Wynyard Hall Open Day 28th July 2013 See You There

Wynyard are hosting an open day on 28th July 2013 and following on from the supplier status I have been invited to attend.

Drop by and have a chat I will have my equipment set up.

http://www.wynyardhall.co.uk/whats_on/info/4#sthash.41xzAlvm

See you there.

Wynyard Hall Recommended Supplier

I now appear in the Wynyard Hall suppliers list as found on their website.

This seemed to coincide with taking some promotional shots of the Conservatory 'washed in colour'

The lights can be set to any static colour or for a more exciting look they can also be set to sound to light and will react to the beats of the music. 

There are numerous options to the lighting that you can have on the evening all totally colour 

co-ordinated or mix it up a bit.

Produce Your Own Playlist or Leave It To The DJ - You Decide

I am primarily a Wedding DJ in the North East however I also DJ Parties of various types including birthdays and corporate functions.

With all of these different type of clients the music range can be everything from a waltz to full on Dance music.

A client may tell me that they like 90’s music that range is massive as an example the database I use has 2491 songs listed as released in the UK for 1990 alone !

So lets narrow it down a bit.

The guest request system that I have in place has proved very popular with many clients.

When a client confirms a booking with me they are sent a username/password that gives them access to the client area of my website. One section in here is the Guest request system, which gives them  a link and a password that they can send to their guests to enable them to make some music requests

The guests can browse the music library, select requests, and include special notes about the requests that they make. The client is notified whenever a guest logs on and makes a request. After navigating to the link the guests will need to log on using the date of the event and the supplied password.

The client is notified each time they make a request but these notifications can be turned off if they wish.

The client can also remove any tracks selected by their guests that they’d would rather not hear!

Further to this on the night I always announce on the microphone that guests are welcome to ask me for any requests they would like to hear, unless the client requests that this not be announced!

Some clients prefer not to get involved in the music choices for the evening that's fine also, the choice is yours.

How Long before You Are Ready ?

At Weddings where there is limited space often it can be a requirement that the disco sets up after the Wedding Breakfast has finished, and the question that many DJs are asked is how long will it take to setup?

It generally takes me around 45 minutes to set up all of the sound & lighting equipment, and I will usually arrive at the venue well over an hour before the start time.

Very often at weddings the bride and groom will make full use of the available space in the room and thus there will be tables covering the entire room, and if the room doesn’t have a separate stage area this will often mean that there will not be enough room for the DJ to setup before the guests arrive at the venue. In these situations the guests will often go into a different room after the meal and speeches have finished and the venue staff will then commence “turning the room around” and getting it ready for the evenings events. It is at this point that I can then begin setting up. There a number of things to bear in mind in these situations though:

Some venues will turn the room around within 15 minutes while others can take an hour or more.

It is very rare that all the guests will leave straight away even if an announcement has been made. There are ALWAYS a few stragglers that stay seated at their tables chatting away, oblivious to the staff trying to clear tables, cleaning up around them. Strangely enough it so often seems to be that they’ll be sitting in the very area that the DJ/act is supposed to be setting up in. This then means I can not begin setting up until those guests leave the room. Even then I will still have to wait until the venue staff have cleared the tables, hoovered the area and cleaned up, and only then can I start bringing the equipment in and start setting up. In the past this has often been over 30 minutes after the first guests left the room. It takes me around 45 minutes to setup. In the situation just described you then get the scenario where one of the wedding party come back into the room around 50 minutes after they first left the room, expecting me to be setup and ready to play! but in actual fact I’ve only had 20 minutes at that stage to setup and so will be nowhere near ready, but they usually aren’t aware that some of the guests didn’t leave the room until a long time after the majority of guests did and just think that I’m taking my time.

If you are in a situation where you would like your guests to be out of the main room for as short a period as possible then the following will usually need to happen to facilitate this.

1. ALL the guests need to leave the room as quickly as possible. Guests tend to leave the room far quicker when the bride/groom or someone from the wedding party ask them to leave than if one of the venue staff does.

2. It is an enormous help if the venue staff can first clear the area where I will be setting up before they do the rest of the room. That way I can start bringing in my equipment while the rest of the room is being cleared/cleaned. Some venues though don’t give this much thought and will clear that area last, meaning I cannot get the equipment in until they have cleared that area. So again, things tend to move quicker if the bride or groom have asked the venue contact person beforehand if they could please clear the area where I will be setting up first.

