Sioux Falls Mobile DJ Blog | BPM DJ Productions

This last weekend, over the Memorial Day Holiday, I traveled to Mitchell, South Dakota for a wedding reception at the Holiday Inn.  Since my wife was working that weekend, I had to have Grandma and Grandpa watch our 15 month old daughter, Lillian.  The trick was, they were camping in Chamberlain, SD - about 75 miles West of Mitchell, and I was coming from Brandon, SD - which is about 75 miles East of Mitchell.  So, in order to drop Lily off, I had to drive past Mitchell and meet them at a half-way point.  Then I had to double-back on myself to go to the venue.

The wedding reception started at 5PM, and I was scheduled to start at 6PM.  I got there about 4PM and began to unload.  There was also a four piece Jazz Quartet there to play dinner music - they did a fantastic job, by the way!  Setting up took me no time at all.  I was using my condensed wedding lighting rig, which consists of one t-bar light stand with the lights premounted to the top.  For lights I was using 3 Par-56 cans, 3 Novascan scanners (2 on the bar and 1 on the floor for the disco ball,) a 12″ disco ball, and a new Chauvet Vue III.  I was most impressed with my new Vue, I shined it up on the ceiling and turned it off and on with a switch.  WOW, I was blown away!  It looked awesome above the dancers.  I’ll have to bring my video camera to the next gig to capture some footage.  I was really impressed with the rest of the lighting rig as well, it did a good job of washing the dancefloor with light, and had plenty of movement from the Novascans.  The third Novascan did a good job of spotlighting the disco ball, but I have a brighter Elation Pro Color color changer on order that should do an even better job. 

The bride and groom did a great job of selecting music, and the crowd was pretty lively.  I exclusively used Serato Scratch Live for the wedding, and as usual, it didn’t let me down.  One of the nicest things about that program is the fact that you can prepare all of the music in a “crate” beforehand.  So, I had all of the reception music in one place.  The dancefloor was pretty big, not so much wide, but very long.  It was a nice venue, I wouldn’t mind going back there.

After the reception ended at 12, I loaded up and headed over to Chamberlain to spend the night camping with my daughter.  We were up kind of early the next morning, so we headed back to Brandon, SD and arrived there around 10:30 AM.

The upcoming month of June should be very busy.  I’ve got a gig every Saturday.  First I’ll be heading to Madison, SD, then Yankton, SD, followed by Brandon, SD (yeah, no travel,) Rock Valley, IA, and finally Hartford, SD.

Now that Summer is here, it’s pretty much weddings every weekend for me.  Oddly enough, I do not have a wedding on 7/7/7 - the most popular wedding date in history, but I have one on even other Saturday in June and July.  This last Saturday I had a reception at the Eagles Club in Sioux City, IA.

I enjoy DJ’ing in Sioux City, it’s only about an hour away, and it’s a pretty good market.  In fact, some time ago I purchased the domain www.siouxcitydj.com just in case I would like to start focusing on that area a little more.  Anyway, the reception venue was right off of the interstate, so it was an easy find.  I pulled up about 4PM, and the reception was scheduled to start at 5:30PM.  I had a nice easy set-up with an outside door only about 10 feet from where I was to set up.

I was set up in less than an hour, and people started to roll in.  I played dinner music for awhile, and after a few tables were moved, we started the dances.  It was a pretty thin crowd all night, but it was a fun time nevertheless.  The reception was scheduled to end at 11:00PM, and around 10:00, I was starting to question whether or not the reception would last that long.  Well, I continued to play good music, and gradually the dancefloor filled up.  That last hour actually turned out to be the most active time all night.  I gave out a number of business cards, so that will hopefully result in a few more Sioux City gigs.  And, to add to the already wonderful night, I managed to fix a problem with my trailer taillights that I had been fighting for weeks!

 This next weekend, I have another wedding in Mitchell, SD at the Holiday Inn.  Mitchell is another great market for me to get my name out in, and I have already done a number of gigs there.  It should be a fun reception, the bride and groom’s request list has a lot of great songs.  Plus, I just got my Chauvet Vue light - so that will be a nice addition.  After that, my next gig is in Madison, SD at Geno’s, which is a nice place right by Lake Madison.  Last time I was there, we had some tornadoes and my truck and trailer got some hail damage.  Come to think of it, it was probably this time last year!  Let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself!

