S4, EP11: What sound equipment will you need 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. And we are back yet again for another episode of Project Engaged. I can’t talk today.

Aleks: I never get to do the opening thing.

Eddy: I kind of wait for you. Then I’m like, oh, just.

Aleks: You don’t wait for me.

Eddy: I do, actually.

Aleks: It’s fine. Hello and welcome back. I’ve done something to my back.

Eddy: Yes, Aleks has unfortunately tweaked her back today. It’s not fun. It’s horrible when you do that. I do feel for you. Have you been using the little ball.

Aleks: Rolly ball, spiky ball, spiky ball massage gun? I’ve got to get into it.

Eddy: It works.

Aleks: But, you know, it’s kind of related to our topic today in a strange way.

Eddy: Yes. I like that you’ve made that connection.

Aleks: Segue.

Eddy: Today we are talking about our equipment setups, which I know is probably not the sexiest thing to talk about, and Aleks’ eyes are already glazing over. But we think it’s important because I got this question last night at a couple video call, and I, you know, from, from the client’s perspective, from the couple’s perspective, you know, I’d have no idea, oh, if I wasn’t in this industry. But what do you come with? How does it work? So we thought it’s probably worth chatting about.

Aleks: Yeah, definitely. I had the same thing last night with a call with a couple as well. They sort of didn’t understand what happens for music in the earlier part of the day. So, yeah, definitely super important. We can’t do a job without equipment.

Eddy: We need equipment. Yes. And it’s. Equipment’s always something that’s evolving, changing the technology changes and gets better. And we’re seeing a lot of battery powered things coming now as the batteries are getting better. So it’s very, very cool. We will go through it all. I know everybody’s waiting with bated breath.

Aleks: But if you’re still with us, you.

Eddy: Probably switched this off. But what I thought I’d start with is what most DJs will come with.

Aleks: A standard kind of standard.

Eddy: Sort of. Sort of setup. So in. I’m going to try and break this down into the most simplest terms possible. Most of the time they’ll have maybe three or four things. They’ll have their DJ decks. And that’s as far as I go with that. Yeah, they’ll have some speakers, usually a couple. They’ll have something to put their decks on, some sort of booth or table. Booth or maybe sometimes they use a venues. Table with a cloth. Not the best look, but, you know, it works. And they’ll have a microphone.

Aleks: Yes. Oh, that is very simple. I like it.

Eddy: That’s as simplistic as it gets. Now, it can get far, far more complex than that, depending on a variety of factors, which we will go into. But in the. In its essence is DJ decks, table speakers and usually a wireless mic.

Aleks: You might see a laptop, but that is connected to the Dex.

Eddy: Correct. So that’s where you store all your music and you run the music software. But, yeah, look, we don’t want to get too complex.

Aleks: We’re not responding to emails when we’re typing on our laptop, FYI, we’re not checking.

Eddy: Checking Facebook or what have you, which is looking for songs. We’re looking for songs, sometimes frantically, if there’s only a few seconds left and we haven’t quite. Yeah, well, that’s the thing, right? So if you ever see us really, really stressed out at the end of a song, it’s usually. I know a song to play. This gonna be better than the one I thought.

Aleks: Yeah.

Eddy: And we’re quickly finding. Quickly finding it to throw it on, so. Yeah, so that’s. And look, there might be some lighting involved as well and things like that and whatever other things.

Aleks: Shitloads of cables.

Eddy: Yeah. I mean, I’m not even gonna mention.

Aleks: That, you know, can everyone tell that this is my least favourite topic on earth? But.

Eddy: Yeah. Yeah. So this is. So this is, in essence, the very basic one standard, typically one room, typically reception setup.

Aleks: Yes, yes, yes. So we’re talking about everyone in the one space for your reception. That’s right.

Eddy: Now, if you’re looking for music for, say, a ceremony or a cocktail hour that’s in a different location that would involve another setup. Usually it’s a single speaker, depending on how, you know, many people there are. If it’s outside or if it’s a big room, you might need a couple of speakers just to, you know, make sure the sound fills the room, especially for.

Aleks: If you’re providing a mic in that situation as well. So, for example, if you’re the DJ and you’re providing a mic for the celebrant, or you are the celebrant, like me. Yeah, sometimes, yeah. You do need to be conscious of how many guests there are because there is a big difference between 50 guests and 150 sound requirements to actually make sure that you are heard properly.

Eddy: That’s right. And in the last few years, as I’ve sort of alluded to before, we are seeing battery technology get better and better and better, which means we don’t necessarily need to plug things in, particularly if it’s outside, which means we don’t have to run a huge, long power cable.

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: A lot of the speakers that you’ll see celebrants and DJ’s use for ceremonies and pre and post ceremony are battery.

Aleks: Powered, which means we charge them in advance, basically.

Eddy: We’ll charge them all up.

