Category Archives: lindy hop and other dances

beginning DJing: how i got into djing

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I’ve had a few people ask questions about getting into DJing. They tend to ask things like “what’re some tips for a beginner DJ?” It’s hard to answer these sorts of questions without giving too much information and without knowing about that person’s scene. So I’m going to try to write a few posts addressing key issues.
[EDIT: I’ve expanded/clarified these points here, in this post
beginning DJing: different DJing contexts’]
Of course, these are issues which I see (with my 20/20 hindsight) as key to my beginning DJing. So they’re probably not going to apply to anyone else’s experiences, or even be a terribly accurate reference point for my own DJing. But what the heck.

Firstly, here’s how I got into DJing:
It was in Melbourne in 2006. Which isn’t very long ago, really. At that time there were two large social dancing nights – CBD on Thursdays in the city and Funpit in a dance studio every second Friday night. There were also many after-class, shorter social dancing opportunities where you could get in an hour or so of dancing. The Brunswick and Camperdown classes were good spots for this. There was also a struggling Sunday afternoon/evening event at a venue called Mayfields. This died almost immediately after I did my first ever set there. I take full responsibility.
Nationally, there were two all-social dancing exchanges – Canberrang and the MLX. MLX had only just moved to social dancing only in 2005.

I had been to Herrang in 2004 and was particularly frustrated by the social dancing in Melbourne. The music really varied. There was one or two DJs who were really solid (Brian, Doris), and there were only a few who really played the sort of music I liked – classic big band swing from the swing era. Otherwise, Melbourne was awash in supergroove, neo, terrible late 90s ‘swing lite’ and contemporary artists like Michael Buble. It was killing me. I wanted to dance to the music I loved, and I wanted to dance to the music I saw in the clips from old films. DJing is not, however, a good way to do this. When you start DJing you’re almost guaranteeing you’ll never dance to your favourite songs. You’ll just be playing them for other people.

I’d been into swing for ages – long before I started dancing lindy hop. It was wanting to dance to swing that brought me to a class in Brisbane in 1998. So I’d been buying music for a while. By 2005 I had been buying CDs for dancing in earnest and had enough music to DJ with. A close friend of mine had started DJing in 2004/2005 and it was her enthusiasm and suggestions which really pushed me to start DJing. From here, it was the support of my close friends which really got me to DJing.

Before I actually played for a crowd I used to practice DJing at home, playing with my music software and doing ‘pretend’ sets. I did my first sets for small after class crowds, and they really weren’t what I’d think of as DJing. I was all caught up in the scariness/excitement and really didn’t rock. It was after about the third of these that I finally did a real set at CBD.
I was really scared.

I really could have done a ‘serious’ gig at an after-class social. But the DJing standard at CBD was so bad at that time, I don’t think I could really have done any worse.
I practiced combining songs and working on ‘flow’ between styles at home a LOT. Basically, I wanted to play stuff I loved, but I knew I was going to have to make some concessions to pre-existing tastes. In retrospect, I was going in there with an agenda: “play some good music, not that shit we hear every week.”

I think it helped that I’d been dancing so long before I started DJing. I had an idea about what might work for dancing, and I had a decent idea about the structure of swing music and how it worked with lindy hop (this is something that’s _really_ improved over my DJing lifetime). I also had an idea about what was fashionable now, and had been in the years before. So I could make some observations about ‘favourites’ and which songs had failed terribly in the past.

I did a few things for my first set:

  • I approached the organiser for a chance.
  • I did the first set of the night
  • I asked an experienced DJ to stand next to me during my set and help me set up and handle the technical stuff
  • I practiced with my laptop and DJing software til I knew it inside out. I didn’t want to have problems there in front of a crowd.
  • I DJed for an hour and a half, which was a bit too long.

