DJ Tip – Tracks Of The Right Length

Another DJ Tip

A big problem is a track lasting too long usually meaning more than three minutes.  It’s a double problem.

(A) Most  dancers would prefer to have four 3-minute dances with four partners than two 6-minute dances in the same time.

(B) Many leads/men feel that their repertoire of freestyle dance figures is exhausted after two or three minutes, and they would much rather move on to something else.

Since many tracks are longer than three minutes, you have two choices: mix the track out at about three minutes, or edit out a central part to retain the original ending.

If so, then you’ll know that an earlier mix-out at 3 minutes is okay.  But if there’s a definitive ending  then you’ll edit out some central strains to bring the track down to three minutes.

If the track is four minutes long, you’ll listen through the piece several times searching for the minute which you can remove from the center without any harm to the track, usually a verse and chorus among many repeats of that verse-chorus.

If the lyrics are telling a story, you might worry about removing an important middle part of the story.

Don’t worry — dancers are too busy dancing to be listening to the lyrics.

There is plenty of software  for editing middle sections out of music to make a 3-minute dance version.

Exceptions :
Some fast and exhausting dances might want to be shorter than three minutes, like a fast techno polka for instance.

Some dance traditions favor long songs, like salsa.

Good DJs ask what the dancers prefer, including track lengths sometimes.  Dancers’ wishes always come first.

Peace

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