Aleks: Yeah, ready to go. And now we’re talking about what, you know, the situation is if your DJ has also been booked for this part of the day, that, you know, as soon as guests arrive. Ceremony.

Eddy: Yeah, or celebrate.

Aleks: Or celebrate. So I was gonna say, this is really important. We’ve mentioned this a million times. Chat to your celebrant. If you are not having a DJ or a live musician there for your ceremony and your cocktail hour, chat to your celebrant about what’s happening. Your celebrant normally will not stay for cocktail hour to play music for that part. So that’s just a warning, you know, even if you’re doing a signing and stuff after, your celebrant will hang out for a bit, but probably won’t be there for the entire cocktail hour unless they’re also your DJ or MC. So that is really important because I feel like that’s a bit that could easily get missed if your celebrant is providing tunes for the earlier part. So as people arrive the first half hour, pre ceremony, you know, your ceremony, key moment songs, and then kind of. Okay, what happens for cocktail hour? So it’s a very important point to make.

Eddy: And obviously, if your celebrant is leaving and you perhaps don’t have an acoustic artist or something in your DJ is. Has set up, is there, then I definitely ask them to see what the quote would be for an additional speaker somewhere in a.

Aleks: Just to get you covered there.

Eddy: Yeah, exactly. Which brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk about is, is that cocktail hour? Well, actually, let’s start from the beginning. Say, for instance, you’ve booked one of us as a DJ, or maybe you’ve booked Aleks is a celebrant as well. And you’d like music from pre ceremony, the key moment songs and. And post ceremony. Yeah, I know it’s a little bit different for you, Aleks, if you are a celebrant, because you do tend to use the time after the ceremony to do the celebratory things like photos involved.

Aleks: Signing, all that kind of stuff. Very important business.

Eddy: So you. You would generally correct me if I’m wrong, but you generally, at that point in time, put it like a curated playlist.

Aleks: Yes, that’s right.

Eddy: You’ll run it through DJ software that will blend the songs nicely so there aren’t any kind of gaps in the songs.

Aleks: Sometimes. Sometimes Spotify as well.

Eddy: Yeah. Which can do that anyway.

Aleks: Which can blend. Crossfade. Yep.

Eddy: Exactly. Crossfade. Yep. If, for instance, you’re not, let’s just say you’re not the celebrant, you’re the DJ or I’m the DJ, and it is a setup that is outside, not in the same area that the reception will be. We do have the ability to actually quote unquote DJ that as well.

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: So again, the speakers are battery powered, but we do now have. This is kind of a recent purchase, new. We have these DJ consoles that are also battery powered and second, all in one with a screen. No laptop required because laptops outside. Laptops outside aren’t great anyway, as everybody.

Aleks: Knows, as a general, they’re hard to.

Eddy: Read the screen and also super hot. It will overheat and if it starts raining, you’re screwed. You need to close that laptop and get undercover straight away.

Aleks: Oh, dear.

Eddy: We do ask for cover, obviously, when we’re outside, regardless, but we can now fully DJ a cocktail hour in a different location to the reception, which is really cool. That’s something kind of new for us.

Aleks: That’s very, very new for us. And the decks are super cute.

Eddy: They’re cute little jog wheels. But so you can, you know, you can do as. More or less as much as you can do on the full setup, obviously in a smaller fashion.

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: But, you know, it’s pretty cool. I was actually used the decks the first time in, what was it, last weekend? Last weekend or the weekend before? The weekend before. I was at the Prince deck over in St Kilda and they did have that cocktail hour set up outside, which is really, really cool because I was able to play some really cool, like soft electronica and all that kind of stuff.

Aleks: It was very nice. It looked warm. Was it?

Eddy: It was very warm. Yeah, it was very warm.

Aleks: And how was the. How did the decks go in the sun?

Eddy: Fine. Yeah, totally fine.

Aleks: I mean, you go in the sun.

Eddy: I was okay. I had my SPF 50 on my face.

Aleks: Beautiful.

Eddy: Good.

Aleks: We don’t want those wrinkles to come through.

Eddy: But, no, it was. I had a cocktail in my hand, too, actually, which helped. But, yeah, no, it was great. And I think people still kind of get a kick out of the fact you are there deejaying. And then obviously, as everybody starts to move inside, bam, you’re there again doing the same thing inside. So it’s very seamless.

Aleks: Yeah, I was gonna say there’s obviously, like a little bit of. There’s always a ten minute gap or whatever, so you might put a long song on.

Eddy: That’s exactly what I did. The naughty venue actually started asking guests to go inside before they asked me to put tunes on. So you saw me kind of run in as I saw guests come in.

Aleks: This is not uncommon.

Eddy: No, it’s not uncommon. So you’ve really got to keep a foot as to what’s going on and make sure you got your timings right. But, yeah, I threw something on inside and then gradually brought the outside sound down. And that’s great because it prompts those that are kind of still dwelling outside to go in.

