Good gig bad gig
What a difference a day makes.
Friday night Xmas party , damn near a full floor all night in attendance were 90% ladies ,10% gents , bar empty
Saturday night Xmas party , empty floor most of the night , in attendance were 10% ladies , 90% Gents , at the bar most of the night
See a pattern here....lol , thats the way it goes sometimes
Daryll
darylldj.co.uk , serving hampshire , Surrey and sussex
3rd of 9
3rd Xmas Party of the season for a web design company imaginatively named Cobweb!
Not the typical as they had Laser Quest in a marquee in the car park, arcade driving games and a 17 year old comedian.
The catering company that booked me are very efficient and served the 3 course meal for 143 people in 83 minutes. I timed it!
Awards ceremony followed by comedian left me with 2 hours. Initially the 70% of the audience who were male rush off to play with the boys toys or use the free bar. Played to the ladies who had a good time and danced with the men joining them for the last 30 mins.
Need to prepare myself mentally for Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week, no 4,5 & 6.
Making a silk purse out of a Sow's ear.
Birthday party last night in The West Riding, so I was honoured and relieved to have assistance from my native guide and Sherpa, Davesounds. He was so efficient that we were out of the venue and turned the key in the ignition in under thirty minutes, including five minutes chatting with a very happy Birthday Boy.
I'm not naming the venue, but it boasts a " state of the art sound and lighting system ".
Dave's disappointment was palpable when after he'd wangled a special dispensation to be allowed to make use of this equipment, he found at the heart of the sound system, a Legendary Prosound 1000!The four wooden boxes strapped to the walls weren't that exciting, either, but to be fair, it made a perfectly acceptable noise all over the room. Try as he might, he couldn't light or rotate the mirror ball, although he did work out how to dim and change colours on the big LED washes in the stunning ceiling.
We admitted defeat, and dragged in the Proels, Crossfires, Powerbar and Dave's Kaleidos. In our humble opinion, it all looked good and worked beautifully. The cunning plan for the night was to be set up early to allow for a couple of hours of strict tempo dance early on by the venue, and us to return at eight till midnight.
Well we did our bit, but the venue's take on them providing carefully chosen music was to give the client a copied CD and " the DJ can play it " . Charming!. Dave was equal to the task,ripping it to his laptop, and setting it to repeat all, giving us a bit of leeway. We popped into the nearest watering hole which was a revelation. Let's just say that the Facebook piccy of the Rottweiler ordering a drink at the bar came from here. ( And when I say Rottweiler, I mean the four legged kind, not a miserable barmaid )!
I was happy to return to our gig, where we took over the musical duties from the software, and got stuck into providing songs suitable for background music and a spot of dancing. The place is a dance academy, and many of the guests were pupils, which showed in some of the moves on the floor, very impressive. Once the buffet was out of the way, they loosened up bit, and we had some fun, with a lot of dressing up, especially to Y.M.C.A. Dave showed himself to be an expert in the actions for that one.I had been asked to wear the Afro wig shown on my website ( thanks Wayne, some of those piccies were more intended for amusement than publication, but all grist to the mill, eh ) and I did so.
The music was very varied, and very important obviously, and Dave was delighted when we were handed a list of requests for mainly Northern Soul, which we both enjoyed playing a lot. Certain songs filled the floor for obvious reasons, such as Dance The Night Away-Mavericks, which led to some brilliant Line Dancing, but odd ones amazed us, such as Guitar Town- Steve Earle, which went down a storm. I'd never have seen that one coming.
All in all, a really good and enjoyable night, due in no small part to Dave's sterling help, and the attitude of the guests.
I'm absolutely loving Christmas party season so far. Infact I don't think I've enjoyed it this much since 1998. Loads of contributors to this not least of which is an about face in my approach. Come mad friday I might change my mind we'll see but here's hoping...
Had a fantastic weekend.
Thursday I covered a pub quiz for a pal who is on holiday. Easy enough night, good banter with the locals and in the words of the staff: You should do this all the time, your quiz is much better than Davy's
Friday was a wedding I'd been dreading since they booked. It was booked under the guise of a 50th, they then said it was going to be a wedding. I thought they were at it but it turned out that it really was the guys 50th and they'd decided to get married and turn it into a joint celebration. The client was quite 'challenging' at times and was wanting the full bhoona wedding package without paying the full bhoona wedding price so I had to be quite blunt with her on a few occasions.
Come Friday all was great - she apologised for "being a bridezilla" because she was so stressed with organising it all and to be fair on the night she was a pleasure. They'd married the day before low key and the night was very much a party more than a formal type reception. Great night, awesome feedback.
Saturday I did my first Christmas party night of the season (I'm only doing 3) covering for a mate who is this particular venue's resident. Easiest load in ever - park up, open fire doors, move stuff 5 yards from car to performance area.
