Problems with the U St Music Hall:
- the #1 problem is too much variation in the quality of the DJs. IMO they might be better off just playing sets from The Magician every night.
- (continued) - The DJs one night played very repetitive, non melodic house. There was no melody, all of the music was going on in the lower ranges. No mid or high-range aspects to the music. [Later:] After going another night I realized what was missing: a piano and human voice. I'm not saying all good house needs to have that, but those two instruments can really brighten up a song.
- very simple lighting system: they only have two pairs of 4 lights, one pair is red and the other pair is blue
- the lights turn on and off, but they don't do it in sync to the music
- the bar is right next to the dance floor and has lights, so it's really distracting for people trying to dance and might make people on the dance floor feel uncomfortable.
- no smoke machine
- the DJs do annoying things that make it harder to dance, like cutting the sound, or constantly talking on the mic in a way that interrupts the music
- there's nothing fun to do while waiting for the place to fill up. People just stand around. They should be teaching people how to dance in ways that use more of the floor. There should be a video screen demonstrating a dance move for people to practice.
- Once the place fills up a lot of people (>50%) still don't dance. I think it's because 1) the music isn't great, and 2) people don't know what to do with their bodies.
- They don't have great control over the sound. It gets too loud.
- People are out on the dancefloor with cups of alcohol when it's packed, which is just a recipe for a mess. And then when someone spills something they shine a big light in the middle of the dancefloor and everyone has to move so a janitor can clean up the mess. It's not ideal.
- People are taking pictures and video
There is clearly something wrong with the way they are doing things, because:
- the club has never been packed when I've been there on Friday and Saturday nights. Maybe it gets packed when they have a well-known performer.
- of the people who are there, a small percentage are actually dancing. One night there were probably 100-150 people there and only ~15 dancing.
- With the non-melodic DJ, I noticed that people immediately got excited when he started to play something even a little more melodic.
Ideas:
- I want people to have such powerful experiences that they may start crying, like really good classical music.
- It would be cool to have an Arduino hooked up to LEDs all over your clothing and have it light up in time to the music.
- Do something with that crowdsourced music video, where people's mouse cursors were used in the music video. Maybe use people's dancing to control the lights?
- I think having new people control the visualizations instead of dancing may be a great way to ease them into the experience.
- Maybe have sections of the floor where people's stomps control lights/visualizations? Kind of like DDR?
Have the music increase or decrease in intensity as more people enter or leave the room
- I hate having an empty room blasting super-intense music. It's just jarring.
Have the music increase or decrease in intensity to correspond to the intensity of the music
- one thing I've noticed while blasting music with 1776's speakers is that after a while you get desensitizes to the volume. It might be better to keep the volume a little lower during the majority of the music and then increase it for a bit when a really intense part of the song comes along.
Use silence to build anticipation
- Example: AH waiting 30 seconds before speaking
- Maybe require silence in the audience; have mics hooked up to the visual display, so it displays the sound people are making, and it says something like "SILENCE" or some other way to convey that people need to be quiet for a period of time before the music will start.
- This idea of having simple ways for the audience to interact with the music is related to the idea of dances that people would learn in the old days: it was a series of simple steps that people would learn to string together. It was the videogame of those days.
Start with a Magic Tape that has a strong opening song
- Contenders:
- MT 22 (1st song is great, 2nd song isn't as strong. Nevermind! It has a weak opening segment that flips into a sick hook.)
- I listed MT 44 as one of the best, from listening to it now it doesn't have a super-strong opening song. At ~8:00 it starts a song I really like, before that it's OK. This might make a good second MT to use in a night. It has a REALLY good song start at ~35:50.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker
Craigslist - DC Loudspeakers
http://washingtondc.en.craigslist.org/s ... oudspeaker
Bose Small-Format Professional-Grade Loudspeakers
http://worldwide.bose.com/pro/en_us/web ... /page.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_stereo
Amazon - Portable / Battery-Powered Speakers
http://www.amazon.com/Speaker-Systems-M ... =689637011
Bose Bluetooth Portable Speakers
http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/sho ... /index.jsp
Amazon - Ion Block Rocker
http://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Portabl ... roduct_top
- This looks like exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. It may be worth trying out.
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- It would be cool to have drums around the edges of the room where people can sit and play if they're too self-conscious or tired to dance. The drums could be noise-makers and/or hooked up to lights.
- I'd really like to capture that amazing feeling I got when I was in the orchestra in 7th grade and we'd play a really cool song. It was a really cool sensation to be contributing to such an impressive spectacle (the song).
While in Spain I saw an amazing EDM show out in the street that used a projector and a big screen that had interesting video clips to go with the music. It was awesome.
Idea: Use SI clips to the music. I was listening to YACT's Second Summer while looking at SI clips and it fit perfectly.
Brookstone HDMI Pocket Projector
http://www.amazon.com/Brookstone-H420-H ... B008D6JDS8
Quincy Jones - Soul Bossa Nova
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyvfXVDNrs
If you use Processing visualizations, the framerate is important. A low framerate looks bad.
Lightning Rod
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/5343
Skin Light
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/14112
firefly flight
http://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/1245
Processing's "Mixture Grid" example sketch; I could see someone controlling that to the music and getting into it as a way of easing them into dancing.
Processing's "Video" sketches are pretty interesting, because they may be the way for me to simulate video within Processing. There are also some interesting effects that might make it another way for people to "dance" by using video.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog_machine
How To Make 5 Easy Fog Effects
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0oX3r31EBE
- This is a very helpful video, this guy really knows his stuff
What's the ideal temperature? I think it being cool may actually be a bad thing; I think people may be more inclined to move around if it's warm. The trick is being able to maintain the ideal temperature as the place fills up.
- 2014.09.01 - I was just folding laundry in my warm laundry room and definitely felt more like moving around. So I think a temp around 80 might be ideal.
Maybe have tape on the ground that marks out boxes where people should stand?
Earplugs
- Have different strength earplugs available
- Give everyone different-strength earplugs and tell them which ones to use depending on where they end up standing (eg closer to the speakers, use stronger earplugs)
Footwear
- Women who show up in heels won't be able to dance. It'll be important to have something available for them to wear.
- Maybe offer shoe rentals like at a bowling alley?
- no conversations
- no photography
- wear sunglasses
- recommended: close your eyes and focus on the music
- bouncers: no using your flashlights unless it's an emergency
- create a scale model of your gym using wood and have LEDs and music so you can show it to the people at CrossFit
- Just throw a house party like Alison did. Don't have it run all night so the neighbors don't get too pissed (even though that's the eventual goal, like in BA / Ibiza).
- Maybe limit the dance parties to an hour so that people can still go do other things on U St
- If you show up in a costume, you get a discount / free entry. I think having people in silly outfits will help everyone relax.
- Have secret policies, like how In & Out has secret menu items.