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First corporate gig: any and all advice welcome :)

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  • August 11, 2011 at 12:55 pm #5626
    Andrea Negri
    Member

    I did a lot of similar gig, you should have almost all the genre excluding the extreme ones…
    Beatles, rock-n-roll, latin must be in your drive.
    Get ready to quickly change type of music and hear a lot fo strange requests.
    By the way, actual and old radio hits are also needed.

    August 11, 2011 at 1:54 pm #5636
    Emma Partnow
    Member

    Hello Hane 🙂
    I Completely Agree with Andrea;
    I Feel that you should Find A Person in Charge Of Events for the Corporation (unless this is your Friend); and Discuss Fully with them what is Normally Expected/Accepted at these Events; as they May have a Set Agenda (being that they will have had DJ’s Previously – Most Likely);
    You May be able to Play Your Normal Set at Some Point in the Evening; but Unless given the ‘Go Ahead’ to Actually Do This; I wouldn’t Expect To;
    I Personally (at these Events) Always Begin with At Least an Hour of Ambient Music (not Dolphins; but Ambient Tracks with Kick Drums); rather than Hip Hop or R’N’B as these are Genres that ‘Could’ be Unexpected and ‘Not For Them’;
    It may be Unfortunate; but Again; as Andrea said; Radio Hits; Beatles and others like them ‘Could Be The Key’;
    Corporate Gigs are ‘One’ of the Hardest Gigs; and to Successfully Pull It Off could mean ‘Big Business For You’ 😎

    August 11, 2011 at 2:00 pm #5638
    Christopher Johnson
    Participant

    The Dj that played my last company party was awful. And this was before I started DJing. It was at a swanky club from 5-10. My guess is the Dj saw lawyers and white people and somehow thought Rick Springfield would hit the spot. once he started some dance music he switched to Billy Idol.

    Remove all your Explicit Tracks. Clean versions only.
    Stick to a theme depending on venue. If it’s a club there’s a reason they chose that place. If it’s at the company, is it beach, sports, mardi gras theme?

    Beatles? Screw that. “Sorry I didn’t bring any oldies.”

    Start with radio hits and then just do your thing like normal and read the crowd. Good luck!

    August 12, 2011 at 9:06 am #5700
    DJ Hane K
    Participant

    Thanks for the great advice, everyone!

    I got a hold of the person in charge of the event and asked about the type of music they’d like to hear, and the lady basically told me to keep it nice and light during the early hours, but then just play whatever to keep the dancefloor going – so I guess I’ll just have to play this one by ear and see what gets the crowd jumping 🙂

    The venue is a sort of a private club they rent out for events like this, with a nice sound system, a dance floor, basically all the essentials – so I’m guessing dance music at some point will probably work.

    The gig’s tonight, so wish me luck 🙂 I’ll let you know how it went.

    August 12, 2011 at 10:02 am #5703
    Andrea Negri
    Member

    Another suggestion coming from my best friend (DJ GLR) is to collect information about the company, like:
    – what they do
    – who is the boss
    – from where the boss come from
    – company competitors
    – etc
    During the gig, this kind of info would be very usefull!

    August 12, 2011 at 6:27 pm #5739
    Emma Partnow
    Member

    DJ Hane K, post: 5695 wrote: Thanks for the great advice, everyone!

    I got a hold of the person in charge of the event and asked about the type of music they’d like to hear, and the lady basically told me to keep it nice and light during the early hours, but then just play whatever to keep the dancefloor going – so I guess I’ll just have to play this one by ear and see what gets the crowd jumping 🙂

    The venue is a sort of a private club they rent out for events like this, with a nice sound system, a dance floor, basically all the essentials – so I’m guessing dance music at some point will probably work.

    The gig’s tonight, so wish me luck 🙂 I’ll let you know how it went.

    Many Many Best Wishes for Tonight’s Gig Hane 😎 😎

    August 15, 2011 at 8:13 pm #5845
    Michael M. Hughes
    Participant

    Never say, “Screw the Beatles.” Especially at a corporate event, you’re likely to do well playing some classic rock early in the evening. Stones, Beatles… tunes with a bit of a dance-y vibe (“Miss You” never fails). Corporate events are a lot like weddings, minus the schmaltzy love songs—you need to be ready to please a variety of people, and some people will be happy hearing music they like early in the evening because they’re not dancers. So hit the rock/alternarock crowd early on and make them happy before shifting gears to dance music after the drinks start kicking in.

    Also like weddings, you need to be flexible and have a focused collection—not necessarily hundreds of songs from each genre, but a few surefire hits from different genres. I was once caught off-guard at a corporate party when I started getting lots of requests for modern country… this was pre-iPhone/wifi days, so I literally had nothing for them but managed to throw down some old country chestnuts that sufficed (or at least kept the beer bottles from flying at me). Now I keep my iTunes organized by genre, and before a corporate or wedding gig I go over the charts and pick a few popular tracks for r&b, pop, alternative, new country, hiphop, etc. just to have in my arsenal.