This is the first set I played for a real crowd. It was at CBD on Thursday 1st February, 2006, starting at 8.30pm and finishing at 10.
[title bpm artist year album]

Knock Me A Kiss 115 Louis Jordan 1943 Swingers
Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off 120 Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, Louie Bellson 1957 Ella And Louis Again [MFSL]
Cow Cow Boogie 120 Jennie Löbel and Swing Kings 2001 He Ain’t Got Rhythm
Splanky 125 Count Basie and his Orchestra 1957 The Complete Atomic Basie
Shoo-Fly Pie and Apple Pan Dowdy 126 Stan Kenton and his Orchestra with June Christy 1945 The Best Of Big Band – Swinging The Blues
Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby? 140 Dinah Washington 1956 The Swingin’ Miss “D”
Moten Swing 138 Oscar Peterson 1962 Night Train
Out South 129 Junior Mance Trio 1962 Happy Time
Good Rockin’ Tonight 155 Jimmy Witherspoon 1963 Jazz Me Blues: the Best of Jimmy Witherspoon
Now Or Never 167 Katharine Whalen 1999 Jazz Squad
Big Fine Daddy 125 Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers 2000 Everybody’s Talkin’ ‘Bout Miss Thing
Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop 136 Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra 1945 Lionel Hampton Story 3: Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop
For Dancers Only 148 Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra 1937 Swingsation – Jimmie Lunceford
C-Jam Blues 143 Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis 1999 Live In Swing City: Swingin’ With Duke
Don’t Falter At The Altar 138 Cab Calloway and his Orchestra Are You Hep To The Jive?
Let’s Do It 148 Eddie Heywood and his Orchestra (Billie Holiday) 1941 Lady Day Swings
Apollo Jump 143 Lucky Millinder and his Orchestra 1943 Apollo Jump
Shoutin’ Blues 148 Count Basie and his Orchestra 1949 Kansas City Powerhouse
Comes Love 105 Billie Holiday and her Orchestra (Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Ben Webster, Jimmy Rowles, Barney Kessel, Joe Mondragon, Alvin Stoller) 1957 Body And Soul
My Handy Man Ain’t Handy No More 76 Alberta Hunter (acc by Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Fran Wess, Norris Turney, Billy Butler, Gerald Cook, Aaron Bell, Jackie Williams) 1978 Amtrak Blues
Salty Papa Blues 115 Lionel Hampton and his Septet with Dinah Washington 1943 Dinah Washington:the Queen Sings – Disc 1 – Evil Gal Blues
Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee 130 Lionel Hampton and his Orchestra 1949 Lionel Hampton Story 4: Midnight Sun
Drum Boogie 176 Gene Krupa Drums Drums Drums

Looking at it now, there’s a fair bit of stuff I never DJ any more and don’t even listen to. That Oscar Peterson version of Moten Swing for a start. But in 2006 Melbourne was heavily into supergroove. There was no real interest in old school music or dancing, beyond the kids learning at Got That Swing, and a few indy dancers. The tempos in this set are really low. Oooh, that first block is tediously slow. And low energy. The tempos in Melbourne were generally extremely low. So 160bpm was crazy fast.

I posted about the set on the Swing Talk board here, though there’s nothing here on dogpossum.org.

In general terms, I think I took a few chances which were new to or underplayed in Melbourne, but used a lot of familiar stuff which I knew would work. The transitions between styles aren’t as smooth as I’d like, and the energy levels are a bit low, but this was my first set, and this was the first set of the night at the venue. If I remember rightly, it was a bit quiet in that moment after the classes and before social dancing. And that set could be heavier on the beginner dancers.

In terms of song selection, I’m surprised I played two Billie Holiday songs. I love her so much, but I rarely play her now. Which is a massive shame – she played with such wonderful bands. Handy Man was probably a moment of ‘oh I loooove this song and I _have_ to play it.’ I dunno how it went down. This was before Melbourne got into blues, so it might have had mixed results… though the preponderance of supergroove meant that Melbourne dancers were generally ok with lower tempos.
Looking back over my set lists (I’ve kept them all as playlists in itunes), I played about 22 sets in the next six months. Which is scary. I was a totally new DJ, playing heaps of sets. And I notice most of the second sets at CBD, where I was finishing, ran way over time, from anywhere to 20 minutes to one and a half hours over my rostered 1.5 hours. I do remember the organiser for that venue wasn’t all that organised, that there was a shortage of DJs willing to do sets, and that I said yes to every set I was offered. I think saying yes (often at no noticed) was a good strategy in that it got me lots of sets and got me lots of experience and exposure and got me a rep as someone you could call on in a pinch. But I’m not sure how good it was for the dancers.