Aleks: I agree. It’s a great way to get people in. Now, the thing we haven’t mentioned is, obviously, we’re talking about now where your ceremony slash cocktail hour is in a different space to where your reception is. There are some venues where we. The ceremony is basically where the dance floor is later on and the room’s kind of flipped around. So it’s in the one space. Your ceremony and reception are all in the one space. Examples of this are glass house inside, where the couple decide to get married, then have their reception there. It just goes into one long cocktail hour, or unless you’re down for dinner. Another example of that is the post office hotel in Coburg. There’s a couple of different examples of that. So in that case, we can actually DJ on our decks with the one setup.

Eddy: Yes. And actually, something that I do need to mention. If you’re asking, well, why can’t you just plug an ipod, or what have you, into one of those battery powered speakers? Why would I need, like, a DJ there? And the answer to that is, for one, it looks cool. Secondly, you know, if you have specific moments in each song that you want to be launched from during a ceremony, say, for instance, the lead in song for the aisle has a really long build up. I can actually, and Aleks can do this too. Cue the song wherever, wherever it needs.

Aleks: To be, which is very difficult. Very difficult.

Eddy: It’s a lot harder when. Yeah. Of Spotify or very, very difficult. You know, we can, ahead of time, if need be, edit a track and run that through a different piece of software to get that. But to be completely honest, having that full control that you have on decks, on DJ decks is just so much better. And obviously as well, for, say, cocktail hour or even before the wedding kick, the ceremony kicks off, I should say you’re in control and that’s, you know, 101 deejaying. You’ve got a DJ, they’re in control, can change things up when they need to, can read the crowd. Because the crowd reading starts at the very beginning of your wedding, your wedding ceremony. As people are coming in, we’re both reading that crowd, even though people aren’t dancing yet. We’re getting so much intel as to what people are vibing to, which helps dictate what we may or, you know, or may not play later on. So that starts there. So we’re getting so much more intel so much sooner being on those decks, albeit, you know, a mobile battery powered setup elsewhere.

Aleks: Yeah, very true. I think in general, look, having your DJ does, you know, from. For the whole day, for your whole wedding, does remove a lot of headache for everyone, for your celebrant, for your venue photographer, because, yeah, as you mentioned, we’re in control and, you know, we can nail those key moments. I think also there’s a nice consistency and also, you know, you’re kind of creating a certain vibe that you want from the very beginning. Sometimes I feel like just putting on a generic, kind of pre ceremony playlist. Just a generic thing on Spotify. Yeah, I’m sure it’s fine, but it’s not the same as like, okay, you know what? We really, really want this type. We really want, like, classic, like our green kind of classic, Motown, soulful vibe as people come in. But then for cocktail hour, we want something a little bit different. Be more of a funk.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: Funky, disco vibe, etc. So it’s really nice to actually have a DJ be able to curate that. You get that all day.

Eddy: Absolutely. And you get. We’re going off topic, we’re talking about tunes again. But, like, you get that evolution of, of music from the beginning to the end of the night. It kind of makes sense. Yeah, nothing’s kind of out of place, but I love what you’ve said there. And I also, you know, sometimes I might have couples are like, we don’t really mind what you’re playing for pre ceremony, but, you know, you know, our vibe and maybe it is soul funk disco later on. So, you know, a big part of our jobs is to do a lot of research in the leader on the types of tunes that we think will work. You know, we’ll dip into our own music library, but I’m always looking at finding new songs. We call it crate digging. So, you know, back in the day, I’m sure I’ve mentioned this on this podcast, but back in the day when DJ’s were deejaying on vinyl records, they’d go into the record shops and be digging literally through make milk crates of, you know, of records and tunes. So it’s still called crate digging, but it’s all electronic now, obviously, for most of us. Yes. So, you know, we can really delve deep into what we think people will like, what we think the couple will like earlier on. And it’s nice to give them those surprises as well for, you know, for background.

Aleks: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s just like just using the experience of a DJ and understanding how to build the night.

Eddy: Correct.

Aleks: And create that atmosphere of different parts. Like, there’s no. It’s almost like a magic. Like, it’s a bit of mysterious art and it’s just something that’s very intuitive. When you’ve done so many weddings and you’ve got a really wide repertoire that you can do easily, that would be difficult to the layperson who doesn’t DJ weddings every weekend. Yeah, over a decade or whatever you’ve done, I think bloody 13 years or something and counting. Long, long time.

Eddy: We’re getting off topic here.

Aleks: We are a little bit.

Eddy: So let’s get back to equipment. So we’ve talked about what the typical DJ will have for a reception setup. We’ve talked about the, you know, now, I think typical setup for somewhere else, like for, you know, for a different area for cocktail hour ceremony. Because I imagine, I can tell you right now, like, 90% of DJ’s and celebrants even that I see are rocking this particular type of Bose speaker with a battery in it. It’s a fantastic speaker. Yeah, yeah. Super reliable. So we’ve talked about those two things where it starts to get kind of hairy or interesting, depending on who you are, is when we look at expanding on the sort of the atypical setup in the reception.

