S03, E11: How we prepare music for your wedding

Eddy: Welcome to Project Engaged, a podcast for fun loving couples planning their non traditional wedding.

Aleks: We’re wedding DJs Aleks and Eddy Mac from Melbourne. We run a business called One More Song, and our tagline is No More Nutbush.

Eddy: In this podcast, we’ll share our wedding experiences and chat to some of our past couples.

Aleks: We’ll also interview bold wedding suppliers who share our philosophy of your wedding being a celebration of you as a couple and one epic party.

Eddy: Let’s get into today’s episode. Hello. This is Eddy Mac and Aleks Mac. Hello, Aleks.

Aleks: You’re not Aleks. I’m Aleks.

Eddy: That’s right. And we’re back for another episode, Project Engaged.

Aleks: We’ve been very good. We’ve been dropping them every week, which is awesome.

Eddy: Yeah, go us. Go us. We’re very excited about today’s episode. We always say the same thing, but it’s an exciting podcast. We really enjoy doing this, and the feedback that we’re getting from some of our colleagues and even some people we’ve never met before is just quite astounding, actually.

Aleks: Yeah, it is. And couples, too, find it helpful, which is so good. Awesome. Are we gonna do a weekend roundup?

Eddy: We are. Let’s. Let’s get straight into it. Wow.

Aleks: That was a bit different. Yeah, I know. I’m, like, straight into it today. Weekend roundup. So last weekend, we. We’ve been quite busy. So I had two weddings last weekend. One was at Rockley Farm for a very nice, very relaxed british couple. Was a really fun night. But I just wanted to talk about the MC, who was a bit of a rogue, literally Uncle Bob, the MC. And he, you know, would just sort of start speaking in the middle of a song. And it was quite tricky. I was in a different area. I was kind of set up under a veranda outside, and everyone was sitting for dinner in another area, so I didn’t know what was going on. And he didn’t really have a run sheet. Yeah. Anyway, the microphone was confiscated at one point by me, and I said, please come and see me when you’re ready to make an announcement. So just a reminder that when you ask someone to be your emcee, to set the expectation that there is an element of actually coordinating with the venue, coordinating with the vendors. We always say it, but I can’t stress it enough to make sure, you know, there’s a smooth running. One good example of what happened that night was the couple had gone off to do their sunset photos, and he announced that speeches were happening.

Aleks: So not ideal. And we had to move that and he had to get on the mic and say, actually no, the couple’s out, we’ll do it in ten minutes. So yeah, just a reminder, it’s more than just making announcements, you have to coordinate. So either get your celebrant to do it or your DJ to MC if you don’t have someone that you can trust.

Eddy: That sounds like a pretty extreme case though.

Aleks: It is an extreme case, yes. And look, he was, he was lovely and it was a very relaxed wedding. So it’s all good, but it’s just a little reminder. But that was fun. And look, I played free from desire, which is like the european summer anthem. So that went off. That was really fun. And the next day I had what I would call sort of a dream wedding gig for Susie and Richard at Butler Lang. And I say it was my dream wedding gig because first of all I had a massive banging hangs backdrop behind me. Hello. So good. I had a percussionist, Hugo joined me and the couple was very, very music focused. They found us on Mixcloud, they live on opposite sides of the world actually. All three of us live in different continents and it was just very cool the way it all came together. Lots of funk house, soul, disco, just a banging night and everyone was up for it too. Everyone was just dancing all night. So. So that was really fun. Yeah.

Eddy: This sounds like you had a really good one.

Aleks: It was great. How about you?

Eddy: I had one. It was at Butterfly Red Hill, which is a new venue for me. And it’s an absolutely beautiful place. It’s actually right next door to Linden Derry, which I didn’t.

Aleks: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eddy: So it’s the next term basically. And it was just gorgeous. So I was booked for pre ceremony right through, obviously to the end of the reception. We had a sax player, we had a photo booth, we had a separate outdoor setup for the everything post cocktail hour. So pretty much everything that we could offer lights as well. So yeah, everything, which is awesome. I think the only thing we didn’t offer was MC, but thankfully the MC was onto it more than the MC that you experienced.

Aleks: It looked like a lot of fun.

Eddy: Oh, it was great. Hannah and Cam, certified legend clients and yeah, they were just. Absolutely. Yeah, they just lapped it up. They were rock star wedding clients. I had a ball.

