Afterhours DJ who agreed to play a basic ass wedding...help

[ConnectControl]

Okay so for some background, I am a techno and house head through and through. I do enjoy listening to other music, but when I play out my sets are always house/tech oriented, and the deeper the better. I'm usually the guy who gets booked for like 4 am at the more "underground" party venues in my city. Now I'm not a huge audio quality snob, but obviously I can hear the difference in a low bitrate .mp3 vs 320kbps, especially on some of the nicer systems I get to play on.

Anyways, about a month ago I semi-reluctantly agreed as a favour to DJ a close friend of a friends wedding, without really knowing what I was getting myself into. Now the date is fast approaching and I've been sent a list of over 200 songs to source for the playlist. Of course I'm perfectly okay with setting aside my late-night techno tunes in lieu of whatever the bride & groom want to hear, but I guess I am hesitant to shell out the schmeckles for hundreds of top 40 radio tunes, slow dance songs, classic rock, and whatever else they are asking for that I will seriously never listen to ever again. However, I don't want to half ass it either and resort to ripping the tunes from youtube or something like that.

Any input/advice from former/current wedding DJs? Perhaps a convenient option I don't know about, or do you think anyone would even notice if they are <320kbps from experience? I obviously want to do a good job, but the amount of music they expect me to personally source is a bit of a pain in the ass, especially with everything else i've got going on in life right now.

Edit: I should mention this will just be on a community hall's PA system, not a fancy club system. So audio quality is less of a factor but I still don't wanna half ass it.

[astromech]

I've done a wedding as a favour for friends. My caveat to them was that they had to supply the music, or a list and a budget for the type of stuff they wanted. I expanded that list with tracks I already own. I play techno, prog, and tech, usually, but I already tend to spice up my set with classics, disco, synthpop, and 90s dance music, so it was fairly easy. I took my Xone:62, Audio 8 (at the time), X1 and 1210s and people loved the fact I was on turntables. I even brought a couple of old records to play as well.

The key is not to worry about beatmatching. For most of the night, the pitch didn't even leave zero. Mixes were quick, and I spent more time making sure channel gain was right so volume changes didn't occur. Just make sure your playlists are prepped well and you are confident you know the music you have. Pace out mini sets of different styles, and change up the tempo throughout. Don't be afraid of throwing in something people wouldn't think of but can get excited about. But remember it has to be family friendly (think Prodigy's No Good rather than Shamen's Ebeneezer Good). mThe most important thing is that the bride is happy. If the bride is happy, the groom is happy, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

The night ended with everyone dancing in a circle singing Bohemian Rhapsody, and the bride a groom still talk about it, four years on.

[deevey]

Spotify Premium Account and DJay for desktop or ipad would be my first port of call for something like that.

It'll save you a ton of "research" time as well as being able to take requests for just about anything if needed.

It'll be $10 - $50 (depending on version) well spent IMHO


*Tip - preload all the tracks into decks beforehand so they cache and Djay only needs to phone home to spotify verify the account not re-stream. Literally just load/unload and they will cache in the background

[thisisian]

Don't rip from YouTube.

.....but if you do, iTunes Match is a handy tool for laundering low quality rips! ;-)

[ConnectControl]

Thanks man this is definitely helpful, especially the second paragraph. I don't even think i'll bother mixing between genres, but grouping them up into mini set lists is a great idea, and I will kind of have to do that anyhow because of the different kinds of dances they want.

I also have the bride and groom supplying me with some of the personalized music they want to hear via USB now, so that should help lessen the load. They are paying me though so I might just have to take the hit and buy a few tracks to fill in the gaps.