The first song in a tanda is a promise to the dancers – if they like it they go to the dance floor, that’s their commitment. A good DJ keeps his promise and makes sure that the following songs in the tanda are connected to the first song either by rhythm, tempo, melody, nerve and ambience. Thats the commitment from the DJ and thats how trust is build up between dancers and DJ.
Tandas
Make your tandas with songs, that in one way or another fit together. This is often done with some basic rules. A tanda:
- consists of four songs from the same orchestra
- is build up with songs from the same time period
- feels more homogeny if the fours songs are from the same recording or at least with the same sound quality
- must consist of fours songs in same tempo
These are the basic rules, now the DJ has to give his own fingerprint and nerve to the tanda by selecting which songs to put together and in what order. This is the artistic part of the DJing where personal taste and preferences makes the difference.
Sometimes
new DJ’s, or dancers with the wish to become a DJ, ask me about the rules of
DJ’ing and how to make a good DJ set. Often they focus on orchestras and ask
something like: “is it good to play Di Sarli after waltz?” or something similar
but unfortunately it is not that simple.
There is no
set of rules that will ensure a good evening for the dancers – if that was
possible the DJ would not be necessary, it would be enough with a playlist made
by these rules. What makes a good DJ set really has got to do with:
- the skills and musicality of the DJ
- his or her CD collection, it’s difficult to make good DJ’ing from a poor CD collection even though I will say that a good DJ can make a lot out of little, just like a good cook can do surprisingly good food from the leftovers in the fridge
Anyways, if
you are a beginner, here are a few guidelines that will help you to get the
basic of tango DJ’ing under your skin.
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| A good team for DJ beginners - 007 Bond is responsible for cortinas... |
Trust
Each good
DJ has his or her philosophy about that, so do I and I don’t want to reveal it
here. Only I want to say that it is very important to understand that The first song in a tanda is a promise to the
dancers – if they like it they go to the dance floor, that’s their commitment. A
good DJ keeps his promise and makes sure that the following songs in the tanda
are connected to the first song either by rhythm, tempo, melody, nerve and
ambience. Thats the commitment from the DJ and thats how trust is build up between dancers and DJ.
