Foobar as a DJ software
Although I have been using iTunes for DJing for the past two years, I have tried using WinAMP before that and currently revisiting using a free software called foobar2000. Now, despite the rather innocuous name, it is actually a very powerful piece of software which works not only in Microsoft Windows but also under Linux (using Wine). The advantages of using foobar2000 include wide range of file formats (for example I have most of my collection in flac, but occasionally I will receive files in aac and mp3), plethora of customisation options, to name a few.
Here are some resources that I have personally found to be extremely useful, for anyone also seeking an alternative player.
Cat magic
The background music of this clip is by Orquesta Típica Fernández Fierro, one of the many modern Tango orchestras in Buenos Aires to consist of only young musicians. Nice sounds, although it seems that their later pieces are tending towards heavy “tangoish” rock music.
Experience of a “superset”
Experienced my first “superset” that Royce had written about at Cachirulo (Maipu 444) last night. The DJ was Carlos Rey.
As far as I could tell, the sequence was
- Vida Mia (Fresedo)
- Percal (Calo)
- Poema (Canaro)
- (Pugliese)
- (Laurenz)
By the end of Poema, the dance floor was completely dark – even the lights at the bar were down to the minimum. Quite an experience, although I was not dancing at the time.
Music and flow
Not so long ago, someone on a Tango DJ mailing list commented that bad music and bad arrangement of music could lead to chaos on the floor.
My initial reaction to this was: surely any chaos on the dance floor was more to do with the collective technical abilities of the daners? However, things started to make more sense as I started to recall a few instances where the inability to connect with the music meant things just “weren’t right” for the whole night. By way of an illustration, I attended a milonga a couple of months ago where no tandas** were used. Granted that there was a “legitimate” explanation for this particular community to dispense with tandas, I discovered that it was very difficult to relax and dance into a comfortable rhythm. Another example, perhaps less extreme, has already been described in vortex of hell before.
