DJ Challenges - A Week Of Swing by DJ Superheidi

Last week, I published DJ challenges, so DJs get to know their music better at the same time as to have some fun. The first reaction I got was from DJ Superheidi from Rotterdam, Netherlands. She sent me A Week Of Swing. Enjoy! :)


Monday At Minton's - Chu Berry Jazz Ensemble with Hot Lips Page
Tuesday At Ten Benny Goodman - Benny Goodman
Wednesday Night Hop - Andy Kirk
Thursday Evening Swing - The Cats & The Fiddle
Where Did Robinson Crusoe Go With Friday on Saturday Night? - Harry Roy & His Orchestra
Harlem On Saturday Night - Lil Hardin Armstrong
Sunday - Bud Freeman & His Summa Cum Laude Orchestra
Every Day Is A Holiday - Lary Clinton&Bea Wain

Want to listen how days sound? Check out the playlist on 8Track.

You completed one of the challenges? Send it to me and I'll publish it!

Play (With) Music

As DJ we are supposed to play music. Serve dancers with hot dance tunes. We are supposed to handle atmosphere and the dancefloor. Part of the trade and a good DJ though is also to research. I've always liked the playful approach to learning best so what better way to learn about music than to play with music.

I like to think of these challenges as games and I want to introduce some of these games to you, and maybe you'll have fun with them. In any case, they will contribute to you learning a lot about your music, which I think is one of they keys to good dj-ing.

Basicly, chosing the next song is always about connecting to the one before. Doing it by style or speed is fairly easy. But what about connecting songs by:

• themes

  Play songs that all have the same theme like love, sex, drug, food, songs about dancing or war etc.
  Example: Big Apple Contest and Black Bottom (songs about dancing)

• titles

  Play songs that have a theme in common in the title (ignore content of lyrics) 
  Example: Big Apple and I like Pie, I like Cake (food)

• musicians that played together at some point:

  The following song has a musician that played with the musician before
  Example: Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman
 
Those are all fairly easy challenges. Some have even already been released as compilations. The ones that are more challenging and require you to research. Connect songs by

• alphabet

  Do an alphabet with titles, artists, women names, etc.

• same musician

  The following song has a musician that played in the song before.
  Example: Recording of Luis Russell's Hot Six - 29th & Dearborn - and Showboat Shuffle by King Oliver's Jazz Band (Barney Bigard)

• record label

  Only play records that were recorded on a specific label, like Decca, Vocalion, Brunswick, etc.
  Example: What Goes Up Must Come Down by Count Basie and Roy Eldridge's Wabash Stomp

• rare instruments or themes:

  Play songs that all use a rare instrument or idea, e.g. harmonica

• location:

  Play only songs by bands that played in the Savoy Ballroom, Roseland Ballroom, etc.
  Example: Luis Russel and Jimmie Lunceford  (Savoy Ballroom)

• date of recording

  Only play songs that were recorded in one specific year, or chronologically
  Example: Ella Fitzgerald - Whacky Dust and Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake 7 - You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby (1938)

• by country (except USA - too easy)

  Only play bands from a specific country, e.g. only France, Germany, Netherlands
  Example: Kristian Hauger, Rowland Greenberg, etc. (Norway)

• by city

  Only play songs by bands that resided in one city.
  Example: The State Street Ramblers - Kentucky Blues and Louis Armstrong - Weather Bird(Were both recorded in Chicago)

If you do these challenges and come up with new ones, you will gain a lot of knowledge about your music and the musicians that made it.

Challenge: Make a small set of 5 to 10 songs that are connected in some way described in the second section or come up with an own challenge. Then write down the link between each song, and send it to me. I'll publish it on this blog. Also include your DJ name and where you are located. Looking very forward to your send-ins! :)

Aspects of DJ-ing

Sometimes when I tell people, that don't dance any kind of swing dance, that I DJ, they assume that I mix my own music, that I scratch etc. In the Swing scene the reaction tends to be more: "It's just music put into a playlist". To me DJ-ing for dancers is neither one nor the other. Being a DJ denotes two parts: serving music to dance to and also educating dancers about music.

