DJ Battles

[Roy]

I was thinking of setting up a DJ battle in Chicago where the format would be 2 DJ's going back and forth between songs for an hour. Each dancer when they walked in the door would get 5 poker chips. When they heard a song they really liked they would go over to a box on the other side of the room and drop 1 poker chip in a box coresponding with the DJ who played the song. Someone would be back by the boxes insuring people knew who played what song. At the end of the battle the chips would be counted and the winner announced.

That sounds like a cool idea, but I think it would make it too easy for people to vote for their friends by simply dropping all their chips into one box.

There would be some control with a person monitoring it for no more then 1 chip can be dropped at a time.

[Roy]

I was thinking of setting up a DJ battle in Chicago where the format would be 2 DJ's going back and forth between songs for an hour. Each dancer when they walked in the door would get 5 poker chips. When they heard a song they really liked they would go over to a box on the other side of the room and drop 1 poker chip in a box coresponding with the DJ who played the song. Someone would be back by the boxes insuring people knew who played what song. At the end of the battle the chips would be counted and the winner announced.

My suggestion about this is that "flow" is more important than "songs". There's a limited amount of swing music out there, and eventually we'll all own the same cds, right? So if you judge people just on what cool songs they play, you're not really judging them on DJ skill as much as on $$ that they have to spend.

Maybe you could have mini-sets where each DJ spins 3 or 5 songs and then the crowd votes with their chips once all the DJs have played. Run a bunch of those mini-sets over the course of the night, and whichever dj gets the most chips wins.

That gives the DJs a fair chance to get people moving onto the floor.. I find the one-off battles to be just a total hodgepodge of styles and tempos that really shakes up the evening.

d.

I think you are right 3-5 song sets then vote would be better.

1 song battles are not hodgepodge of styles when you have good DJ's, a good DJ will recognize the energy and will play something that compliments the previous song. I saw Jesse and Greg do it well at Soflex/04. Myself and Drew got allot of compliments when we did it on 2 different sets at Cleveland exchange. Also myself and Kevin Caruso did a good job keeping the flow when we accidenlty got dobule booked at an event in Chicago. In fact I found the opposite to be true instead of being hodepogdes I felt we stayed into one type of syle or energy too long.

[dana]

1 song battles are not hodgepodge of styles when you have good DJ's, a good DJ will recognize the energy and will play something that compliments the previous song. I saw Jesse and Greg do it well at Soflex/04. Myself and Drew got allot of compliments when we did it on 2 different sets at Cleveland exchange. Also myself and Kevin Caruso did a good job keeping the flow when we accidenlty got dobule booked at an event in Chicago. In fact I found the opposite to be true instead of being hodepogdes I felt we stayed into one type of syle or energy too long.

I admit that I was thinking of the "hodgepodge" effect coming into play more when you have inexperienced DJs (which we tend to have around here). I've seen some one-off nights go bad when one DJ will play their #1 crowd-pleasing song, then the other DJ comes back with THEIR #1 song with no regard to style or flow. If both DJs are jamming off each other and working towards a common goal, then that would be sweet.

d.

[Ryan]

Although it's something of a tangent, I actually prefer DJ'd band battles over actual DJ battles. For example, what we're doing at an upcoming event is to have one DJ spin 1/2 hour of one artist and then another DJ spins 1/2 hour of another artist.

But, that's really more about hearing an hour of good music from two artists than really "battling" to determine a winner.

This idea could go VERY wrong if the wrong artists are picked. It's one thing to play a 3 song block, but most artists would get a bit annoying after that point unless their material is both expansive and varied.

That said you'd probably have no problem with an Ellington vs. Basie session with half hour blocks.

[yedancer]

There's a pretty big battle called the Blackball Challenge coming up in San Diego, featuring DJs from all over SoCal. If I remember correctly, the format is as follows:

09:00-09:30 - House DJ
09:30-10:00 - DJ1
10:00-10:30 - DJ2
10:30-10:45 - DJ1
10:45-11:00 - DJ2
11:00-11:30 - DJ1 & DJ2 (Song for Song)
11:30-12:00 - House DJ

The audience will decide the winner, who will then go on to a semi-final round. Then the semi-final winners will battle it out for the title. We'll see how it all works out.