Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Ever wondered what happens when technology fails a DJ mid-performance? Dive into this eye-opening episode where I share the heart-pounding moments when my equipment failed at crucial times—and how proper preparation saved the day.
First, picture this: You're DJing a wedding in a beautiful Hood River resort. The dance party is just beginning, with two hours of celebration ahead, when suddenly half your controller dies. What would you do? I'll walk you through my real-time problem-solving process that allowed me to deliver a seamless experience by creatively using Spotify and volume knobs as makeshift crossfaders. This wedding crisis—where I successfully DJ'd for two full hours with broken equipment—demonstrates why hiring professionals who can think on their feet matters.
Then we travel to a high-profile Nike corporate event resembling a private TEDx talk. One hour before showtime, my digital audio system completely fails. Rather than panic, I immediately deployed my backup analog mixer, saving the event without the client ever knowing there was a problem. These stories highlight my core philosophy: redundancy isn't optional—it's essential. Just as I never carried one gun or one set of handcuffs in my previous career, I never arrive at an event without backup systems and contingency plans.
Technology will fail. It happens to everyone—even trillion-dollar companies that make your smartphone. The difference between amateurs and professionals isn't whether problems occur, but how they're handled when they do. Have you prepared your own redundancies for life's crucial moments? Share your thoughts or questions about professional event production in the comments below!
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to a Murders to Music snapshot. We're going to emphasize on the music side of things. So, as you guys know, the Murders to Music whole platform goes from what I did to what I do. I do a lot of music-related stuff. Now I have a company that does DJing for weddings and corporate events. It does live music for those same events. Lighting and sound production.
Speaker 1:
All of that stuff takes technology right and you can be as great as you want to be, but if your tech fails, then what? We've all been there. When we're doing a presentation and we can't get our PowerPoint up, you know that is a high stress moment and you're in front of a corporate boardroom or something to that effect. What happens when you're at that wedding? And this is somebody's Superbowl, we don't get do-overs, and you're in the middle of it and all of a sudden things go to shit and your system fails, then what? What happens when you're out at a corporate event for Nike and all of a sudden something fails, then what? And now you don't have sound, you can't produce sound, you don't have microphones, you don't have music, whatever it may be right. So, whether you're doing tech or whether you're doing anything else in life, there's always redundancies. You got to have stuff built back in. I'm going to tell you a couple of stories, really, really quick, about a couple of times where things went really south and the recovery and then hopefully, you guys are putting redundancies in plan. You know, I didn't carry one gun at work, I carry two. Uh, I didn't carry one set of handcuffs, I carry two. You know, when you're doing things, there's gotta be those redundancies built in.
Speaker 1:
So here we are. I'm gonna take you out to a wedding. This wedding is at a awesome, awesome resort. Uh, out in hood, river Oregon, and I've got a great. Uh, I'm doing DJ. I'm doing some live music at this wedding. The live music is over. It's now the DJ portion, and when you're running a DJ controller, you have two decks, deck A and deck B. You load up a song on deck A. You're playing it. When it's time to go to the next song that's already set up on deck B, you crossfade over or you mix over. Now your song is playing on deck B. While that's going on, you put a new song on deck A. You crossfade back the other way, right? So you're juggling back and forth. Boom da, boom da boom, da boom. So I'm not sure what noise that is or how that relates Anyway. So go back and forth. So here I am, I've got this wedding.
Speaker 1:
The day has been going awesome, everything has been tested, all of my equipment is up to par, all the updates are done, I've done all the life music. We've done the introductions. We are literally kicking off the dance party. We got two hours of solid dancing and these guys want to rock. They absolutely want to party. So I load up the first song Boom, I'm playing it. Load up the second song Boom, I'm playing it. Go to load up the third song Literally the third song in a two hour set and one side of my controller no longer works.
Speaker 1:
Like there's a bug, there's something, tech fails. One side doesn't work. That means I have one deck that I can use, load one song at a time, and I'm like, holy crap, like you know, this can't be. You can't crossfade, you can't mix, you can't DJ, you can't do any of that stuff with one deck. So I think quick, and I'm like, well, I've got Spotify, so I've got Spotify, and Spotify is running through my board and I don't have a crossfader, but I have a volume knob happens if I put, like one song on the working deck, the second song I loaded up in Spotify and then I, when I'm ready for it, I turned the volume down at one volume up on the other, and I use that as my crossfader. So I give it a shot and guess what it works. So my stress level's high. I'm doing this and I'm thinking this is temporary for five minutes while I figure out what the problem is. So I've got my assistant Googling what the hell's the problem if this is happening and can't come up with any solutions. So, uh, I keep going back and forth and, before you know it, I've DJ two hours with one deck and I'm going back and forth. So you adapt, overcome and compromise. That's what I had to do. I had to go back and forth, but I got to the point where I'm actually with the volume knobs back and forth and it was pretty cool. I did some pretty cool drops and I'm like man, this actually worked out.
Speaker 1:
So hire a professional, right? A professional that has been there, done that, seen it, can think through things, think on their feet and are able to put a solution together in those rough times. Um, you know, you not had somebody with experience or somebody who's thinking on their feet, or you hire the hundred dollar DJ or the you know the hundred dollar guy to do your deck, whatever it may be. When those things come up, you don't want there to be a failure, you don't want that to shut down the night, you know, or have seconds of silence between songs and you think, man, aaron, we could put on a playlist and, uh, you know, accomplish the same thing. Sure, you could put on a playlist and play music, but there's a whole lot more to this event and to this production than just playing music. Um, anyway, so that was that experience.
Speaker 1:
But then, uh, about a year later, I'm doing an event for Nike and it's pretty cool because I got Nike going on and we're going to do this corporate event where they're bringing in some high end people to do some speeches, conversation almost like a TEDx event If you've seen TEDx or been around TEDx, it's almost like a Nike inside TEDx event. And they've hired me to do the audio production for this, which is totally cool. So I get there again, my equipment and my gear is all ready to go, and, uh, I get there, I set it all up and I go to do a sound check and there's no sound and I cannot figure it out. And my equipment is all digital, so it runs off of a cat five cable to the router and et cetera and I can't get it to work. I can't get any audio and you know we're about an hour away from start time. So luckily I carry a second mixer, a redundancy mixer, just in case an old animal, not an old analog mixer, but an analog mixer so I'm able to plug that analog mixer in, get everything up and running. The customers did not know the difference. The show went off without a hitch, it was awesome.
Speaker 1:
But again, it's that pre-thinking. If, then thinking, if this happens, then what am I going to do? And that is why I carry redundancies and I have other stuff and that's what makes, sets me apart and makes me a professional. Now you're thinking why does your shit break down all the time, aaron? It doesn't. Uh, just technology happens. You know, if you do so much and rely on tech so much, ultimately there's going to be a bug your iPhone that you're all holding right now or sitting on, if you've got an Android in your pocket, I'm sorry. You can actually give the Androids back and they'll give you an iPhone for me. Just check in with your local provider. You guys can do that. So if you're sitting on an Android, we have a help group for you. We have a solution and we can get you into something real For you. Iphone users as much as you guys use them, guess what? There's times that you turn it on and it doesn't work, or you don't get phone calls or whatever it may be. Your text messages won't send. You've got to.