Aleks: Yeah, the photo booth photos looked awesome too because they provided. They made their own backdrop. Is that right?

Eddy: Yeah, they made their own backdrop, which is awesome. Which is what we, we love to see our photo booth. While we can get our backdrop. We sort of recommend it to be backdropless and the couples find a cool space or an interesting wall or something like that to plonk it behind.

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: And, yeah, it just worked really, really well.

Aleks: But they made a kind of streamer, sort of almost like an arbour type.

Eddy: They did, yeah, it was in front of a brick wall, too. So you got to see some of the bricks above it. So it was. Yeah, quite well, quite well done.

Aleks: And it’s quite nice because it looks different to other photo booths too, because you always have a different backdrop. So I kind of like that.

Eddy: Definitely.

Aleks: But hot tip. And look, we’ve mentioned this before, but there are some venues where there’s like brickwork with hanging greenery that works well. Wallpaper, anything like that. You can even have it outside if it’s obviously undercover as well. So, yeah, you can get kind of creative with it, which is cool. All right, let’s get into today’s episode. So it’s just us two. And we are going to be talking about something that came up when Eddy did a reel yesterday. Do you want to kick it off?

Eddy: Yeah. So I did a reel about what we do with the music brief that’s supplied to us by our clients, how we organise our music for a wedding.

Aleks: Yeah. And I think you were inspired by this because there is. There’s this idea or this understanding or assumption, I should say, by couples that we stream music. So when they provide us with like inspirational Spotify playlists, we just basically play songs from that playlist, which is incorrect.

Eddy: Okay. So there is a caveat behind that. And not to get too technical, because I have a way of doing that. You can’t use Spotify, you can use other streaming programmes or platforms, I should say, like one called Tidal. There’s another one called beat source.

Aleks: Yeah.

Eddy: So, and you are able to convert Spotify or Apple music playlists to tidal playlists and stream them. It’s a technology for deejaying that’s only came sort of come in the last few years and it will become mainstream, I believe, in five to ten years.

Aleks: Yeah. Not quite there yet.

Eddy: Not quite there yet. So most of the time, the DJ’s that you’re seeing playing at weddings are using a music library where they’ve actually physically downloaded the songs as MP3 s or similar format and are sitting on their hard drive on their computer.

Aleks: Yeah. So we physically have the file for every single song that we play. And if you. Yeah, we’ll go through. We’ll go through what we do with.

Eddy: It’s like liking it to back in the day on itunes, you’d buy your music from the itunes store. Sounds old school, but it sounds so old school now. But, you know, that’s what we did, you know, rocking. Rocking in. IPod. I remember the first ipod that I got. It was sort of someone at my high school, high school had one and I just fell in love with it. So I just begged my parents to get me one. I think I got one from my 18th birthday. It was quite a hefty present.

Aleks: Quite like, yeah, yeah.

Eddy: And it wasn’t cheap. Like, it was like, oh, my God, it’s amazing.

Aleks: Um, like now you spend $2800 on a phone without thinking about it.

Eddy: Yeah, exactly. I loved it so much that I’d bring with me a little microfiber cloth and I wouldn’t put it on a table unless I had the microfiber cloth.

Aleks: That is so you.

Eddy: Well, it’s funny because it got noticed. I remember, this is a bit of a tangent, but I remember my it teacher seeing it and going, oh, that’s. It’s like gold, isn’t it? Because it was just one of those things, that ipod.

Aleks: Oh, those were the days before the iPhone when we were impressed by technology instead of just taking.

Eddy: Still impressed.

Aleks: Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah. So basically, we’re gonna go through what we do when you provide your music request. So just to preempt this, we have mentioned it before, but once you book us in, every single client gets an online questionnaire that you fill out in the lead up.

Eddy: It’s called the party brief.

Aleks: Party brief. Woo. And obviously your music requests form part of that. But the party brief also contains other things like, you know, your venue, contact details, your run sheet, key moments, floor plan, other things. But, you know, a huge part of it is obviously going through the type of music that you want. So your music brief.