Aleks: Oh, can I just go back one step? I just want to mention one more thing too. And I’ve got an example of this where the ceremony is in different space to the cocktail hour, in a different space to the reception. So, yeah, three spaces. This is quite common.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: I’ve got an example of a couple I just booked at Combe Yarra Valley. Perfect example of this. The ceremony normally takes place in the beautiful italian gardens and then it’s quite a bit of a walk to the cellar door.

Eddy: Yes.

Aleks: Where the cocktail hour is. And then going inside into the restaurant for the reception.

Eddy: Yes.

Aleks: So normally, in that case, reception setup kind of goes in first because it’s the big one. I do it either one of two ways. I either have a bows ready to go in the ceremony and another bows in the cellar door just because of the distance required to walk. If the distance is smaller. And I’ve got an example of this, the button factory in Cheltenham, I was involved in ceremony cocktail hour for that as well. I literally picked up the Bose speaker and moved it like two metres, three metres down into the other space for cocktail hour. So I can do that. But in situations where it’s going to be a bit tight, there’s a bit of distance we can actually put in a. Another speaker for cocktail hour ready to go, run over.

Eddy: Yeah. So if you see Aleks running with a speaker and a speaker stand at a wedding, you know, help her to another. In heels to another area on gravel, then, yeah. Give her a helping hand if you like.

Aleks: That would be lovely. Thank you very much for that. But, yeah, just. It is possible. And we do have extra equipment, if that is required. Absolutely. No drama. Another thing, just talking backups. We always have a cable for the microphone in case something happens.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: Do you have a battery? Battery powered? Is that what it.

Eddy: Battery powered. Microphone? Microphone, yeah. So we’ve got. Yeah, so as much as we can, we try and do battery powered for ceremony, cocktail hour, et cetera. You know, we’re in very. You know, sometimes things happen, technical things will happen. So we’ll always have, like, a backup old school microphone cable with enough length to give it to the. To the cellar. It’s not ideal, but, you know, if it needs to be done, it needs to be done.

Aleks: It’s better than not being able to hear the rest of the ceremony. Let’s just put it that way. It’s absolutely fine. These things happen.

Eddy: And look, it’s. It’s. You know, things typically don’t break down very often. No. Yeah, so. But, yeah, look, we have backups where we need them, but you can get.

Aleks: Interference and stuff from, you know, with the microphone.

Eddy: Yeah. And that’s another thing I wanted to talk about. So there is a case to be able to send signals wirelessly from, say, speaker to speaker or DJ Dax to speaker. I know that there’s a lot of celebrants that use Bluetooth to launch their tunes.

Aleks: Terrifying for me.

Eddy: Yeah. For me, Bluetooth is more of a consumer grade technology. There are better ways of doing it. Where I’ve had problems and I’ve elected to go hard cabled into everything is where, for instance, it was a ceremony. I remember Zenna was the seller. This is years ago now, so shout out to Zenna. And I had something and I was streaming it through. Through Bluetooth, but I was sort of behind where everyone was. And obviously the signal has to come through everybody’s bodies and everybody’s phones. And there was some interference. So I remember it wasn’t during the ceremony, thankfully, but it was pretty serene. And my song started to, like, drop out here and there, so. Okay, cool. So I ran all the way up to the front, front corner of the room, plugged the iPad in via the jack cable and kind of hid behind the speaker for the whole of the ceremony. I wasn’t in the way or anything like that. But you’ve got to be close if you are using Bluetooth, which makes sense.

Aleks: For a celebrant because the speaker will.

Eddy: Be up there with you, and that’s great. Where we try to basically get right is obviously no dropouts or anything like that. So we want to make sure that things are where they can be plugged in from a. From like an audio communication perspective.

Aleks: Yes. I’m glad you’re keeping it non jargony, but we do tend to put it place ourselves at the back. So that’s where you get the, you know, you might get the interference. Whereas if we’re only. We were providing a speaker and a microphone for the celebrant, then we’ll be at the front.

Eddy: Yes, exactly.

Aleks: We’ll have the one speaker and we don’t want any interference with the mic. So we’ll have an extra long cable for our iPad to be able to play the key songs and stuff. So, yeah, so we’ll use the. The decks, the DJ decks for outside where we can. Where it logistically makes sense. But there’ll be some situations where they might not be possible, but.

Eddy: Correct.

Aleks: Most of the time we’ll try and do it.

Eddy: Exactly. So no one wants music dropouts.

Aleks: No, no one’s music dropout. And also, when I am celebrating, I’ve been very lucky and I’ve had either the venue looking after the music or live musicians. So I’ve not really had to worry about it too much. But I will have those decks out the front with me to be able to very nicely played the aisle song and not have to burden a guest.

Eddy: True, very true drama. Very true.