When 1 & 2 are done quickly then I can also setup quickly, meaning that the guests can return to the room far quicker and the evening’s entertainment can begin.

I can have the sound setup and playing within 30 minutes and can setup the lighting as the guests are coming into the room if you would like to have your guests back into the room in as short a time as possible.

idisco A New Trend For Mobile Discos In The North East ? Dont Think So

I DJ’ed a Wedding last week at an undisclosed venue and ended up chatting to one of the Event staff at the end of the night who told me of a new trend .

Being a bit of a trendy guy I enquire what this new trend was.

                                                                         The ‘IDJ

He mentioned to me that he’d seen an increase in bookings where the couple hadn’t booked a DJ but instead had used an iPod to play the music. 
I asked him how these events had gone and his reply was he felt that virtually every couple probably regretted doing so by the end of the night, because at every single event the guests left far earlier than when there was a DJ or band, and he felt it was because there was a marked lack in atmosphere compared to when there was professional entertainment.

I guess with the state of the economy it’s a route that more couples will explore and unless they’ve seen first hand the results they may well just presume that they can create a playlist with songs they like and that everyone will dance, and it’s a shame that they may well discover the hard way that it actually takes a lot of skill to maintain a busy dancefloor at a wedding and keep all the different age groups and music tastes happy throughout the night.

But not having entertainment, or just as bad, not having good entertainment, can make what was a a good day fizzle out instead of ending with a bang, and thus instead of a fantastic wedding celebration, it became a very expensive dinner party that ends early.

Yet another ramble !

www.designerweddingdj.co.uk

So you want to get your request played! @ Wynyard Hall ( or anywhere ) Interested then read this guide

I am a DJ based in Durham covering the North East with a mobile disco and DJ services however the below guide is Universal ……. International even!  

Some people genuinely seem to believe that DJs won’t play their requests and thus you can read it in their body language when they approach to ask for a request. No doubt there are awful DJs around or DJs with oversize ego’s that don’t play requests, or worse, say yes to the request when it’s asked but then they don’t play anything that any guests have asked for all night.

For private functions such as weddings and corporate events however, most DJs, and certainly most professional DJs, will always try to play as many requests as possible, because their main aim is to try to make as many of the guests as happy as possible, because that will give the DJ a much more enjoyable night and also by doing that, that will keep the client happy and more importantly (from the DJs point of view!) it increases their prospects of picking up a booking from one of the guests at the event! They are in business like anybody else and always looking to take on more bookings, especially bookings where the prospective client has already seen/heard them.

But, and it’s a big ole butt, a good DJ won’t play a request that is likely to lead to a lot of people leaving the dance-floor, or, even if the dance-floor’s not that busy at the time- they probably won’t play a request that is unlikely to entice people onto the dance-floor. There are exceptions of course, but on the whole this is the attitude most professional DJs will adopt.

How to get your request played?

Simple common sense. You’ve got a lot more chance of getting your track played if you say to a DJ “can you play my track at some stage during the night” than if you give the classic line “I have to leave in 10 minutes, so please play it before I go”! because if you’re leaving in 10 minutes then the DJ has no incentive to play it! Especially if the request doesn’t fit in with the type of music that he’s playing when you ask, and besides, you’re just leaving yourself open to him thinking, well if the request was so important to you, why did you wait until 10 minutes before you leave to ask for it?

The DJs ultimate aim is to get as many people in the room dancing as possible and for as long as possible and so he has to try and decide which tracks are most likely to appeal to as many people in the room as possible as opposed to just keeping one person happy.

Simple psychology also kicks in; if you’re polite to the DJ when asking for a song you’ve got far more chance of getting your song played than if you talk to him like he’s a piece of dirt or being sarcastic. You’re then just giving the DJ a reason not to play your request.

Other good tips to NOT get your song played:

“What songs have you got?” “what do you want?” “I dunno, anything”!

“Have you got anything other than this?”

                           www.designerweddingdj.co.uk

Hey DJ Play My Song ! @ Wynyard Hall Durham Castle Or Any Venue

I’ve  been DJ’ing for many years and have DJ’ed in clubs,  parties and Weddings in many venues  and one thing that seems to be the same in many events or Weddings are guests asking for requests from the DJ.

OK what’s strange about that I hear you cry ?