Eddy: So it effectively guides you through with a series of question answers, type of thing to get you to start thinking about how you want to soundtrack your day. And you mentioned key moments. So there are key moments, songs. If you are a couple that chooses to do a first dance, honestly, that’s like 50 50 these days for us. First song, last song or song to start the dance floor, I should say last song of the night, things like that to have a think about. They’re the ones that are a little bit trickier for us to advise on because they could be quite personal to the couple. Obviously, we’ll point you in the right direction and then it starts to open up with, you know, sort of more general requests, things that you absolutely want on the dance floor, maybe a few things for background vibes starts to have a think about things maybe your parents would like, or maybe your friends would like if you went on holidays with them and what the anthems were at the time, if there are any in jokes, songs, etcetera. And of course, the inverse of that, what you want to stay away from.

Aleks: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So they’re the questions we ask. We also, if you go back to an episode a couple of episodes ago, we run through our vibe playlist. I would recommend, if you are planning your wedding, to check that out. That’s something new we’ve added to collect even more information about your, you know, what music you like, your music preferences. So that’s included as well. So we ask all of our class to tick, you know, the vibe playlist they like the most, and it just gives us a bit more intel. But that’s not the point of today’s podcast. The point is to actually run through the process that we go through once we have that music brief. It’s the week of your wedding and we’re sitting down and preparing our music because I have mentioned to a few suppliers, oh, I’ve got to do my music prep, you know, for this weekend. And they’re like, what do you mean? Are you producing music like. No, we actually spend a few hours preparing for every single wedding.

Eddy: Yeah. So we’ll make the assumption that the party brief, the questionnaire, has been completely filled out by our couple at this stage. And we are jumping on our laptops and starting to sort through the music and make sure it’s in the right. Create some playlists, which we’ll get to for your wedding.

Aleks: And I must say, look, this is our process. This is what we go through. Just so everyone understands. But every DJ is obviously different. Some might not do as much preparation as we do. It just depends. So what’s the first thing that you do when you sit down and you’re preparing for a client’s wedding?

Eddy: I order a coffee.

Aleks: Oh, yeah, many.

Eddy: That’s the honest answer.

Aleks: And we normally do it, like one to two days before. I don’t like to do it too early because I like to have it fresh.

Eddy: Look, it depends on how much. So it may come as no surprise that some couples are really prescriptive with what they’d like and others far more relaxed. To be completely honest, it doesn’t really matter to us. Sometimes when couples are really relaxed, it just means that we need to do a little more, bit more prodding in the lead up just to make sure that we’ve got what we need to flesh those things out. If they are very prescriptive, it typically means. I mean, I had one as basis of the real that I did. I had one where I got, I think, seven or eight highly curated Spotify playlists, ranging from some really cool, like new wave eighties, some sort of chilled stuff for pre ceremony, right through to some of the dance, law bangers, UK stuff. Different genre, different sort of genres. So, you know, house, deep house, all that kind of stuff. So they, they broke it up really, really well. And that meant that I had a lot, obviously, to work with, but I had a lot more tracks that I potentially didn’t have to download as well.

Aleks: Yeah. But there not much prodding needed there on the other end of the scale. Sometimes we have clients, and I’ve had this before, who literally just list five to ten artists that they love. Like, not even songs, just artists, which is actually really helpful because as we’ve mentioned before, you can just pick the tunes that will work for different parts of the day. Your favourite tunes, the ones that work the best for, for each artist. That’s great. So, yeah, our point is to say we get really varied music briefs and where we need more information, we will prod you and ask you to provide a little bit more and give you some inspiration through blogs and different playlists and things for you to pick from. But anyway, yeah, we’ve got the brief, you’ve got your coffee. What’s next?

Eddy: What’s next? So, okay, so I still organise. We both do this. We still organise our music with iTunes, or as it’s known now, music app, not to be confused with Apple Music. It’s very strange.

Aleks: Let’s just call iTunes.

Eddy: We’ll call it. Yeah, for the purpose of this podcast, let’s just call it iTunes. And so, yep, so we open up that programme, we open up our party brief questionnaire and then I also open up a bunch of the Spotify playlists, if I’ve been, or apple music playlists, just to confuse everyone further that I’ve received from a, from a couple. And then I start to create crates or playlists within apple music or itunes and then I start filling them.