Serving Hot Tunes

The maybe biggest challenge for beginner and intermediate DJs is that we don't play for ourselves but for a room full of dancers. This does not mean that I play music I dislike but almost analogue to teaching - I only teach stuff I like. When DJ-ing this means something slightly different. I don't play all the music I like. I play the music that is the intersecting set of music from the tastes of the room and mine. 

Serving the room also means taking care of the ambiance. Do you want to have an easy-going or a high energy atmosphere? Do you want the floor to be crowded or not? Connecting the music in a way to shift the ambiance to where you want it can be done through tempo-managing and styles and various other ways.

And All That Jazz

The second aspect is to educate the dancers. We DJs spend countles hours on researching music, musicians, history and connections that make us the "experts". DJs should know what bands played at the Savoy and what the difference between Traditional New Orleans Jazz and Swing is.
For some people it's the music that made them start to dance Lindy Hop or Balboa or whatever Swing dance. For others the music is secondary and the interest is for example in the infectious joy. Music made the dance what it is. As the experts it is our job to play this music so people can have a chance to experience what it must have been like to dance back in the days. It is our job to play this music so people can find the spirit and joy of all those swing time era dances.

We DJs can call ourselves lucky. Swing music is considered normal in most scenes. As with any good teacher, we have to continue learning ourselves to be able to continue to teach and educate. This means continuing to research, understanding better, finding new old tunes etc.

It is for those two reasons I call myself Doctor Jazz. It's a song by Joe "King" Oliver and if you don't understand the connection, listen to the lyrics. :)

A Jazz Song Alphabet by Dr. Jazz

This week it's going to be a very simple post. It's a Jazz-Song Alphabet with some hidden treasures to please your ears. It's a funny task because some letters are overcrowded with good tunes, and others are tricky to fill. Also, even if you stick to not taking the same band twice, you will miss bands. Only enough reason to come up with more Jazz-Song-Alphabets. This is an open call - which other DJs come up with a different Jazz-Song Alphabet?

After You've Gone - Coon-Sanders Orchestra
Blues Galore - Johnny Dodds Chicago Boys
Clementine From New Orleans - Bix Beiderbecke
Dee Blues - Benny Carter
Eeny Meeny Miney Mo - Putney Dandridge
Four Four Rhythm - Paul Treiman & His Aristocrats
Gettin Together - Mezzrow-Ladnier Quintet
Hep Tee Hootie - Jimmy Dorsey
I'm Painting The Town Red - Teddy Wilson
Jack, I'm Mellow - Trixie Smith
Kentucky - Buster Bailey
Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You - Artie Shaw
Missouri Gambler - Larry Clinton
Number 19 - Earl Hines
Organ Grinder's Swing - Bunny Berigan & His Boys
Puddin' Head Serenade - Andy Kirk & His Twelve Clouds Of Joy
Queer Notions - Fletcher Henderson & His Orchestra
Rocks In My Bed - Ivie Anderson
Squeeze Me - Tiny Parham and His Musicians
Tickle Toe - Count Basie
Undecided - John Kirby
Victory Stride - James P. Johnson
Wailing Blues - Wingy Manone & His Cellar Boys
You Ain't Living Right - Blanche Calloway & Her Band
Zulu Wail - Clarance Williams and Evelyn Preer

Check the Comment-Section for a download link.

Yours, Doctor Jazz

Want to see all alphabets? Go here!

EDIT 14.03.2013

The Challenge: 

• compile a jazz alphabet
• if you don't find a good song for a letter, send it anyway
• preferably don't repeat songs that have been in other compilations already
• preferably don't repeat the same artist
• send it to me, and I'll post your playlist on this blog :)

Hello Central Give Me Dr. Jazz

I'm just back from DJ-ing at The Snowball. Besides this being a super great event for new years, it is also an event where you can apply your DJ skills. Many people still think that DJ-ing is just appending a couple of good songs. But there are so many things to watch out for, like speed or style. Both can be used and sometimes have to be used to move things or respond things going on. This article will be talking about some moments during sets or complete sets, where the style was not a choice but an instrument to playing the dancefloor.