Aleks: Anyway, sorry, going back to the reception.

Eddy: No. So let’s. Yeah, so let’s talk the reception. And this is where it gets, like I said before, like, a little bit more interesting. There might be some cases where the venue room is quite long or it’s a weird shape or something like that. So we may elect to throw what we call a satellite speaker up, connected back to the main set of speakers, just to fill out the room a little bit more.

Aleks: It’s basically a third speaker that’s connected to our main setup, but a bit further down the room, closer to where the guests are.

Eddy: And most of the time, the reason why we do it is, say, a. If the venue, and we’ll get onto this too. If the venue doesn’t have their own sound system, we want to make sure that everybody’s hearing speeches as best they can and announcements as best they can. So that’s when we will elect to put something in a corner somewhere just to get more of a spread.

Aleks: Yeah. And as well as, obviously, announcements and speeches, extremely important. But for me, I found that, you know, if you don’t have that third speaker, if you’re quite far, like, say, for example, you’re set up at one end of the venue, then there’s an entire dance floor before you start to hit the guests. And we’re talking mainly about sit down, let’s be honest, for cocktail, people can mill around wherever they want. A lot easier to deal with from a sound perspective. But, yeah, if you’ve got an entire dance floor, I actually. I want people to hear the music during dinner, and if they’re really far away, you have to blast the speakers, and it’s not good for anyone.

Eddy: Well, particularly.

Aleks: You particularly use the DJ, the staff, also the people that are closest to you. So you’re much better off having that third speaker to pat out the sound and have it at a more reasonable volume, but actually filling out the room more without blasting anyone’s head off. Yes, I feel very passionately about this. It’s not just the speeches and announcements, it’s the music.

Eddy: Totally, totally agree with that. And that speaker will typically be cabled where it’s safe to do so all the way back, rather than being wireless, because, again, wireless sometimes lets us down. So there have been instances where, you know, something has been wireless. A good example of that would be, what am I thinking of here in Collingwood?

Aleks: Craft and co.

Eddy: Craft and co. Yes. So they’ve got a split sort of room set up. So you’ve got the. Where the ceremony takes place. The DJ’s in the corner on one side of the room, and on the other side, there’s a bit of a partition in the middle. They’ve got everyone where they’re sort of dining, and then they come back to the other room for dancing later.

Aleks: A big bar in the middle.

Eddy: There’s a huge bar in the middle. Yeah, bar both sides. It’s gorgeous venue. So I’ve had an instance there where we were sending a wireless signal for background music from my decks, but perfectly fine when nobody was there. Worked well. Of course, when everybody got in the room, I was, you know, there was dropouts. So I frantically. This is before, actually, I started playing, but I was frantically putting a playlist together and throwing it onto an iPad and then basically putting on that speakers. The speaker was fine. One speaker was enough for that particular, particular side of the room, so I just did that. And then instead of using, you know, the microphone back on my. Where my decks were, I used another plug microphone from that speaker. So, you know, it worked fine and it was still the vibe that the client wanted. And, you know, I just had to really, really think quickly on my feet on how to solve that. But that, for us, and I remember telling you about it, that for us, kind of killed that wireless signal sending.

Aleks: Oh, that’s it. Once it fails, it’s gone and that’s it.

Eddy: And. Yeah, so we don’t use that anymore. So it’s really where we can. We want to cable it back to the old school. Back to the old school. A good old reliable cable.

Aleks: I can see it physically there. It’s doing its thing.

Eddy: It’s doing its thing, but sometimes it is difficult to do it safely, so. And these are the types of conversations that we will have with venues in relation to equipment. So it may make more sense if it’s. If it’s a room somewhere else to curate ahead of time, something that will just play from that speaker for dinner or a couple of smaller speakers. Or of course, we’ll use our secondary battery power DJ setup where we can be there, spin tunes, and then as everybody leaves to go to a different area for the, you know, the dance floor. Bam, we’re back to our sort of OG setup.

Aleks: Exactly. I think the main thing, and this is why it’s so important to speak to your DJ before you book them in is to actually have these conversations around what’s happening, where are people going to be, what does the floor plan look like? And then you really have a good idea. Okay. We need a little bit of extra equipment. We need to think about music for this particular part. You know, there are some situations where the DJ will be playing background music in one area, and then the dance floor is in a completely different room.

Eddy: Yeah, completely different space.

Aleks: Like, not even. Like, you can’t even throw a third speaker in. It’s a completely different space. So, yeah, definitely, definitely have these conversations with your DJ and they will speak to your venue as well, just to nut it out. We also, often, particularly for the trickier setups, have a professional sound team who are there, and we’ll scope things out and make sure that it’s all working and, you know, in the best position that it can be. So, yeah, it’s super important.

Eddy: Absolutely. And that sort of brings us, I guess, to the tail end of this. This episode in setup pack down, communicating with the venue and all that kind of stuff.

