SwingDJs

julius wrote:I've often wondered what it'd be like to simply announce the name of the song before you play it. No "and here's" or "this is", just "One O'Clock Jump", blam, the music starts.

I have had more than one dancer tell me that they wish they knew more about the music, as in the artist and name of the song. I wonder if dancers would tolerate an announcement every 2 songs. As in, "That was One O'Clock Jump by Count Basie. Here is Takin' The A Train by Duke Ellington." No commentary or anything, just name and artist.

I personally would love to hear it tried.
I think I might like it.

yedancer wrote:I wonder if dancers would tolerate an announcement every 2 songs. As in, "That was One O'Clock Jump by Count Basie. Here is Takin' The A Train by Duke Ellington."

Don't you mean "Once O'Clock Jump?"

The other benefit is that over time I will learn to recognize the titles of songs I need to sit out.

heh heh heh.

More seriously there have been tons of times when I wanted to know what a track was but was too busy dancing to bug the DJ.

julius wrote:The other benefit is that over time I will learn to recognize the titles of songs I need to sit out.

heh heh heh.

More seriously there have been tons of times when I wanted to know what a track was but was too busy dancing to bug the DJ.

I'm sure this would be pretty darn expensive for the average venue, but it would be cool if there was a reader board that displayed the artist/title/album as you dj'ed (ideally from CDDB info, which could be overwritten by the DJ if it was wrong).

djstarr wrote: I'm sure this would be pretty darn expensive for the average venue, but it would be cool if there was a reader board that displayed the artist/title/album as you dj'ed (ideally from CDDB info, which could be overwritten by the DJ if it was wrong).

I've actually done this once, though with a computer (had to write the artist and song name) connected to a video projector. Result: 4m wide artist names
Though it was a pain to write in every single song, that's why we don't do it very often.

djstarr wrote:
I'm sure this would be pretty darn expensive for the average venue, but it would be cool if there was a reader board that displayed the artist/title/album as you dj'ed (ideally from CDDB info, which could be overwritten by the DJ if it was wrong).

Well, you know, you could always put up those magnetic letter like they had on "American Bandstand" back in the day.

Tina

gatorgal wrote:

djstarr wrote:
I'm sure this would be pretty darn expensive for the average venue, but it would be cool if there was a reader board that displayed the artist/title/album as you dj'ed (ideally from CDDB info, which could be overwritten by the DJ if it was wrong).

Well, you know, you could always put up those magnetic letter like they had on "American Bandstand" back in the day.

Tina

The Austin Swing Syndicate actually bought a horizontal scrolling message board last year. It was meant for upcoming annoucements and so forth. It is kind of a pain to update, a lot easier if you have a laptop that it can synch to.

Alas, we never had the dedicated laptop/software. We used it about six months and got lazy about it. It is sitting in storage right now.

We did talk about having DJs use it, but the consensus was that it was a lot of work. Maybe a few DJs would get into it. It might work well for laptop DJs that run set lists. For me, it would be a distraction. It is hard enough to physically write my set list down, let alone programs the message board every song.

Nate Dogg wrote: We did talk about having DJs use it, but the consensus was that it was a lot of work. Maybe a few DJs would get into it. It might work well for laptop DJs that run set lists. For me, it would be a distraction. It is hard enough to physically write my set list down, let alone programs the message board every song.

yeah, I barely have enough time to find my next track and cue it up, much less type into something every song --- you'd definitely have to figure out how to get the board to read directly from the player - ideally your CD player would be Internet enabled so that DJ's who use CDs instead of laptops would also benefit. Ok, I'll stop geeking out now.

djstarr wrote:
yeah, I barely have enough time to find my next track and cue it up, much less type into something every song --- you'd definitely have to figure out how to get the board to read directly from the player - ideally your CD player would be Internet enabled so that DJ's who use CDs instead of laptops would also benefit. Ok, I'll stop geeking out now.

Only if you use the originals, but who caries those around anyway...

main_stem wrote:

djstarr wrote:
yeah, I barely have enough time to find my next track and cue it up, much less type into something every song --- you'd definitely have to figure out how to get the board to read directly from the player - ideally your CD player would be Internet enabled so that DJ's who use CDs instead of laptops would also benefit. Ok, I'll stop geeking out now.

Only if you use the originals, but who caries those around anyway...

yeah, I was thinking about that too - lots of issues to resolve before you could automate the reader board. Perhaps a little mike that you could talk into as you play each song; voice technology is good enough you could probably do that pretty easily with a system attached to the reader board.

julius wrote:I've often wondered what it'd be like to simply announce the name of the song before you play it. No "and here's" or "this is", just "One O'Clock Jump", blam, the music starts.

i do that sometimes, before a particularly rawkin' song that people might know the title. "flyin' home," "c-jam blues" etc.