 On another note, the redesign of www.bpmdjproductions.com appears to be having a positive effect on my leads.  Google picked up the site on it’s latest crawl, and it is showing up really nice in the search engine results.  So nice in fact that I might be able to cancel my www.wedj.com advertising.  That site has always been great to me, but there was a big change in the site, and the leads really aren’t there anymore.  I need to book a few more gigs for September and October to finish filling out the year, but at the same time, I’ll be fine if I manage to stay right where I’m at. 

I’m in the process of steamlining my wedding light show.  Last Summer, I spent about 45 minutes each wedding setting up my lighting, and about 45 minutes setting up my sound.  Then, I would spend another 15 minutes reprogramming my lights for the particular venue. 

I would like to cut that setup time down to about 15 minutes.  To do that, I am going to eliminate one of my light stands, leaving a single stand.  On that stand, I plan on having 2 of my scanner lights, 2-3 Par Cans (for mood lighting), and a mirror ball.  I will spotlight the mirror ball with a super bright Elation Pro Color 150 Watt discharge color changer.

I’m also going to have a Chauvet Vue III for the ceiling, a little trick that I learned from www.djchat.com.  I’m excited since this light has been the called THE DJ light of 2007.  Here’s a pic of what it looks like:

I may even have the Vue before my Sioux City Wedding this weekend.  The FedEx tracking said it should arrive today!

Over the weekend, I launched my redesign of bpmdjproductions.com.  The site has a nice clean layout, and will feature video and pictures on every page.  My overall goal is to make potential clients feel like they know me personally, simply by visiting the site.  I also purchased another domain name bpmdj.net, and am redirecting it to bpmdjproductions.com.  I’m thinking that the shorter name will be easier to remember for marketing purposes.

I am going to focus on providing regularly updated videos and pictures, and might even throw a few videos on this blog.  I have a wedding reception this Saturday, so maybe I’ll have an opportunity there.

This has probably been one of my busiest Aprils ever.  I performed at 5 Proms and 1 wedding reception, and have traveled to Parker, SD, Parkston, SD, Canistota, SD, Hurley, SD, Sioux Center, IA, and Sioux Falls, SD.  There were a lot of late nights, and a couple double-booked weekends, but it was well worth it.

I would have to say that the best Prom was Sioux Center’s.  I have never DJ’ed for that school before, and the students seemed to enjoy my performance.  I think this is due in part to the fact that I am not like any other DJ in the area, I bring a lot of nightclub experience with me, and beat-mix almost every song into the next.  The students were great, very courteous and full of energy.

The next night (4/28), I had an upscale wedding reception at the Downtown Holiday Inn.  I took extra care when setting everything up to make sure it was nice and clean - no exposed wires.  The end result was great, and the extra effort was well worth it.  I had a nice new tuxedo vest and tie for myself to complete the upscale look.  It was kind of a long night, I got there to setup at 3PM and did not leave until about 2AM, but I had a great time.  The bride was very nice, and everyone in attendence was great as well.  As the night grew later, the music started to have a little more “bump” and the hotel had complaints from 3 floors below us.  I’m sure it had a lot to do with where I was setup - right next to a main wall that undoubtedly carried the vibrations well.  We didn’t start receiving complaints until 11:30 or so, and I turned the volume down for the last half hour.

The worst part of the night were the elevator rides.  It was very time consuming to load up my cart with equipment, roll to the elevator, wait for the elevator, and go up 10 floors to the ballroom, then unload and do it all over again.  Well, at least I didn’t have to use the stairs!

I have a little break before my next reception in May (May 19th to be exact.)  I’ll take advantage of that time to upgrade a couple of things with my current system.  I’m planning on purchasing a new case for my turntables, mixer, and Serato interface.  I might also rearrange some of my lights to improve my wedding reception light show.  I’ve got a pretty busy Summer ahead of me, and my overall goal is to make my operation as efficient as possible.