Aleks: So I think I just want to go back on one before we go into the setup and pack down. Just one more point that you raised about, you know, the venues having their own sound systems.

Eddy: Oh, yeah, actually. Good call. Yeah, very, very good call. So this happens often. There are a lot of venues that do have their own sound system. And the beauty about. Well, there’s two things. Number one, typically, they’re not designed for dance.

Aleks: I was gonna say. Yeah, okay.

Eddy: Number two, they’re great for speeches and for the microphone. So typically, they have speakers that will line the ceiling throughout the whole of say that the sit down area, which.

Aleks: Is great, because spread out sound.

Eddy: Grandma can hear the speeches even if she’s in the corner in the back there, because there’s probably a speaker above her head, which is awesome. So we typically will lean on the venue’s microphones if they have a system like that. If they don’t, obviously, we have our own.

Aleks: Also, sometimes the venue’s mic is really crap.

Eddy: Yeah. And sound is not good. Sound is not good. And. Yeah, that’s when we’ll probably use our own.

Aleks: Yeah. So we will always bring, again, a backup, and we’ll call it. And look, we do work in a lot of venues very often, so we’re familiar with what the sound situation is. But in the case where it is a new venue, you know, we’ll always have a couple of backup mics and have that conversation with the venue, too. And some venues are really honest, and they say, you know what? You’re probably better off using your mic.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: You know, it might be that their mic is great for a really small amount of guests or something like that. Like, it’s. But it’s not really appropriate. Maybe it’s okay for a little luncheon, but not a big wedding or whatever.

Eddy: And actually, now that we’re talking about microphones, a little side note for particularly those couples that are having videographers there, just, you know, because the videographers will ask on the night in the lead up. Just ask the videographers to get in touch with the DJ.

Aleks: Absolutely. Please do. Like, we would rather hear from them than rush conversation on the night. Try and figure it out.

Eddy: Because even though the essentials are pretty much the same, every DJ’s chosen equipment is different. So they might have different inputs and outputs and different line outputs for a microphone. So there’s that technical jargon. But outputs, it’s important to know because some, some people say, you know, does the DJ have a line out? Which. What is a line out? If I didn’t know, I had no idea. But the best thing to do is just say, hey, talk directly to the DJ.

Aleks: Yeah. This is what we have. You know, we have quite a few options for videographers as well. And I know some videographers have different preferences in terms of how they like to plug in. For example, with, like, ceremony sometimes, or if you’re doing speeches outside of something, the, the videographer will prefer to actually plug directly into the speaker and get a line out that way.

Eddy: Or they can actually plug directly into the box that the microphone speaks to.

Aleks: Yeah.

Eddy: That’s the cleanest way.

Aleks: Yeah. Well, that’s actually true. I should remember that. That’s for the reception. I’m saying, like, if you’re outside and you’ve got it. Yeah. And you’re providing the microphone for the.

Eddy: Celebrant, etcetera, there’s definitely a few ways to do it. They also have, like, little devices with microphones on them. They can kind of, you’ve probably seen these if you’ve, if you’ve kind of noticed them, I guess, at weddings. But they have, like, a sock that they put around the microphone and the little receiver or the little microphones there to capture the actual voice.

Aleks: Yes. And they do that as a backup as well.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: In case they’re, however they plugged in to get a feed of the sound doesn’t work, they’ve got a recording.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: Very clever.

Eddy: They should all do that.

Aleks: They should all.

Eddy: Most of them do. But sometimes it’s just one thing. I’m like, oh, what happened? Something goes wrong.

Aleks: Want to miss, like, the vows and everything else. And you can tell because I’ve seen a couple of videos where there’s, like, no dialogue. Like, there’s no. And I’m like, oh, they normally do do it, so don’t know what happened there. Another thing that you could just. This is going like, whoa, if you don’t have a videographer, we’ve done this before, is to speak to your DJ about recording speeches through their system. So I have an example again, glasshouse inside. We actually got our sound team, sort of, the couple just booked them directly to manage this, but someone came in and recorded through my mic, actually, like, properly recorded all the speeches. So if you don’t have a videographer, that’s an option as well. If you do want to capture that. So have a chat to your DJ. Even if they outsource it, it’s a really good option.

Eddy: Yeah, that’s a great point.

Aleks: I think it was like $400 or something like that. Like, it was pretty reasonable for capturing such an important part of the day, so.

Eddy: Absolutely. So. Yes.

Aleks: Oh, one more thing.

Eddy: One more thing about the.

Aleks: About. Sorry, about the venues PA system. So we’re talking about. This is obviously all talking about if the venue doesn’t have its own proper sound system that we can plug into, which is a, you know, whole other thing. We still have a lot of stuff that we bring with us, but with some venues, particularly in the inner city, we are required to use their sound system only. So.

Eddy: Yeah, that is true.

Aleks: Your venue will hopefully let you know that when you book.

