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One song to another
The basics of the sequeway - how to end one song and start another without it sounding like the arse end of, well, an arse.
Apart from speaking, the other main job a presenter has to do is get from the end of one song to the start of another. Not a particularly difficult task, but something that separates the men from the boys in broadcasting.
The process of getting from one record to another is called segueing (pronounced segging) , and the process is known as the segueway (segway). There are two extremes - the first being where one song has finished and there is a noticeable gap before the next song starts up. The second is when the first song still has yet to finish and the second song starts.
In both extremes there is an element of personal interpretation - the gap doesn't necessarily have to be silence, and waiting for a song to finish isn't the same as the end of the song. The job of the disc-jockey is to find the ultimate point between the two extremes where the segue works best. Again there is a certain amount of personal taste and station style that will go into that decision. Dance stations, or those looking for a younger clientele, will generally be less worried about waiting until songs get to the end before going into the next record. Personally I'm all in favour of starting the next track whilst the previous record still has another 20 seconds to go, but others like to wait until the third repeat of the chorus has ended before introducing the next song. Whatever style you adopt the most important element is it has to sound good.
There are generally two different ways that a song finishes - the end and the fade-out. The end is just that, the song reaches a point and stops. A fade-out is the cheat method, whether rather than having to create a purposeful end to the song, the chorus is just repeated and then faded out. In a similar manner, there are basically two intros to a song - the soft-in and the hard-in. The hard-in is the reverse of the end, where the beginning of the song starts at the very beginning. The soft-in is where the song gradually builds or fades up.
The easiest way to successfully segue is to select a song that has an end and a song that has a hard-in. You then literally stick the two next to each other and you should have a pretty decent segue. This is especially impressive with dance records that have a similar bpm, it can give the impression of beat mixing.
More difficult is where one or both the records involve fade's. If the song you are playing ends with a fade and the next song starts quite hard then it's worth doing a voiced link - talking out of the previous song, ending your voice link and starting the next record. If you're doing a song that ends into one that's quite slow to start then a sweeper or station ident is useful. Alternatively consider taking out the slow beginning and starting the track when the main song kicks in.
If both the tracks have fades, depending on the style of the track you can quite often start the second song as the first ends, making a really good segueway. Use of timings is really crucial to differentiate between a link that does it's job and a link that quite frankly rocks. Make the vocals on the second song start as the final chorus on the first has just ended and you're on to a real winner.
It's also important to bear in mind tempo, or speed of the songs involved. Generally it's best to move up and down the tempo range through your songs, so that if you start with a dance track you then play something mid-tempo before playing a ballad. Sometimes however you can jump between the extremes very effectively - the final crescendo of the ballad ends as the pumping drums of the latest dance number kick in; or reverse the guitar rift from an indie track fades as the slow piano intro starts to play.
Describing sequeing on paper is a little like trying to explain to someone how to tie a shoelace - it's a hundred times easier to demonstrate. So I shall not persist in attempting to explain the perfect segue, other than say as long as it sounds good it probably is. And my other rule to turn an average show into something rather special - always start the next song half a second before you intended to. It works.