    Good luck, and please let us know how it went and any lessons you learned.

    August 15, 2011 at 8:56 pm #1001421
    NewportDJ Drew
    Participant

    but managed to throw down some old country chestnuts that sufficed (or at least kept the beer bottles from flying at me).

    Why do I see images of you singing rawhide? 😀

    August 25, 2011 at 8:04 pm #1001504
    yournamehere
    Member

    A good 1/3 of my holiday season is corporate events. You want whatever the 98 Cool oldies station plays. You want whatever the Soccer Mom 100.something station plays. You want to take it easy on the rap. I wouldn’t play any electronica unless someone specifically asks you for it. In my experience, stuff like “Sweet Home Alabama” or Tom Petty “Free Fallin'” are good fallbacks/starters if you’re trying to feel out the crowd. Beatles & Stones. “D’yer Maker” is also money. Hopefully by the time you’re a few songs in someone might come up to ask if you have ________. The broader your musical selection, the easier your job becomes.

    When we book corporate stuff, one question we always ask is, “What type of music are y’all looking for/do you want us to avoid?”

    Take requests, but exercise discretion. Clean edits for sure. Keep a notepad or text yourself any request you don’t already have so you can get it later. If you use a notepad for requests, that’ll give you a good sense of what the crowd that night wanted.

    August 26, 2011 at 8:13 am #6382
    DJ Hane K
    Participant

    Hi again!

    Sorry, completely forgot to report back here 🙂 Here’s a short recap of what turned out to be a very successful night:

    I started the evening by playing some ambient background music, like Emma suggested. People were eating, there were some speeches, and people were socializing amongst themselves – so basically the way each party starts, slowly. After dinner the drinks started flowing, and I could see people getting more relaxed, so I cranked the volume up a bit, and switched to playing some older radio hits. A few heads were nodding, but no major movement towards the dancefloor yet. One of the organizers, a woman in her late twenties I guessed, turned up and asked if I could play some R’n’B, so I did, and this got a few of the younger ladies on the floor, but they left after a few songs. So I decided to switch styles again, and started playing oldies rock – Queen, CCR, Dire Straits, you get the picture. Not surprisingly this got a lot more people on the dancefloor, including the older folk present. The mood was good, people were dancing (and getting increasingly drunk), and I figured I’d found the right music style to play.

    Then, at around midnight, older folks were leaving, and there was a sort of a break at the party with people saying goodbyes, some leaving, some hoarding more drinks, and I got the first request for Lady Gaga. I took a quick scan, and noticed that the average age at the party had dropped considerably, so I figured it was time to switch things up again. Just to see what would happen, I put on the DJs From Mars mash-up ‘Run This Town in D Minor’, and followed up with Lady Gaga’s Judas (ElectroLightz Remix). This really got the party going, and the dancefloor filled out nicely – apparently it was now time to pull out all the stops, and hit ’em with my usual set. This basically went on until four in the morning, and the party showed no signs of ending. I was pretty exhausted by then, so I put on ‘My Heart Will Go On’ (Jack Sauce mix) as the last (and first) slow song of the night, got on the mic, thanked everyone for a great night, and prepared to start packing up my stuff. There were a lot of ‘awwwww not yet!’ cries from the dancefloor.

    Fortunately (I guess), there was this one guy at the party who claimed to be a DJ (he was pretty annoying at times, because he kept wanting to chat me up about my gear, my music, my mixing – you know, all the little things that you really shouldn’t do when someone’s playing a set!), and he was still at the party at that time, so I called him over and asked if he’d like to take over for me. I was using a house mixer and he could hook his iPhone into it, which he did. I packed up my V7’s and other stuff and left for home. Later I heard that last people had left the party after seven in the morning 🙂

    So, overall, a great night. I got a call from the organizers later on, and they said that the feedback they’d gotten was excellent. Good times 🙂

    To conclude, a picture says more than a thousand words:

    August 26, 2011 at 2:21 pm #6386
    Emma Partnow
    Member

    This is Excellent Hane 🙂
    I am so Pleased that you managed to Read The Crowd Correctly; and the Ambient Build Up was the Right Move at the Right Time 😎
    It sounds like you had a Lot of Switching of Genres and Styles to Deal With; and it is Great that you not only had the Tracks to Enable that; but that you were ‘Thinking On Your Feet’ and it Worked 🙂
    And to get a Call from the Organisers Complimenting you on the Audience is ‘The Icing On The Cake’;
    Well Done for a Brilliant Performance 🙂 😎

    September 24, 2011 at 11:05 am #7819
    Phil Morse
    Keymaster

    Glad it went well.

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