What happens when there’s a mistake?

On Facebook, there are groups for DJ’s to network, ask for help or feedback, get ideas, talk about gear and discuss trends in music. In one group, someone asked about making mistakes and what to do. I thought this might be something I could talk about. With over 20 years in this industry, when I’m training new DJs, I reassure them that mistakes are part of the journey, we WILL make them, and how we respond makes all the difference. Here are a some examples:

The most common mistake a wedding DJ can make is playing the wrong song at the wrong time. For instance, for the ceremony, playing the exit song (the Wedding March) at the beginning of the ceremony, and then playing the Bridal Chorus at the end. Oh yeah - I did that.

Another time I was using a venue’s sound system, and I was using an iPod for their music. I had their music set up in order in a folder, and running through the system sounding as it should. Played the first song for the entrance of the family, played the next song (entrance of the wedding party), and went to the third song (entrance of the bride escorted by her father), they entered and started walking - I hit “play” and it skipped to the last song. I faded it out, went back to the bridal entrance song, hit play again, and it skipped to the last song……again. I went back to the wedding party entrance song (so as not to have dead air), and the bride GLARED at me all the way down the aisle. That set the tone for her opinion of me the entire event. At the end of the event, the groom asked for a discount (the bride was so upset even though the rest of the day went flawlessly), I agreed and offered to take some off the balance for ONE song that wouldn’t play.
So now we make sure that all the music plays, and that music is backed up on multiple devices in the event of an equipment failure.

There are other mistakes that happen. I’ll cover those in future posts.