SwingDJs

Do you have certain DJ rules you hold your self accountable which defines your DJ personality or determines what song you may or may not play next.

Here are my own rules which I follow. I'm not saying this is the proper way to DJ, it's just my way. In fact I would expect that most people would do things differently. I am curious what other DJ's do.

>I Never play 2 non-vocal groove songs in a row
>I Never play 2 songs faster then 200 in a row
>I Never play 2 songs slower then 130 in a row
>In most cases I move the tempo up or down at least 20 BPM's but not more then 40.
>I Never play low energy,sleepy songs early or in the prime-time of the night
>Every hour I make sure I get in at least 3 big band songs and if the crowd is it to it play more.
>I Group low-fi songs together to reduce the audible difference on a crowd.
>I Never play a song over 6 minutes in length, unless it is a last song, or jam song.
>I Never play a song with prolonged, drum solos.
>I Always play songs that are either Jazz or Blues based, I would never play Mo-town, rock&Roll, etc
>I Always try to fit in a few songs a hour that would be familar to an inexperienced dancer.
>I Always try to fit in a few Jazz insturmentals with no vocals an hour, if there are any experienced Lindy Hoppers in the house.
>I Never play more then 3 or 4 songs of the exact same style in a row, unless it is a theme night.
>If a song bombs I always follow it up with a song I know will work great with that crowd.
>If there is a break anouncement of Jam where most people can not dance, I always follow it up with a high energy song that most people I know will dance too.
>if DJing late nights after hours of dancing, I mix in more low energy and lower tempos.
>I Never play the same artist twice in a row.
>I will only play the same song in the same night if the versions are so different they are hard to recognze as the same song.
>I Never play a song the previous DJ played
>I Listen to all other DJ's playing the same event that I am and make mental notes on songs that I might play to insure i don't repeat the song at the same event.

That's all I can think of, what rules do you hold for yourself?

Rule #1: Play music that people will have fun dancing to
Rule #2: No rules, except for rule #1

yedancer wrote:Rule #1: Play music that people will have fun dancing to
Rule #2: No rules, except for rule #1

Yeah, but how do you insure that happens? Most of my rules developed over time as I learned, and I didn't even know I had so many until I started typing that post. and most were developed after a certain part of the crowd complained about something.

Roy--does that mean you never do songs over 239 except for special occasions? Hmmm...

I don't have enough experience to generalize "nevers" yet, but I know one thing that I think defines my taste is that if I were DJing late-night, I'd try to save my high-energy music for it.
Not high speed, necessarily--but extremely high-energy. I find that if I'm already tired, as a dancer, not just the dancing itself can keep me awake--there's got to be a certain spark to the music...otherwise, I'll just lose my focus, my balance, etc, as I start to fall asleep in an upright position.

Not really I think I meant generally I don't go up or down more then 40 BPM's but there can be exceptions.

I DJ what people are enjoying and is within my tastes. I would say that I have a very varied collection within my, as some may call, limited tastes. So if something's working, I continue with it. For instance, I DJ at a dance downtown that's mainly ECS dancers, so what I do is I play mostly old vocal stuff and that keeps them on the floor, then I start weaning them into the old instrumental stuff, and as long as they're weaned in, they have no problem with the old instrumental stuff. I make sure I play good old vocals stuff though too.

When DJing for Lindy Hop (which is what I do most of the time), I just DJ mostly instrumentals because I prefer it over vocals.

Harrison

wow Roy - that's a lot of stuff to think about as you DJ!

I keep things fairly simple, I have some basic rules of thumbs:

1) Play lots of vocals, especially earlier in the evening and if there are more beginners there.
2) Try not to play more than 3 songs in a row of the same tempo.
3) Stay away from Rock or Rockabilly (motown is ok and quite fun at times).
4) Try to play at least one or two new songs that I've never DJ'ed before.
5) Play Louis Armstrong at least once during the set; preferably as much as I can get away with......
6) Play something unexpected if I'm at a venue I've DJ'ed a lot at.

I'm also having fun with themes; last week I Dj'ed on Canadian Thanksgiving and did a run of "food" songs. I tend to play more of a variety if I'm thinking about some type of theme.

Roy wrote:

yedancer wrote:Rule #1: Play music that people will have fun dancing to
Rule #2: No rules, except for rule #1

Yeah, but how do you insure that happens? Most of my rules developed over time as I learned, and I didn't even know I had so many until I started typing that post. and most were developed after a certain part of the crowd complained about something.

I guess I'm just not as structured as you. I take a look at the crowd and play what I think they'll like. There are some of your rules that I follow, but I don't really think of them as rules, just common sense. For instance:

Roy wrote: >I Always try to fit in a few songs a hour that would be familar to an inexperienced dancer.
>If a song bombs I always follow it up with a song I know will work great with that crowd.
>if DJing late nights after hours of dancing, I mix in more low energy and lower tempos.

But there are a lot of your rules that I'll break on a regular basis. For instance, I frequently will play two -130 songs in a row, or two 200+ songs in a row. I just play it by ear mostly.

Of course, I don't claim to be a great DJ or anything either.

Three general rules I use when selecting a song:

- Never play anything I wouldn't dance to.
- Always play music I like.
- Try to play music the (current) crowd will like and will want to dance to (at the time).

Anything else is just a flexible guidline.

and every time you do one of those things by accident...
DRINK!

I think the only rule I would have is to try to play music that the dancers want to dance to.

Roy,
I general the rules you state above a very good, but I would perfer to use them as guide lines. The above rules IMHO don't suite every situation, and as djstarr said, Thats a lot to think about when DJing. I would perfer to use them as a guide and then just go with the flow.

Bob

Guidlines is a better term, and like I said, this works for me in the situations I normally DJ, obviously they can be changed if the situation changes.

I also work on these themes,
>play a litte bit for everyone,
>attempt some blending, but avoid blending to a point where an inexperienced ear can not tell the difference between the songs,
> play more of what the crowd responds to well,
>not get stuck in a rut with "well the crowd responds to it well so I'll keep going with it" for too long,
>not playing songs I absolulty hate to dance too.

One trap that I used to fall into is to only play stuff that I really want to hear or really want to dance to forgetting that there are many other tastes out there. These self imposed guidlines force me mix things up and prevents me from falling back into this trap.

And I was wondering if other DJ's stick to many self imposed rules or guidelines, but it looks like I might be the only one.

Roy wrote:...> play more of what the crowd responds to well,
>not get stuck in a rut with "well the crowd responds to it well so I'll keep going with it" for too long...

I think this is a very important point. It's something I'm working on right now. I think that in such a case, guidelines are very helpful. That transition point can be very difficult to deal with.

yes, i feel like you cant overdo contrast. i played lionel hampton -> illinois jacquet -> wynonie harris the other day and it sounded like a 10 minute song, much to my chagrin.

Yakov wrote:yes, i feel like you cant overdo contrast. i played lionel hampton -> illinois jacquet -> wynonie harris the other day and it sounded like a 10 minute song, much to my chagrin.

what songs did you play?