Aleks: Yeah. So, yeah, you start a new folder for the, for the couple, the couple’s name, then you have different playlists. Now, playlists are not lists of songs that we’re going to play in order. Playlists are just, as you call them, crates, they’re just organ. It’s just a bunch of tunes that comprises the client’s request, first and foremost. And then stuff that we think will work.

Eddy: Yeah. So just to give you an example, and I’m literally pulling one up. And you know what? Just to make things nice and easy, I’m going to use the exact example as I did on the actual brief. So I’m just trying to pull it up now. This is terrible podcasting, by the way, while I’m doing this.

Aleks: It is terrible.

Eddy: Do you know any jokes?

Aleks: No. We need some more. We need some extra sound effects.

Eddy: We do need. We need like a thinking sound effect where it’s like, I’m looking this up. I’m almost there, guys. How exciting.

Aleks: Now, the reason that Eddy is taking so long is because we keep all of our preparation folders. So all the music that we prepare for all of our gigs, we keep.

Eddy: That’s right. I’m literally wading through them now, and lo and behold, I have found it. Oh, yes. Here we go.

Aleks: Okay, our poor listeners.

Eddy: I’m very sorry. Maybe I’ll cut all of this out in post production. Okay, so I’m going to take the same example as the real. And it was a wedding for Nick and Lara at Panama dining room. This was a couple of weeks ago now, in February, 2023. Okay, cool. So they gave me 123-4567 Spotify playlist. So the first thing I actually did with these guys is I opened up or started crates, and I named them the same as their Spotify playlist. And I was literally dragging the same tunes from their Spotify playlist into these particular crates.

Aleks: Can you give us names, examples of names of the crates?

Eddy: So they had an eighties crate.

Aleks: Okay.

Eddy: So they had like, really cool stuff, like Chaka Khan. They had like, black box, right on time. They had some Yazoo, some blondie. So, yeah, like, Durand ran like, really cool stuff. So I created that one. They had one called Chilled, which is like, you know, the xx and some Moby, massive attack Rufus, of course, in there they had like, dance classics. They had house, deep house. They had indie rock and pop and UK bangers.

Aleks: This is rare.

Eddy: The other end of the spectrum, right, where they’re really prescriptive, which I absolutely love. Like, this is great. They’re really, really into their music. Super discerning. So I created crates in my Apple music app that mirrored the playlist that they gave me on Spotify. And then I found all the songs, download the ones I didn’t have, and basically mirror image them, duplicated them, bearing in mind that I downloaded these tracks and I used a combination with the new downloads versus the tracks I already had in my library. So these, these are like basically mp3 files that I have.

Aleks: Yeah. So you, you also played music for their ceremony. So did you take the stuff from chilled, for example, and put it in?

Eddy: Well, you’re. Yeah, you’re taking the words out of my mouth. So once I did that, I started to populate their day.

Aleks: Yeah. So the order of events, rather than.

Eddy: The order of events, I even order them in numbers. So I have like, almost like a chronological flow of their day. So again, bearing in mind I did, I was there for pre ceremony all the way through to the end of the reception. So I literally created crates called one, pre ceremony, two ceremony key moment songs. Three, post ceremony vibe. Four reception key moment songs.

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: Five, dinner because they sat down for dinner. Six, this is where it changes up a little bit. Their favourite stuff. And then like, seven, the things that I know or knew that would work on the dance floor, like dance hall. Sure. Things I know they’re gonna go off and, like another playlist was like, ideas. So ideas for, for dance floor, ideas for background. So I just dumped a whole bunch of stuff that I think is their vibe. Yeah. So that was kind of because these guys are so prescriptive, this, this was my opportunity with the ideas to get a bit more creative even than they were.

Aleks: Yeah, yeah. And I do things in the same way. So, yeah, not only do we take the requests, we then actually put them in the order of the day so that we have staff, we can jump into a crate and we’ve got pretty much, almost double the amount we need.

Eddy: So if pre ceremony did the low, like. So the hard and fast rule is to, you know, if you, if you’re playing, let’s just say if you’re playing for 1 hour, you should have 2 hours worth of music ready.

Aleks: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So often, if you look at the folder as a whole, with all the different crates within it, covering the different parts of the night and the different requests, etcetera, you will have for a five hour wedding, at least 10 hours of music prepped. Now, that’s stuff that you would like to play, think you might play. But of course, on the night we dip into so many other bits.