Looking over the sets themselves, I didn’t suck at all (though how can you tell without seeing the effect songs had on the floor?), but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have so few DJs working a social scene. CBD was very popular during this period, though it did decline in the following year.
There’s some interesting comment about DJs’ sets in the DJed sets thread with some interesting parallel discussions about CBD in this thread. The DJ bubbs thread is also kind of interesting.
I’ll try to do another thread on beginning DJing generally. But I don’t make any promises…

NB: looking back over those threads from SwingTalk, I’m struck by Brian’s awesome music. He was playing stuff I still haven’t discovered. It was a sad time when he gave up DJing. :(

Other posts on beginning DJing:

reports

Running report: I can run for 28 minutes without stopping. I’m at run 3 of week 8 of the c25k. I am badass. I am considering some sort of fun run situation.

DJing report: went to BBS and DJed. DJing for blues dancers is a bit boring. Blues dancing events are a bit boring. Having said that, I had a very good time. For my money (and it was), BBS offers the most interesting bands and venues at any Australian dance event. G$ has some great photos here. That’s one of his there with this post.
My DJing was ok, and I think I did a pretty good job on the… Sunday night I think it was. On the whole I didn’t hear a whole lot of really inspiring DJing over the weekend. Most of the sets seem to lack coherency or flow. And they tended to be really low energy. The low energy is a real suck at an entire weekend of blues – you really need to keep the energy up there so people dance. One exception was Chris Haarm, who did some really nice work warming the room on the Friday night. I think his set was my favourite.
The bands, though, ROCKED. And that’s how it should be.
I don’t think I’ll bother with another blues weekend. I ended up going for a run on the Sunday because I didn’t feel like I’d had enough exercise. And that’s just wrong for an exchange.
Learnz report: I am working my way through this pgrad diploma. It’s really hard not directing your own learnz. I don’t like waiting for someone else to decide when I’m ready for the next bit of learn. I also much prefer following my own interests rather than having to follow someone else’s curriculum. Remind me to talk a bit about this more later on.
Intertubes report: I have neglected this blog for twitter. And my learnz.
That’s it.