The first set I played Wednesday night from 1 to 2 am. The floor wasn't exactly crowded and the level of the dancers was a good intermediate-advanced in average. You could feel that the energy was low, which made sense - many people spent the day traveling to get to Stockholm. So an obvious choice was the tempo range, that would have to stay under 44 bars per minute. What was less obvious was the choice of music style-wise. Every song has it's own energy and low energy songs would've despite good tempo killed the dancefloor immediately and people would've gone sleeping. So the only real possibility was to play a set with music with a strong walking bass, mainly big band swing. Suffice to say - the dancefloor was equally full when I left my set.

Another fun set was on Friday from 4 to 5 am. The big difference to Wednesday was that the energy had found it's high during a fantabulous band battle between Gordon Webster's Band and Gentlemen & Gansters from Göteborg. This left people with lots of inspiration and and the wish to dance, but little energy. There was no need of external energy infusion, which would have probably been more exhausting than helping. Easy going music in a more New Orleans-style and also 20s-sound kept them swinging till the end.

The biggest challenge that I faced was after the second band battle at this years Snowball. Gordon played against the Stockholm Swing Allstars and the energy in the main ballroom was boiling when they finished. I was on directly after and playing no-matter-what-but-still-good song would've made a huge crowd leave the ballroom, despite most people actually wanting to dance since the end of the band battle was more watching and standing than actual dancing. So required was a song that wasn't too fast so many people could dance to it, it would have to be high energy to not have a too big of a contrast. I decided to play Jump Through The Window by Roy Eldridge. Additionally to fulfilling the just stated requirements, the most important part was that it is a widely known song, thanks to the ILHC 2009 Routine by Skye and Frida, which would make people have a really easy time to dance to it, and still being able to ride the flow of energy received from band battle. It worked perfectly :)

If you enjoyed my music at snowball and want me to be there again next year, mention me in the snowball feedback survey!

Swingly yours,

Dr. Jazz

Jumpin The Numbers

Swing DJ-ing is choosing music. Choosing music based on dancers, atmosphere, style, maybe place and several more aspects. Atmosphere is a two-way street. On the one hand, you DJ based on the atmosphere, and on the other hand you influence the atmosphere by the music you play. While there are multiple factors that influence the ambiance, the focus of this article is on the speed of the music played.

Speed Up!

What I often do to increase the speed of the music is something I learned from DJ Jenn: pick the next song 4 Bars Per Minute (BPM) faster and the one after 2 BPM slower. Then repeat. Example: 36, 40, 38, 42, 40 ...

This way you will continuously get faster (and increase the energy of the dance floor) but letting them get accustomed to the faster speed, by always having a little slow down.

I've added a few things to smooth out various little hiccups. Usually I encourage everyone to DJ the whole range from very slow to very fast. Sometimes this is not practicable, like when DJ-ing a floor of beginners who can't dance fast, or a late night floor where people want swing but are not ready anymore for fast tracks. The problem is that you'll get too fast out of a range that is comfortable to dance, if you stick to 4-2. If the music is too slow, the dancers will likely have no energy or go home. If the music is too fast it might be frustrating. So to stay in a good range, for example 34-42 BPM, you can change 4-2 to 3-2. This way, you'll go up slower and stay longer in the same range.

Another hiccup often occurs in the higher tempos, when the energy of the crowd is not high enough anymore to maintain fast tempos for a long time. It's the opposite problem from late nights. Opposite in the way that if you follow 4-2, you will stay too long in the fast range. The 50-60 BPM range will exhaust the floor easily. There are two way of solving this issue. One is to increase the intervals : go 6-3 or even 8-4. The other way is to go without going down anymore. Go up up up. 52-56-60.

And Slow Down

To go slower one can simply inverse 4-2 and go down by 4 BPM and then up by 2. I hardly ever do this. I prefer to drop the speed at once. The amount of the drop will vary depending on the energy available. I'll give you a couple examples:

60BPM to 30BPM

This might fit well onto a big dance floor with many people who you just exhausted on very fast music. They'll long for some slow tracks and a few beginners who got left out towards then end will happily join in again after getting inspired.

55 BPM to 40 BPM

This would be typical for a dance floor full of dancers with lots of energy. Dropping the tempo to low might kill the atmosphere here.

52 BPM to 29 BPM

This could be from a set where the scene is not accustomed to dance to beats over 42 BPM. So 52 was definitely on the very high end and dropping the speed to 29 will not kill their energy.