Eddy: Although some venues, it’s an interesting space. We’ve spoken about sound restrictions before on this potty.

Aleks: How could you not?

Eddy: How could you not? Yeah, I think my going joke is, like, I can count the number of venues that don’t have restrictions on one hand. I think it might be like two fingers now, but, yeah, it’s an interesting space where venues, I think where venues are good is the ones that speak to their couples upfront about their restrictions, what the DJ’s are and are not able to bring in. So that really, really helps. There are some venues that have sound limiters inside, so they’ll have a light that will shine green and then yellow or orange and then red, depending on.

Aleks: How loud the music is.

Eddy: And sometimes it’s wired into the PowerPoint that the DJ plugs in in such a way that if it’s read for a certain amount of seconds. I think it depends on the venue.

Aleks: House configured?

Eddy: Yeah, how it’s configured. It would actually cut that power off and then you’ll lose all the music.

Aleks: Oh, it’s a fun time, isn’t it?

Eddy: I think I’ve had it happen once to me.

Aleks: Have you?

Eddy: I didn’t know that. No one told me there was a limited.

Aleks: Oh, beautiful.

Eddy: Yeah, this was a lot. Long time ago, but yeah. And so it will take, you know, a few seconds for everything to come back on and. Yeah, you really lose momentum there.

Aleks: Oh, you do. And it’s slightly anxiety inducing to watch that.

Eddy: Continually watch away from your deejaying. A little bit like with the crowd watching element of it, at least.

Aleks: So, yeah. Ask your venue upfront about their sound restrictions and to get specifics. Yeah, specific. Because some venues might say, oh, we’ve got an 85 decibel, you know, it’s more than enough for the downfall 95 or whatever, but fail to mention that there’s a limiter or, you know, the DJ has to plug into their system and they basically cut all the base out or whatever it is. So don’t be afraid to get really specific and even ask your DJ to our potential DJ to ask the venue.

Eddy: Yeah, yeah, put them on. To put them onto the DJ.

Aleks: Blame the DJ.

Eddy: So I think, yeah. To sort of wrap this up, I did want to chat quickly about equipment set up.

Aleks: Impacted you?

Eddy: No, that is fine. That is fine. We love the interruptions. We love them. So when I’m speaking to clients for the first time, I’ll say, we’ll obviously chat to your venue for setup packdown. We might be a little bit different in that we have a sound team that will help with our setups and pack downs where it makes sense to, or 100% of the time for Aleks, where it makes sense to. Which means we have probably a little bit more flexibility built in as to times that we can bump in and bump out.

Aleks: This is a good point, actually. I know where you’re going.

Eddy: No. Yes. So some DJ’s will do it all themselves. Hats off to them, because it’s a lot of work lugging it in and out. And you might have to park your car and unload and then move your car and then come back and all this. All this stuff. So there is a bit that goes into it. But what I wanted to say is if you have a DJ that’s doing it all, there may be some limitations as to when they can bump in. So it might be 2 hours before or something like that. Things kick off for the reception. They may also charge a standby rate if they have to come in quite early. So maybe they have to come in at midday, but their set doesn’t start till six, so they have to kind of charge, you know, like a half rate or something like that. So keep that, that in mind.

Aleks: Such a good point. Such a good point.

Eddy: Yeah. Where it comes for us, we have more flexibility. So. And we have. Shout out to Dale, who runs

Aleks: Leader.

Eddy: Yes, I was waiting for you to just to burst out with that.

Aleks: Sorry.

Eddy: So he’s recently rebranded. Recently rebranded. So he used to be play on sound, lighting. Now his new company name is Leader, which is very, very cute because it’s a combination of his name and his partner’s name.

Aleks: His wife’s name.

Eddy: Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m just saying. His partner.

Aleks: No, he said it the other day. He’s like my, said something about his wife to someone else. I was like, oh yeah. Throws me off on people that I.

Eddy: Know get married recently, recently married. They went to New Zealand, got hitched there. It looked amazing. I’m so sad that we couldn’t go. Anyway, anyway, moving on. So, yeah, so we got a bit more flexibility there, basically.

Aleks: Yeah. But I have to say something about this as well there. Your venue might give you maybe on the run sheet or maybe just in your, maybe in your contract even might give you a bump in time. And this could be just an arbitrary time.

Eddy: Yes.

Aleks: Not necessary for us. There are a few considerations for us and a lot of it is logistics. So for example, depending on how many ways to load into the venue, if your florist is there doing massive installation, probably not a great time for your DJ to also be in there if there’s only one place to get into the venue. Little things like that, which are actually quite big things for us, we like to set up, if we have our sound team setting up, we like to have them in 2 hours before our start time and for us to get in an hour before, do a final sound cheque with them, make any adjustments that we have to. So everything’s ready to go. And then that means that we’re there at the same time as the sound team. You don’t really need much more time than that. I think it’s also a little bit tricky when venues have a really, really short bump in window for DJ’s who do set up for themselves. Because you have like an hour, half an hour.

