As autumn starts to descend upon us, I once again find myself fondly looking back on this years events. Another year will be over soon and it reminds me of how time passes by so quickly. I often refer to my favourite saying ‘A good life is made of good memories’ and this saying is so true! Creating those magical moments at an event need a few factors to fall into place, good friends and family, alcohol, a venue with great acoustics and music specifically designed to suit the event. Perhaps many people overlook the importance of the music selection, but there’s so much thought and effort that goes into this from my prospective. From keeping up with the latest releases, to making sure I can cater for all taste, genres and decades to being able to use my vast experience into what to play next to keep people on the dance floor is just the tip of the iceberg. I carry over 140,000 high quality music files and there’s even some basic psychology goes into each selection of the tracks. For example, when it’s early evening at a wedding when the happy couple are still meeting and greeting evening guests, the music is naturally kept fairly low at this point. Most of the younger people during this period tend to be too busy socialising to pay too much attention to what songs are playing, however, the much older guests tend to listen to what's being played. Therefore, I often cater for the older generation at this particulate point in the night. This is all about retaining the older guest, if I was to play music that was too new, too soon and too loud, older guest tend not to enjoy the listening experience and as a result may even make their excuses and leave early. On the flip side, if they have enjoyed the music, they are more likely to stay and pretty much dance to all styles of music later on. People watching is part of my job, looking around the room to see who is tapping their feet or singing along to the music is a typical observational tool I use. Having said all of this, not all events are the same, the example I used above suggest a chilled meet and greet section of the evening, but sometimes, especially if people have got married early in the day, by the time 7.00pm comes around everyone is ready to party, or indeed there may not even be any more guests arriving. Extracting all the finer details from my clients makes a massive difference as to how I choose music. Another important factor is inviting guests to requests songs, I may have years of experience and intuition of knowing what to play, but the best judge is the guests, they know what they like and what they want to dance too. I love all sorts of music, from the 50’s right through to the latest dance music, so it’s always a pleasure to take request and sometimes drift away from the usual tracks that get the hell played out of them. Perhaps my personal favorite decade is the 80’s and this is the decade where I perfected my mixing the skills the hard way, I.e on vinyl. It’s all digital nowadays, but the digital turntable replaces that replaces the old analogue format still rains as king when mixing techniques are required. Incidentally, I still have turntables and all my old records! If you would like to discuss booking me for your event, please feel free to email or call anytime, I would love to hear from you. I am so lucky to work in a job where I get to meet so many amazing people and play music for a living, peace out!