Eddy: We have. Yeah, I mean, we have a library with all sorts of different crates in different folders for different situations. You know, we have our typical genres and decades crates, but we also have a bunch of other stuff. Not to give away too much of our secret sauce, but we have a bunch of other stuff that helps us with the flow of the night and dipping into different types of music for different things that will happen.

Aleks: That will happen. Like, for example, one of my favourite ones is crunk. So when things have, like, gotten to a new level, we’ve got a specific crate with cranks.

Eddy: Yeah, that’s a great example. Or like, resets as well.

Aleks: Reset the dance.

Eddy: We need to reset the dance floor.

Aleks: Like, basically mix things up because, you know, you might have been staying in a particular genre, you might have like a particular group of people that maybe.

Eddy: Like the old boom, bowie or beatles.

Aleks: Yes, there’s a lot going on, but I just want to go back to the Spotify playlists because, you know, I’ve had a lot of couples who have given me, like, 13 hours Spotify playlists, and obviously I’m not going to play all of those songs. But not only that, but I want to go through every single song. Right. So often I will say to a couple, I’m going to go through this playlist, I’m going to pick out the stuff that I know is going to work and that, I think, you know, is great for a wedding because often you get people just throw in songs that, you know, they might like to hear at the gym or in the shower or when they’re chilling out at home or whatever. Might not necessarily work for a wedding, though. So it’s not that we take all of those requests and put them in, unless they’re like, whoa. Like, bang, bang.

Eddy: Yeah. And you raise a really, really great point in that we will go through all of your music. And sometimes our prep takes, I don’t know, like four to 6 hours, um, maybe more. Um, so it’s funny if you compare us to a photographer, you know, um, obviously the photographers having meetings with a couple, uh, having couple filling out questionnaires and all sorts of stuff, maybe, you know, maybe doing a pre shoot, but not, I wouldn’t imagine, very often. Look, correct me if I’m wrong, but they do the shoot on the day and they’ve got quite a lot of work after the wedding, you know, all the post production stuff. Whereas for us, wedding DJs, a lot of the work obviously happens on the day, but a lot of it happens before is up front is up front, and afterwards, not as much, if anything. Look, sometimes we will record our weddings and upload that recording. Funnily enough, I did this for this particular wedding. Yeah, I broke it up into different sections of the day, uploaded up to our mix cloud account, which is where we store our mixes. And I also converted the song list, the track list, to a Spotify playlist.

Aleks: And songs that you actually played on the night.

Eddy: Yeah, in the order that I played them. So. And that becomes really cool for us to be able to remarket ourselves with. And this is the kind of vibe that we like, all that kind of stuff, so. But there’s not a lot that we do after.

Aleks: It’s all in the lead up, which I think surprises people. I don’t think they realise that it takes us hours to prepare, but we want to make sure that we, you know, because in the moment, we might have 30 seconds left to find a song, you know, if we’re like, oh, we’ve got something queued up as the next song. But actually, you know, the oldies have left the dance floor and there’s a bunch of, like, 30 year olds that have come on. You’re like, oh, I think I want to play something else. And being organised helps you make those last minute decisions.

Eddy: Yeah. You sort of hedge your bet. Like, hedge your bets.

Aleks: Sure.

Eddy: With something. You know, you might put something. You might load something into deck b if you’re playing with deck a, two decks usually, and someone will come up and say, oh, what are you gonna play next? Most of the time, I don’t really know until, you know, it’s funny, when I get asked that question, it’s like, oh, what’s coming up next? I don’t know. You get this strange look and it’s the honest truth. I really don’t know. We’ll see. Like, we’ll let this play out for another minute and let’s see what happens.

Aleks: Yeah.

Eddy: Maybe we’re, you know, we’re in four to the floor dance classics and maybe it’s time for some R n B.

Aleks: Four to the floor is like 123-4123 you can’t be playing that all night.

Eddy: Pretty sure people would know.

Aleks: No, before I was a DJ, I would not know what.

Eddy: Really?

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: Four to the floor.

Aleks: You’ve been doing this too long.

Eddy: I was sure, yeah.

Aleks: Well, man, I love that song. That’s actually a great song. What I wanted to say as well with the Spotify playlist was, is that often I’ll get couples. Give me two playlists, like, one for, like, earlier. I’ve got one actually, this weekend coming up. One for earlier, like, dinner or cocktail hour, and then one for dance floor.

