Wedding DJ Preparation
So, over the last week or so, I’ve been shoring up the playlist for my buddy’s wedding. I have a big bin of wedding staples, including a ridiculous amount of disco, funk, pop, and soul. According to iTunes, I could play continuously for 18 hours without playing the same track twice. That should suffice.
Early yesterday, I tested out the sound system I’ve cobbled together from bits and pieces of gear from my music studio. I’ve borrowed a couple of speakers from the groom, Steve, and a pair from my housemate, Ray.
I set everything up on my little printer cart on which the sound mixer and amplifier usually live, got everything wired up, and carted it all in the back of my Vibe to the Santa Cruz Mountains for a late evening sound check. After sussing an issue stemming from a disconnected speaker cable, I had everything set up and ready for tomorrow. One quick breakdown and back down the hill.
This morning, I got up extra early, because my computer’s been having crash issues for more than a year. I wanted to make sure that there’s music even if the computer crashes. In order to ensure that, I plugged in a little USB powered speaker and spun a 2½ hour set of what I’m planning for the reception, loaded it onto my iPod, and got the car loaded up. The computer behaved remarkably with nothing even resembling a hiccup. No stalls, no issues, all tracks previewed in Traktor. We are go for disco.
My luck was not to last. I climbed the mountains, unloaded everything at the venue, set it all back up (I broke it down last night, because I’m not leaving my gear in an unsecured building 40 miles from home, ever), and started my sound check. Loading Deck A and previewing Deck B: screen goes blank and we have the freeze. Ten minutes after putting the computer on the card table in Ben Lomond and we’ve got two reboots.
Maybe this third time’s the charm. No tracks are previewed in Traktor now, but it’s not house music. We don’t need a beatmatched continuous mix. Fade and thump, thump and fade. I got everything back to normal and made sure the iPhone was on Airplane mode just in case.
Fortunately, that was the end of the drama. I played my 95 minute set without a hitch. At last, I can stop worrying. A great group of people danced their hearts out to my mix. I’m a happy man. I’ll write about that later.
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