Wedding DJ with a live band

Paul:
Hello people, this is Paul from Tara Weddings.

Alex:
This is Alex from Tara Weddings

Paul:
Today we’re going to speak about the wedding DJ with a live band. How can they work together? What the wedding DJ supposed to know about the live band, and how they can help each other to make a crowd go crazy. So Alex, what do you think about live bands?

Alex:
So live band is a traditional approach to any wedding. Because the way it used to be is that musicians would show up, they would accommodate the whole sonical or musical background for the entire wedding. However, time changes. And nowadays some people prefer live bands. Some people prefer DJ, which is basically like imitation for live band. However, here’s a couple of things to know about bringing a DJ and a live band together. So first of all, this experience is a little bit pricey because live band can cost relatively a lot of money. If you were buying a cheap band then, well you’ll get what you pay for.

Paul:
Good luck.

Alex:
But if you would like to have a full size band with a couple of singers, usually it’s male, female singers because the variety of songs that they perform can be different, right.

Alex:
So there’s some with males singers. There’s some with female singers. Anyway-

Paul:
Sometimes they sing together.

Alex:
Exactly. So the good way to make a set up, is that a DJ would perform during the cocktail hours. And then sometimes the bride would ask for live band to play a specific song when they step into the venue, and specific song for the first dance. So it can look really awesome because usually when you have live musicians on stage, you kind of feel the vibe of live music. It’s like having an orchestra. And when the party parts… I can’t even speak. When the party starts, that’s again when usually people mix live band and DJ because some people prefer electronic music, some people prefer rock music, traditional band music. I don’t know how to call that…

Paul:
Folk.

Alex:
Folk music? Yeah, whatever.

Alex:
And then usually it’s a set of live band, 40 minutes, one hour. Then there’s the break for the band and 15-20 minutes for a DJ. Then after that 20 minutes, there’s a second set for the band, then again a break and a third set. So what they do is they mix DJing and live performance. In this case, you basically satisfy the taste of everybody.

Alex:
In terms of how to avoid any issues. There’s actually none unless you have the same setup for a band and for a DJ. Meaning that everything goes through the same equipment. As long as the band knows what they do and the DJ knows what he or she does, nothing should interfere. But it all goes through the same PA system. It doesn’t affect any sound.

Paul:
And what is PA system?

Alex:
PA system?

Alex:
PA system is those big speakers that you have on the stage when you have any type of performance whether it’s a DJ or it’s a live band. So when you play the instrument, for example, if you play the guitar, it goes to a guitar amp. And then the mic picks up that sound from the guitar and then goes to the mixer, and then the mixer splits the channel to right and left. That goes to P.A. System which are big speakers that you have on the stage.

Paul:
Amazing.

Paul:
So guys from my experience, it is very good when DJ knows the band. Because in this case they can work together in order to make sure that people are actually enjoying the wedding. Because sometimes when DJ playing some songs and the crowd just wants to chill. In this case, DJ can ask the band to play some live guitar music and everybody [crosstalk 00:03:39] be on the same flow. But when it’s time for the dancing and people want to go crazy dancing on the songs that they will like, that they know, that they hear on the radio every day. Band can tell this to the DJ and DJ will just switch to his top 10 or whatever songs so people will go crazy because there are moments on some weddings, when band is playing and nobody’s dancing at all. Or DJs playing his best and nobody’s enjoying it.

Paul:
It’s just different mood. So it’s really good to have variety on your wedding.

Alex:
The other thing is sometimes I think, last summer we had a couple of these episodes when I think it was the groom or maybe his best friend. So he asked for an acoustic guitar and he just was singing  in the mic like a song or anything. So you can’t do that with a DJ, but with a live band that looked really awesome because if you’ve got a piece of guitar playing and then the rest of the band, because they knew the song, they just started to do all kinds of instruments and it looked really cool.

Paul:
Epic.

Alex:
Epic. And this is what you want on your wedding. Everything to go “epic”. So your guests will love it and they will remember it.

Paul:
The other thing is when you shopping around for the band, there’s a little trick that band uses. So sometimes they play with the tracks. So basically, they have a list of the songs they are supposed to play and that’s some sort of, can be disadvantage or advantage. It depends. But disadvantage is, if you start playing your songs from the list then you can’t change that because you have to talk to everybody that’s on the stage and say, okay guys, actually right now we’re not going to believe this. We’re going to believe that. So that’s a lot of pressure. So usually events just play the tracks in a certain order of the songs. You just go. A DJ you can feel the crowd. So if the crowd doesn’t react.

Paul:
Yeah and that’s it. However, there is some bands who does interesting thing. They don’t have a list of the songs they play. They start with the song and you see how the crowd goes and then they switch to the other songs. They play the song. They start for example, I don’t know, something easy like many Bob Marley Song.

Paul:
And then the crowd feels that, so the singer goes “okay guys”. He turns around, to the band and goes “okay guys, next song is going to be like this one, but some other reggae song” and so by doing that, the musicians know what to do and, like a DJ, they would go into the next song and then the next song with the same genre of music. And when they need to switch to some other genre, again, just say to them; “Hey, right now it’s better if it’s a good time to play ‘Living On A Prayer'” for example. Right? And then he comes up to the guitar player and says “okay, just start playing the main riff.” And that how it flows into the next song. So there’s some really cool things bands can do nowadays. But yeah.

Alex:
So the main point, your band and your DJ supposed to feel the crowd. Otherwise that just doesn’t make any sense.

Paul:
Just doesn’t work. It just doesn’t, I mean awful.

Alex:
Terrible.

Paul:
Thank you very much for watching, and see you the next time.

Alex:
Thanks guys.