Eddy: Well, I think you need at least.

Aleks: An hour, I would say at least I think if you have at least an hour and a half just for troubleshooting because stuff happens, you know, the other day.

Eddy: Yeah. That’s without any buffer shoot. But yeah, an hour at a pinch. Yes, it’s fine if it’s only like one setup. If you’re talking multiple, you need more time.

Aleks: Yeah. And I think it’s. And we actually, we’re normally fine. We don’t have an issue with, with bumping times. But good to, you know, have a chat to your vendors and what they require because often we’ll get, you know, an email from the venue saying this is your bump in time. And we go back and say, well hang on, we were actually thinking this time. And they go, okay, no worries. So it’s not a definite final time. So definitely make sure that you’re, you know, or you understand your vendors, what they need and they are in contact with your venue too, if there are any kind of issues with the timings. But yeah, 2 hours is usually great. 1 hour manageable.

Eddy: That’s right. And when it comes to the end of the reception, pack down is usually on the night.

Aleks: Straight away.

Eddy: Straight away, sometimes the day after. But like 90% of the time it’s, it’s, it’s on the night.

Aleks: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it’s pretty straightforward from that perspective.

Eddy: Yeah. So that’s easy.

Aleks: Except when you’ve got like drunk guests. There’s only one way. Yeah, that as well.

Eddy: Yeah.

Aleks: Another reason to have a professional sound team pack you down so you can get sneak right out.

Eddy: Yep, absolutely. So yeah, so we’ve run through sound equipment, conversations with venue and other suppliers such as videographers.

Aleks: Yeah.

Eddy: We’ve also talked about kind of the setup and pack down side of it. Additions to that, you may have seen DJ’s have to. Sound is obviously lighting.

Aleks: Yes.

Eddy: Which is something that we provide as well. And it really does add a lot of atmosphere. Again, because the batteries are getting so good. 100% of our lighting now is battery powered, which gives us so much flexibility to put lighting in different areas of.

Aleks: A room wherever we want.

Eddy: Which is cool. Yeah, wherever it looks good. So that’s really cool. So have a chat to your DJ about lighting options. Sometimes the venue have options as well.

Aleks: Rarely, but.

Eddy: So that’s cool to talk about. Yeah. So lighting and then there’s other things that you’ll see around the place. Photobooths, audio, guest books. Not that we do like dry ice, but there’s dry ice and all that kind of stuff.

Aleks: You’re probably not out if you like dry ice. I don’t think we’ve ever had a.

Eddy: Couple, but yeah, I guess what I’m getting at is ask the question. You know, if it’s not obvious from the website, what else do you offer that can enhance the party, enhance the wedding?

Aleks: And there’s more boring stuff too, that the other day we added a microphone stand for a bride’s mum who needed it to help her with her speech. So there are other little tidbits, so it never hurts to ask.

Eddy: Absolutely.

Aleks: Awesome. Well, actually, that was.

Eddy: I can’t believe we did 40 minutes of that.

Aleks: I. Can. I actually. Can we go? Well, we didn’t even go to the nitty gritty. If this was a podcast for DJ’s, we would have had 3 hours.

Eddy: We’ve been talking brand names.

Aleks: I wouldn’t have been on that podcast. I just have zero, zero interest.

Eddy: Like, I must work. I did. Like when I was kind of going down that path, you were kind of bringing me back out before I went too deep. So thank you very much. It’s an automatic response. Oh, dear.

Aleks: Sorry. It’s that cackle. We got in an Uber the other day and the lovely Uber driver told me that. What do you call me? He said I had a very loud.

Eddy: You were shook or something.

Aleks: I was a chook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He asked me if I had eggs under the bed and they were cackle berries.

Eddy: Cackleberries. Yes. I will never forget we were seeing. We were seeing a comedian and I felt like the uber trip was gone from Brunswick to St. Kilda and I felt like the uber driver was basically the warm up act.

Aleks: Correct. It was a long.

Eddy: Good on him. Good on him. Champion.

Aleks: All right, I’ll leave you all with that cackle. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, I should say. Are we too. No. Yes. Correct. We do now have all of our podcast episodes from the current season on the website. There’s separate. Have them on the blog, but they’re in. In their own special place on the website called podcast, so you can’t miss it. And it also includes a transcript for every episode if you want to have a read of that and see the silly things that we say.

Eddy: Not only that, but we do above the transcript. That transcript is like a drop down thing. So you’re just not inundated with a lot of text. Yeah, but we do have a lot of the hyperlinks from the suppliers that we mention as well in each episode page. So if there is an episode that you’ve loved and you’ve really want to know who we’ve spoken to or who we mentioned, then that’s where to go to. So our website, onemoresong.com.au/podcasts/.

Aleks: Bye. Thanks for tuning in. If you’re enjoying project engaged, please hit the subscribe button on your fave 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.