Spin Class

Today I took my first "spin" class at the local gym.  My goal in taking the class was to find a new way to ease the tedium of winter cycling training.  That does not relate to this blog, but the music they played does.

Prior to today's experience I knew relatively little about the music behind spinning.  I had read once in the editor's column of Club Systems International that the music was diva trance and this afternoon when talking to a coworker he stated that he thought they turned down the lights low and blasted techno.

And the truth to be told the music did fulfill those expectations.  There were a couple of cool songs during the rest periods and the cool down, but during the actual workout it was mainstream dance / trance with every overplayed sample that you can think of.  Now I know there are some limitations to the music that they can play.  It has to be upbeat, driving, and during the peak moments of the workout pretty fast.  To add to those problems the instructor probably does not care about what is happening in the dance scene...

I can not help to think though how damaging this is to the EDM scene.  The mainstream world has very little exposure to dance music: commercials, trendy clothing stores, wedding DJs still playing Sandstorm.  This continual exposure (except for commercials) to the same cheesy pop cannot help spread the music or alleviate peoples' misconceptions.

-Charles Cushman