mid-week report

This is just going to be an account of things I’ve done lately, as I’m trying to get my brain in gear for doing readings and some writing.
Today I did the third run of week five of c25k. That was 5 minutes walking, 20 minutes running, 5 minutes walking. I ran for twenty whole minutes without having to stop. I haven’t been able to do that since I was in an athletics squad at thirteen. It’s pretty bloody amazing. And it wasn’t as hard as I thought. My knees did get a bit sore from the impact, and I really felt the limited range of movement in my right ankle, but otherwise it was ok. I’m pretty tired now, and I don’t have that massive, crazy adrenaline-charged energy I usually have on days I run, but I don’t feel terrible at all. In fact, I am tough.
Tomorrow I’m off to Melbourne for Blues Before Sunrise, a blues dancing exchange. I’m not doing workshops. I never do any more – I’d much rather spend the daylight hours being a tourist and socialising. I’m not interested in any of the teachers either, which is usually the deciding factor. I’d really like it if Damon Stone came back so I could do some historically informed blues dancing classes.
I’m doing some DJing there (as I mentioned earlier), and I’m interested in seeing how Melbourne’s social dancing is going these days. I’ll probably play the sort of set I do at Roxbury these days, as Melbourne used to have slightly higher tempos than the Sydney SP gigs, but I’ll also keep an eye on the lower tempo range as it’s an after-class gig.
I’m also looking forward to buying a good sports bra. I’ve lost a bit of weight since I started running and this has meant that most of my clothes no longer fit the same way. Most of my wardrobe is cope-with-able, but I’m finding that I really need to get a smaller bra. I’ve got three super awesome Berlei ones that are actually still in good shape, even though they’re about two or three years old. Apparently the elastic goes in bras after a few zillion washes, so you should replace them. But I like these and they were fricking expensive ($70 each). They’re not, though, really fitting properly, and I’m getting some bad bounce which actually gives me a bit of a stitch. Egads. So I’m going to go in and get fitted at Myer and then have a look at the outlet store in Brunswick to see if they have what I’m after. I really do have to buy at least one good one for running in.
The semester has started and I’ve been to two of my three classes. There’s an option of getting credit for one subject because of my previous study, but I’m not sure I’ll take it. I should, because it’ll save me heaps of money and make the workload easier, but I’m actually interested in the content. It’s really just basic semiotics and critical thinking, but it’s applied to information systems and data management, which is interesting. I really could just do the readings and guide myself through the content on my own (seeing as how I’ve spent a couple of higher degrees learning just how to do that), but I think the discussions in class could be interesting. At any rate, I have until week four to make up my mind and then withdraw without academic penalty. I should withdraw – it’ll save me 1.5 thousand dollars.
Classes have been interesting. The one I’m thinking of dropping was a little frustrating. It really was like being in a first year semiotics/intro to cultural studies subject, but in a very light weight way. It felt as though the discussion was going really. really. really. slowly. Partly because the group doesn’t have the sort of discussion skills you get from an arts degree, but also because the tutor/lecturer is kind of adversarial, and this shut down the contributions. It’s also because it seems as though information management people are only just discovering concepts like cultural diversity, active readership, meaning as a product of reader + text not inherent in text, etc etc.
The literature is equally slow – it’s very tentative about its claims about audiences and users and the status of texts, which is very ANNOYING. These things are so standardly basic in cultural studies, it feels as though we are reinventing the wheel, but without actually using any round shapes. It’s a bit interesting because it also makes clear the fact that info management really does rely on the idea that texts do have innate or essential value and meaning. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t collect and catalogue them and libraries wouldn’t exist. The very nature of cataloguing is that texts and items carry meaning within them.
I think this is why the field is having such difficulty accommodating the idea of users as a diverse bunch with different needs and interests. If your text is the important bit, you really have to assume that readers have a shared value system and shared approaches to text. I’d like to see how the literature ultimately deals with this stuff, but right now articles published in the 1990s are all ‘you know what – anything can be information! Even a building!’ and I’m all ‘oh fuck, didn’t we talk about this thirty years ago?’ So it’s very frustrating, but also reveals a whole lot about the way museums and libraries and things work.
It’s super frustrating because I’m used to teaching these things to undergrads, and I’m not particularly enjoying the way the tutor in our classes is handling discussion. This stuff really requires a lot of talk and testing from students; they really have to actually do the whole ‘meaning is made not innate to texts’ thing in class through their own discussions and exploration of readings. But this can’t happen if your (white, male, hetero, alpha-male…) tutor can’t let the discussion move away from him-as-focus. It’s really emphasising the way patriarchy relies on masculinist ways of communicating and engaging in public talk and the negotiation of ideas to maintain the status quo. And while this tutor is all about ‘multiple approaches to texts’ and so on, he can’t see that his own discursive style is enforcing boring old hierarchies and status and modes of engagement that marginalise women and not-patriarchy-types. This is way poop when your group is 90% middle aged women with badass careers behind them. I mean, you’ve gotta be doing something wrong if you manage to reduce a loud, enthusiastic, cooperative group of mature aged women students to silence. Self-reflexivity, please.
