FYI: what software we Münster DJs use

For your initial forays into listening to music, all you need is a streaming service. Practice by yourself first: put together your own tandas or pick something out from existing playlists – for listening and for dancing 🙂

Where the Music Comes From

Source	Good for	Limitations
Streaming (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music)	Discovering, practicing, music for yourself and friends	No recording year, private use only, unknown sound quality
Purchased files from specialists (TangoTunes, Tango Time Travel, there are others too)	DJing, best sound quality, precise details for every recording	Costs money, you build your own collection
Older CDs and downloads	A cheap foundation	Very varied quality, often inaccurate details

There are two things you should know about streaming. Firstly, the recording year is missing: what's shown is the album year, usually a re-release. Many pieces, however, were recorded multiple times; D’Arienzo’s “El Choclo”, for example, in 1937, 1948, 1954, and 1963. Secondly, you don't know which transfer is playing. The music comes from shellac records from the 1930s and 40s, and how good it sounds depends on the transfer. The transfers from TangoTunes (including the “Golden Ear” series by Christian Tobler) and Tango Time Travel (Jens-Ingo Brodesser) are currently considered the highest standard. But you won't find those on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.

What Our Friends in Münster Use to DJ

Anyone who DJs for others should work with their own files and software they can rely on. There isn't one standard program; every DJ here has their own setup.

Andreas and Maria DJ using iTunes on Windows. Jana works on Windows with foobar2000, an open-source player that can be customized and extended to suit one's needs. Manfred, as far as I know, uses Traktor. Sonja from Münsterland uses foobar2000, just like Jana. I can't quite remember Maitena's setup right now. One of the best setups would be Mixxx on Linux with a dedicated kernel for sound.

I use Swinsian on Mac (the "successor" to iTunes). For DJing, I use Embrace; I project the information about the current Orquesta and cantante onto the wall with Beam. More recently, I've been doing both with Richard Slade's TangoDisplay. I'm especially thrilled with the button that lets you fade out the cortina and automatically jump to the next song 🫶!

Sean Ericson deserves another mention. He has built extensions for VirtualDJ, a widely used DJ program for Windows and Mac: TigerTango, an interface with buttons for fading out the cortina, for example, and TigerTanda, which helps find suitable pieces for a tanda. His website The Tango Toolkit offers much more for Tango DJs. If you're thinking about starting to DJ, ask me what's currently hip and I'll give you a list. But the solutions above should serve as guidance.

A Word on DJing with Streaming

I keep hearing that DJs are supposedly invited to Milongas for payment, and then play via streaming (Spotify, Apple Music, ...). I strongly advise against this:

• It's not permitted.
• The origin and quality of the transfers are unknown. You don't know what you're playing for your dancers.
• There are surprises you can't control. A track suddenly becomes unavailable, a different recording appears, the connection drops out.
• The programs aren't designed for DJing. Pre-listening, clean cortina transitions, reliable playback – they're not built for that.

Organizers who invite such DJs are turning their backs on our beautiful Tango music and are not doing the community, the scene, or Tango any favors. They promote an uncritical, undifferentiated, and uneducated approach to the music. Naturally, this impacts the experience on the dance floor.

For practicing at home and for an evening with friends, streaming is often an option, simply because it's the primary source for most people's music.

Working Quickly on a Laptop

Compiling things on a phone is tedious, but it's very easy on a laptop. The most important shortcuts, using Spotify as an example:

What you want	Mac	Windows
Select multiple consecutive tracks	Click, then Shift + Click	Click, then Shift + Click
Add individual tracks to selection	Cmd + Click	Ctrl + Click
Copy selected tracks	Cmd + C	Ctrl + C
Cut (move) tracks	Cmd + X	Ctrl + X
Paste below the selected track	Cmd + V	Ctrl + V
Select all tracks in a list	Cmd + A	Ctrl + A
Play / Pause	Spacebar	Spacebar

Spotify pastes copied tracks exactly where you've selected. This way, you can copy tandas from other people's lists and insert them into the correct spot in your own. Also handy: drag tracks to a playlist in the left sidebar and sort playlists into folders, e.g., “Tandas Tango”, “Tandas Vals”, “Tandas Milonga”.

In the next post: The “big four” Tango Orquestas – with ready-made tandas for mixing.