Eddy: Well, that’s interesting because I like that. And maybe that’s the conversations that you’ve had with couples, because I find that most of the time they’re thinking, dance floor and when I’m mentioning background, a lot of them like, oh yeah.

Aleks: I didn’t think, yeah, oh, it depends on the couple. It depends on the couple and, you know, how discerning they are and that sort of thing. But with that, I do find sometimes that I will pick up, say, for example, in the dance floor playlist, tunes that are better suited to background and vice versa. So I’ll often say to couples, look like all these tunes are great. I have noticed a couple that would be better suited for later in the night. So again, even with that, not only are we going through all of the tracks in your Spotify playlist, we’re picking out the ones that are going to work and then we’re picking the best moments for them as well. So you’ve put something forward for dance floor. I’m like, nah, that’s gonna be better for dinner. So I will put it in my folder, I will put it for the early, early, you know, crates. So yeah, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of work that gets done. But look, I point and obviously on the night, which we will probably cover in an upcoming podcast about how you read the crowd and, you know, what actually happens on the dance floor, I think that’s a separate, separate podcast. But this was really just to say we are human wedding DJs. There is a lot of work that goes into it upfront. We take your music brief very seriously. We prod, we give you a lot of inspiration to make sure that we really get the most out of you and really understand what you’re after in terms of the music. And then we are super, super organised because that is how we have access to tracks really quickly because it is very quick, we’re working. What did you say? Two, three minutes at a time?

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: On the night itself.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: Did that cover at all?

Eddy: I think it did. I just wanted to go back and retouch on Spotify again because obviously it’s such a massive thing. I’d say 90% of our clients will provide Spotify. And again, the reason why we’re going through them track by track is because there are opportunities for us to find music that we’re not super familiar with. I know there would be DJ’s out there and like, this is just a different process and this is nothing wrong with it. That would perhaps just grab all the Spotify tracks, throw them into tidal and stream them. And if you’ve got a really solid in can Internet connection, that’s fantastic. And that is the future.

Aleks: Yeah.

Eddy: Of this industry. For sure. But I think you’re missing an opportunity there to actually run through each track by track and just listen and get the vibe. Because if I’m listening to a song in Spotify, I’m naturally going to think almost like a tree growing. I’m like, okay, so this song’s like this, this and this. Yeah, they’re probably going to like these artists. And that’s where I go back and start to throw different tunes that aren’t necessarily, well, surely aren’t on their Spotify players into that ideas crate.

Aleks: It definitely sparks something. You go, oh, actually, that would go really well with this. Exactly what I found, particularly for this weekend coming out shout out to Grayson Niche. I actually like to go for a walk a couple of days before my weddings and just put my. Put my couple’s Spotify playlist on my phone and just listen to it for an hour while I’m walking. And I find it, like, there’s been so many tracks in, particularly for this weekend that have come up and I’m like, wow, like, there’s a Kylie track in my eyes. In your eyes. In my eyes. I think that I’m like, wow, that is a great, great track. And I’ve never played it, you know what I mean? But it just gives you ideas. So we actually learn a lot from our clients, too. And it just. We constantly are building our library based on client requests and then that, you know, like we said, we keep all of our prep folders, so it just grows and grows. And we often will refer to past wedding track lists for clients who have a similar vibe to get some of those extra ids as well.

Eddy: And that’s another thing I didn’t mention in front of me, is a couple of, or one in particular for this particular client. But an example track list, you know, track by track, that I thought had a very similar vibe, you know, to the wedding. So we do that in the lead up to. Yeah. So it just. It’s more or less a safety net for us, I suppose, in a way, having. Having these wedding setlists within the client folder for a wedding. Yeah, yeah. It really, really helps us.

Aleks: Yeah. We’re just super anal. I want to make sure that we have access, easy access to the best.

Eddy: Possible tunes, I think, at any given time.

Aleks: Yeah, totally. And one other thing that I think is really fun and super helpful and obviously a benefit because there’s two of us, is that we do share set lists with each other. So we do have a chat about what’s coming up. And, you know, I’ll say to Eddy, oh, have you had, like, a wedding with this kind of vibe and this sort of demographic? And you’ll often print out your track list and I’ll take it with me for some extra inspo. So we do also share that information with each other, which is super helpful.