Really great night with a new game I tried out that went down a storm. Lots of great feedback and thank yous and the token absolute steamer actually kept a fairly large distance from my booth which was nice.
Some little gussied up tramp called me the worst DJ ever because I wouldn't play her deep trance "crowd pleaser" as she put it. Next year she should probably get her requests in a bit earlier than 12:58 when it's a 1am finish
Had been at uni on Saturday morning and my post gig hot tub prosecco session turned into a 2 bottle affair so I did very little of productive value yesterday
Company party night in a nice hotel in Glasgow on Friday, which has reasonably good access for it being in the city centre. Family party night for a local horse riding centre on Saturday and that's me for 2017 - well apart from the Xmas disco for the kids in work next Tuesday.
Almost forgot - I bought this for going to Las Vegas at New Year
Decided I might as well get my moneys worth so I'm going to wear it for these party nights. I thought I'd get a bit of a ribbing for it but everyone who commented said they loved it
Tuesday night Christmas parties.....urgh!
This one was in a Cambridge college, with lovely access for a change, plentiful parking.....and appalling acoustics (it was a diamond shaped room and the sound was bouncing all over the place).
I'd been looking forward to this one as I was booked on the pretence of music from the 70s to the 90s....bring it on. In the event, the 70s and 80s were working a treat....until the younger ones started demanding stuff you can't dance to - but I try to entertain everyone and since there was a sizeable group of said whipper-snappers I thought I'd better make an effort.
The problem is, the older ones then saw this as their opportunity to start leaving (well....they've got work the next morning after all). Because of the weeknight party, there wasn't an awful lot of alcohol being consumed either so it was a rather tame affair that petered out 10 minutes before the allotted 11:30pm finish. Oh well...I tried.
Made a couple of interesting discoveries tonight though...
1. The mic controls on the MX7000 are horrendous. Boy that thing's heavy on the gain....doesn't take much to make the Maui 28's feedback (yes....I actually managed to make the Maui's scream!)
2. An interesting WiFi dongle issue. I have Freedom sticks which use Chauvet's own wireless protocol (DiFi) and as such had to purchase one of their boxes to transmit. Into this, I've plugged in a Lixidar wireless dongle which transmits to my other fixtures. it's worked a treat this way for the past 5-6 weeks.
It wasn't going to play ball tonight (may have been something to do with the fact that I was standing right under a wireless repeater mounted to the ceiling). So....hardwire it is then....except I only remembered to hardwire the Intimidator 305s, completely forgetting about the 2 Party Bars either side of the rig. I didn't realise this until about half an hour into the party....mainly because the Party Bars were responding! It would appear that hardwiring to a fixture with one of the Chinese wireless DMX boards also gives it the opportunity to TRANSMIT(this is something I plan on testing in the very near future!)
Right - time for a kip. Got a long drive tomorrow for a very boring work meeting, then back out on the road for a school disco on Thursday
Well, well, well. A Denon controller with poor mic inputs. Who'da thunk it?Originally Posted by Imagine
The mc6000mk1 was derided for its poor mic inputs when really the problem was one of gain structure. That said even then the mic channels are very hot. I've studied the circuit diagrams & found the level control comes after a lot of input gain. No! You're doing it all wrong, Denon! Mic inputs are first amplified by 33.4dB (voltage gain of 46) then go to the mic level control, get amplified again by 6db (voltage gain of 4) before entering an audio codec via a circuit which clips the level to 5V to protect the codec. This is silly in the extreme. Why does the audio from the mics get digitised here? Why, so they can apply eq & echo digitally of course! Derrr. I'd rather do without the stupid echo thanks. So your blessed mic is amplified by a factor of almost 40dB in the chain & the audio codec only needs 1Vpk-pk to clip. Arghhhh.Well, well, well. A Denon controller with poor mic inputs. Who'da thunk it?
I'm gonna change 2 resistors on the input board to get me a more workable input volume. A hair past 'off' simply booms out even with a regular dynamic mic!
Using wireless mics I never really have much of a problem, however the biggest challenge is when using the Denon X500 mixer - that was lethal. Using a wired mic was nigh on impossible.Well, well, well. A Denon controller with poor mic inputs. Who'da thunk it?
Looking at Denon's specs they're designing mic preamps for a studio rather than a live environment. The MC6000 MK1 has a mic input sensitivity adjustable between -54dBV (5.6mV) & -34dbV (56mV). The MK2 goes between -60dBU (2.6mV) and -16dBU (347mV). The DN-X500 on the other hand... -54dBV (5.6mV), same as the MC6000 - very very easy to clip if you don't know what you're doing. An excitable DJ on a wired dynamic mic is probably going to produce something in the region of 50mV so the usable range of your mic gain control has been reduced to OFF < Just a hair off OFF. This needs its own thread really.
So, NOBODY is making mixers with mic channels suitable for mobile DJs anymore then. With the possible exception of ADJ...
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