- I love the sense of overwhelming awe I feel when I hear really deep, powerful bass come into a song, like the same sense of awe when I heard a lion roar in-person. I want to take that to its logical conclusion, and be able to shake the entire dancefloor like if there was an earthquake happening. At the moment I'm thinking it could be done with hydraulics.
- There should be some procedure for gradually introducing new songs / types of music into a new region. For example, if some really good country music song comes out, there should be some gradual wa
- There should be multiple rooms with different energy-levels, and people who are new should have some way of starting out at the low-energy rooms and then gradually working their way up to the high-energy rooms.
- This will also help people warm up.
- You should list rules for men and women to follow if they want to try to get intimate. This is the way things used to be done. The man makes a gesture, the woman has to respond in a certain way, and then it goes to the next level, there's a certain amount of time the guy has to wait before he can try again, and he can do XYZ in the interim to make it more likely he'll succeed next time, etc.
- I want it to be a game where everyone has accelerometers on disposable coveralls hooked up to lights they're wearing, and there's a big board where it shows the collective energy level of everyone in the room, and when the energy level reaches certain thresholds they unlock certain cool things.
- I want to limit it to 1 hour a night at first. Just 1 Magic Tape.
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:
- Invite local people who are into dancing to dance on platforms, like those guys you often see breakdancing in public.
- 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?