Eddy: Yeah, it’s awesome. And so, like, just to finish answering your question, after we’ve, you know, after I. And after you have put everything in those. Those crates and built that night. And by the way, I should say that even though we’ve done all of this work, sometimes things can go completely out of the window on the night. So. Yes. You know, and the beauty of our wonderful couples is that they do trust us.

Aleks: Yeah.

Eddy: If something needs to change, we’ll change it up. And they’re totally fine as long as we’re not playing the things that they want to hear. So that can completely go out the window. But that’s what our general library and the way that we’ve structured our crates in our library is for, as well to lean on. But. So after putting everything in all the crates, putting together everything for that wedding, we then open up our DJ software. And this is your. You might be a bit different, but my process is any new tracks have to be analysed by the software so they understand how quick it is, like the BPM and the key of the song and all that kind of stuff. And then I typically, if I’ve got the time, I’ll mess around a little bit.

Aleks: You know, I do that too. Yeah, on the software.

Eddy: Yeah, on the software. I’ll pull out, you know, that the DJ decks and I’ll just have a bit of a play around with the tunes that this sounds good with this. Or, you know, there’s this new fan dangled feature in my software now where it’s called stems. And I can drop out different elements of the track in real time using AI technology. So, yeah, so Aleks’ software doesn’t have it.

Aleks: God, don’t publicly shame me. He’s trying to get me to switch over to the dark side.

Eddy: It’s not the dark side, it’s the cool side. So I use this piece of software called Serato, not to be confused with the Kia motors car spelling. It’s actually a company from New Zealand, which is crazy. And Aleks uses one called Traktor with a k. He makes fun of me. But. So stems, I can drop out the vocals, the drums or the melody or the bass. So it gives rise to some really creative things, you know, and it makes it really interesting when you want to mix one song into something else, you might drop out a couple of the elements to make it sound really cool and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I’ve been having a bit of fun playing around with that.

Aleks: Yeah. The other thing as well, when we kind of drop all the tracks and have a little play around in our software is. And particularly for new tracks is I’ll put, like, cue points in. So basically, you know, if you’ve got like a really long introduction for a dance tune, I’ll kind of put in a couple of points. I might want to start mixing in and out. Yeah, that’s brand new tracks, actually.

Eddy: A really good point. So on our controllers, we have these pads and they call them hot cues. They’ve got different functions, but we can put a hot cue on any part of the track just like Aleks said. And that becomes really, really helpful because you can label them as well. Like, this is where the vocals start. So this is where the first chorus is or whatever. And when it comes to, like, wedding party entrances. I know. Exactly. I can literally start the track from that exact point.

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: So that’s really cool as well.

Aleks: Yeah, there’s a lot. I’m tired.

Eddy: There’s realised.

Aleks: Literally go and do this now. After we’ve talked about it, I’m hoping.

Eddy: That everyone was able to follow on because. Yeah, it is. It’s definitely more in depth than a lot of people think. Oh, do you just play? Press play, right, like, of course. Yeah, we do press play, but there’s a lot of other things we do too.

Aleks: We press play on the carefully selected, painfully prepared tracks.

Eddy: Yeah, exactly. And that’s the Amazon guy.

Aleks: So I think that’s a wrap for us.

Eddy: I think that’s a wrap. So there you have it. That’s how we organise our music before we rock your wedding.

Aleks: We hope you enjoyed that. Or at least found it informative.

Eddy: It’s probably the most frustrating episode we’ve ever done.

Aleks: Yeah, I know. And thanks to all the DJ’s, who probably are the only people who actually made it to the end of this episode.

Eddy: Now, look, if you’re not a non DJ, if you’re a couple, if you’re another vendor, hopefully there are a couple of nuggets of information that was useful. I suppose.

Aleks: So you understand the process that, you know, we and potentially other DJ’s go through to make sure that. Yeah, we do the best job possible for your wedding. All right, till next time, guys.

Eddy: Bye bye.

Aleks: Thanks for tuning in. If you’re enjoying Project Engaged, please hit the subscribe button on your fav podcast app.

Eddy: You can also follow us on Instagram, @projectengaged and @onemoresongdjs.

Aleks: We’ll see you next time. And until then, have fun out there.