But I am really really really enjoying being back in a class again, as a student not a teacher. I did have to fight my instinct to manage the discussion in the first tutorial (especially when I could see the tutor squashing the discussion). It is hard to change the way I work in such a familiar setting. Tutorials are so clearly hierarchical. The tutor really is the alpha, or at least the guiding, structuring entity. And while I don’t mind being in the beta position (yahoo! no lesson planning!), I’m finding it hard not to act on my instincts to lubricate discussion. I think in part it’s because I’m also used to being in academic discussions where everyone knows how to talk – you know how to keep things rolling along.
I also think it’s a part of being a woman in talk – women tend to do more affirming, active listening and general social lubrication. I’ve noticed that women tend to respond to alphas in a particular way – affirming, listening, agreeing rather than volunteering ideas, disagreeing or asserting themselves. In a group setting, when faced with an alpha, I tend to square up, to assert myself. And I’m trying not to do that in this class because it then encourages a sort of competition between me and other alphas, but it also provokes a particular response from the women in the group – agreeing, nodding, etc. And while that’s all very nice, it also shuts you off from the sort of serious, hardcore communicating women do in all-female groups. Sure, there are particular hierarchies and power dynamics at work there, but they’re not such blunt objects. So I need to chill and step back because a) I’m not responsible for the smooth and productive running of the tute, and b) these are my peers, not my students and I’ll gain a lot from remembering that.
Basically, this has reminded me of how challenging being a university student is, and of how academia is – despite all this talk about discourse and collegiality – absolutely all about competitive, masculinised interaction. While it was professionally a good idea to learn how to do this type of behaviour when I was teaching, it’s actually a fairly shitty way to be in a cooperative, collaborative class setting. So I’m trying to – once again – stop talking and to listen more. To not be the first one to answer questions, and to not ‘take control’ of the discussion or social setting, even by doing things like massaging conversation or discussion, or heading off at the pass disruptive influences.
It’s also a real change to be a student within the university. I’m used to the status and privilege of teaching and researching. But as a student, no one will provide my reader, no one will tell me where to be at any one time, no one will organise rooms for me. Staff deal with me in a different way (I’m definitely lower status). It’s super-nice to have other students treat me as peers, though. It’s strange because though I’ve always tried not to be a ‘we are gods’ type academic, I’ve still benefited from the higher status of being staff. But I just haven’t noticed it. So that shift in status is kind of destabilising.
I noticed it most yesterday when I couldn’t find my lecture room. When you’re doing the teaching, everyone has to wait for you to find the room. But when you’re a student, things just continue whether you’re there or not. I found this a bit daunting because it was the first class of the semester for a new subject. So coming in late, I found it tricky to catch up.
This class was discussing stuff I really know nothing about – the internal architecture of information systems like google or databases or search engines. It’s taught by a computer science dood (who’s really a very good teacher and a lovely guy) and it’s run a bit like a computer science subject – practical lab work and lots of contact hours, but NO READINGS (that blows my brain). So I’m going to have to learn how to learn in this new type of setting.
I’m kind of lucky that I do do dance classes regularly – I have ongoing experience learning how to learn in a class, and being comfortable with not knowing things. I think that dancers in the lindy world are very much about learning and knowledge… well, most of them are. The ones who are interested in historical dance forms tend to be very interested in learning. Learning new steps, routines, etc. But there’s a great deal of difference between learning a routine from an archival clip or being in a dance class, and learning how to construct databases in a computer lab.
So being a student again is challenging. But it’s also very exciting. I really love being in a group again, rather than working independently as you do during a PhD. I love hearing other people talk about their ideas, and having my own brain fired up by their saying things I’d never have come up with. I love this part of teaching, but when you’re part of the group it’s as though you have permission to just let your brain go, and follow ideas much further. When I’m teaching, I have to stay on track and keep the discussion within some sort of structure, as you have some goals and definite things to achieve. But when you’re a stood, you can just let your brain run on and on and on. It’s fabulous, and I love it SO MUCH.
Meanwhile, less fabulously, the bathroom renovation continues. The tiling is going on as I type, insulated by my headphones. The floor will go in today (hopefully), and then it will be tiled tomorrow. The vanity should be in by the end of the week, and the plumber in and doing the bits and pieces that make water work and the toilet exist. Next week they put in the fittings and shower screen. So, really, it won’t possibly be done by next Wednesday, unless we’re really lucky. But it should be done by Friday.
I haven’t had a shower since Friday, and though I’m doing a good job with buckets, I’m looking forward to showering in Melbourne. Especially as I’ll be dancing so much. But the bathroom will look good, and I think I did a good job choosing the tiles. It’s all white, but the shade of white matches the old tub. The shiny (rather than matte) tiles mean it’s already far brighter in there, and the whiteness is really good for light. There’re no external windows, just a skylight, but the new downlights have also made a big difference. I’m not entirely happy about the vanity, as it will just eat up room, but we just couldn’t afford a custom-made one, which is what would be required. Well, we could have afforded it, but it’s not a good investment in a flat we won’t spend the rest of our lives in.
And that’s just about it, I think. I have some readings to do now. :D