Remember to drop to odd and even numbered BPMs. Otherwise you will miss half of your music.

Occasionally I like to top things off before dropping the tempo. This is done by choosing a song that starts slow and turns fast. A classic is "After You've Gone". After this, people will be ready to dance to some slow songs that swing hard.

Bars vs. Beats

When it comes to organizing swing music, one fairly common criteria is the so called BPM. I also use it to a certain degree when actually DJ-ing. BPM is a measurement for the speed of a song and stands for either beats per minute or bars per minute. The difference is simply in the number range. Beats are four times the bars, because there are four beats to a bar in swing music.

While Beats are more exact (when using whole numbers) I don't see much use for that extra precision. I've seen both in use. I personally use bars, mainly because it's less work to get and because I don't need it any more exact.

Getting the BPM

To get BPM, you'll have to either tap them out, count them out, or find a (to me) still unknown program that can handle swing music and determines it for you.

To tap out the music, you'll have to get a software or use online software and depending on wether you want to determine beats, you have to tap once every beat, or every fourth beat to get bars.(Some programs might actually do the beats to bars conversion itself. There are of course more software options to explore if you are interested.

I usually count out music, by counting bars for 15 seconds and then multiply the number by four. While there are more ways, this is the one I prefer.

Fun Fact: Just from talking to fellow DJs, it seems like there are national tendencies. ;) If you are a DJ, state your country in the comments and if you are using beats or bars!

Finding Music Vol 2

This post follows up on where to find new music. In most cases, those two collections named will probably keep you busy for quite a while and might be more then sufficient.

If you want to dig deeper though, there are a couple of other ways of course, and these are ways I use:

Who Played With Whom 

Find out who played in the bands you like and look for those names. Often there were sub-groups or they formed groups later on in their career. Information about who played with whom can be found e.g. on the covers of the chronological series (background image) or wikipedia. Looking for members of Duke Ellington's band, I found Johnny Hodges, who has some amazing recordings himself.

Books

On that note I want to mention a book, "This thing called swing", where there are plenty of connections shown, and many interesting people named.

Antique Shops

Occasionally you have luck looking for old records in shops. Success strongly depends also on what country and city you live in. I've personally never found anything useful, but I know people who have built their collection by doing this.

Internet

• free online music like Spotify or Deezer (might be country dependent)
• Often music from that time is now freely and legally available on the net. The thing to watch out for is illegal downloading and poor quality (below 192 kbit/s) (e.g. youtube). 

  Search for

• public domain repositories (archive.org, http://publicdomain4u.com/)
• chronological covers on google, and find forums that share public domain music
• archives
• blogs

Collections

The two collections mentioned in the former post are of course in this category. But from time to time you'll find offers on shops like amazon - 200 songs for 5 bucks. You will probably toss 190 or even 195 of those songs, but if there is one good song in that collection and you did chose this path, it was probably worth the money :)

Finding Music Vol 1

Whether you are a teacher and you are looking for music for your class or you are a DJ and want to grow your collection, the search for swing music is a necessity. 

Every DJ has a bit of a different story on how they started. I can't recall mine, it just started :D 

The easiest way, and I've seen many people do this, is to ask a DJ for some music. However, I would actually recommend not simply copying someone else's harddrive, but rather getting out there yourself and starting from scratch. With copied music, whether you're using it for class or a party, you'll have to listen to it beforehand anyway to familiarize yourself with the songs and make sure they fit your needs and taste. So why not just use that time to find your own stuff? 

Two birds, one stone: You'll listen to different songs as you sort through albums, familiarizing yourself with the one you like as you go along, and you'll be building your own unique collection at the same time. 

To start building your own music collection, there are two truly great collections out there:

• The Ultimate Jazz Archive 
• Chronological Classics 

Getting one of those, or even both, will give you a great start. Since they are quite big, two tips: 

First, check for musicians you like. 

Second, check for a certain time period. 

Get those records first. The collections themselves will be too overwhelming. 

On a personal note, a "less" known musician I like very much and is verydanceable is Bunny Berigan. The time period I like most is 32-39. Have fun with it! :)