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:48 am

A lot depends on the type of crowd you have.

Here in Madison we just had to change venues and our Wednesday "bar venue" night immediately follows a West Coast Swing dance, requiring a gradual transition to higher tempos.

After about a half your of low to mid-tempo numbers the fast stuff starts to come out. But there is another factor to consider ... average dance skill of the crowd. I DJ campus dances (where there are a lot of Charleston dancers on the floor) differently than I DJ for the crowd that shows up on Wednesday night who seem to prefer the low to moderate tempo stuff all night. That means that I have to "ration" the fast stuff for them and try to avoid doing two in a row.

Interestingly enough, the "higher experience level = more high energy tempos" rule of thumb breaks down if you have a crowd of VERY new dancers who mostly do ECS. They like the high tempo / neo-swing type stuff. But once they start to learn Lindy, they like the lower tempo stuff because until they get their technique down they tend to wear themselves out when trying to dance fast lindy/Charleston.

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