I will continue……

The person making the request then expects the request to be played immediately. Most people are OK about it when their song isn’t played soon after asking but there are always the minority that seem to think they’re really special and that the very fact that they have asked for a song means that it should be played straight away!

I realise that it’s not something most people would give any thought to but I thought I’d attempt to explain some of the reasons why there’s a good chance your request won’t be played immediately, and that it’s not because the Wedding DJ is on an ego trip!

Lets remember these are my thoughts so I cant account for other DJ”s.

For this example I will use a Wedding as the point of reference as there are most ages from toddler to Great Grandparents so therefore everything from teen pop to rock n roll.

As the DJ I will attempt to try and keep everyone happy and so there will be music from many different era’s and genres played.

If for example I’m playing “Marvin Gaye I Heard It Through The Grapevine” and there are a lot of the crowd dancing to it and a guest then requests The Killers; if I went from Grapevine into a track from The Killers the probability is that many people will leave the dancefloor and a few of those would probably give me a strange/dirty look.

To try to keep as many of the guests as happy as possible I will tend to group together small groups of similar genres/era’s, because very often if someone gets up to a 60′s track for example they’ll likely want to dance for a few songs at least and there’s a good chance anyone that has come onto the dancefloor to a 60’s track will like other songs of that era.

So if you followed that 60’s track with a 90’s track the people that came onto the dancefloor for the 60’s will probably go and sit down again. Whereas if you played around 3 sixties tracks they’d stay dancing to all 3 of them. From the 3rd sixties track I could then gradually transform into something from the 70’s or something with a similar feel from a different era, by mixing the tracks into each other, thus maintaining exactly the same tempo and so many people will just continue dancing as long as they still like the next track. And by playing a few from this era and then a few from that era and then a few from a certain genre it’s easier to try to keep most of the crowd happy.

It can be a problem though to stay with one particular era/genre for too long, say for 30 minutes or so and that is almost certain to rile at least one section of the crowd as they are probably waiting for a transition to the 70’s.

Can you imagine what would happen if the DJ just played every single request they received in the order they received them and as soon as possible?

To give you an example at a recent event I made a record of the requests received, and this is how they came in (in the order they were received):

“something from Beyonce”

“some rock n roll”

“Black eyed peas”

“Take That”

“Some Beatles”

“AC DC – Rosie”

“Yolanda – We no speak Americano”

“Joe Tex – Ain’t gonna bump no more”

“Robin S-Show me love”

“Rihanna-Only girl in the world”

“Fatback-I found lovin”

“Lady Gaga-Bad romance”

“Paul Weller Town Called Malice”

“Kings of Leon-Sex on Fire”

“any Jackie Wilson”

“Anything from the top ten”

If a DJ played those tracks in that order, it’s unlikely that they would maintain a full dance floor throughout that set. One thing that would be likely is that a lot of the guests would get annoyed with the constant change of tempo, era, style and the atmosphere would probably be pretty bad.

Every DJ would probably play them in a different order but this would be my playlist and the reasons for those choices:-

Personally I try to play every request I receive unless it’s a song that is probably gonna clear the floor. I will try whenever possible to play it as soon as possible after being asked for it, but sometimes that might not be until over an hour after it was asked for, while at other times it might be within a few minutes, and there have been times when someone has asked me for a song that will fit perfectly with what I’m playing at that very moment and I’ve then mixed it into the current track within a minute or so.

Other things to bear in mind when making a request; there are certain songs which will work particularly well near the end of the night and others that will work better earlier in the night but not so well later on. Other times I’ve been asked for a song and at the time it was asked for I’ve thought that I’ll be able to fit that in later but then the way that the event progresses, it gradually dawns on me that that request just isn’t gonna work. So I then decide not to play it because it’s better to annoy one person by not playing a track than clear a dancefloor and annoy a load of people!

Exception To The Rule :-There are some requests that ordinarily wouldn’t work but will work when they are asked for by the host of a party such as the bride or groom at a wedding, because if the bride or groom dance to it then usually some of the guests will dance with them, same for the birthday boy/girl at a birthday party…unless of course they’ve asked for a real floorkiller such as Leonard Cohen or a chilled out instrumental!

Hopefully it’s given a tiny glimpse into some of the many things that a DJ needs to take into consideration when receiving a request, and most of the time if a DJ doesn’t play your request it’s not because they’re on an ego trip it’s because they feel it either won’t work at that particular time or just won’t work at all.

www.designerweddingdj.co.uk

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