Tip to those using ipods for reception music

I had been trying to find a local DJ to put together a mix of our reception music, and finally found one that was willing to work with us about a month ago. We sent him a list of all the songs we wanted, and highlighted our must haves. There were some songs we wanted to play that were really long that we wanted shortened, so we could fit in the most songs in the 2-2.5 hours we would have for dancing. Well for the past two weeks Mike and I have not been able to get a hold of him. We are hiring a DJ at our resort, but were told they don't have up to date music. Since we don't know the DJ's style and how they mix the songs together we wanted to come prepared with a mix on our ipods that he could just hook up and play with CDs as backup.

 

Mike had already created the playlist of our reception songs and put them in the order he wanted them played. He then listened to each song and shortened the time (there is usually a buffer of a few seconds of dead air at the end of each song so there is a break in between songs). He also started some songs later that had long or weird intros. Once that was done he was able to move the songs into the GarageBand program on our Mac. For the long songs he was able to fade them out to a shorter length. He was able to overlap certain songs that flowed together to mix them so we have one continuous playlist. He was able to do one hour mixes and burned each hour to a CD, and then just merged each mix into one playlist on his ipod. It honestly didn't take that long once he cut down each song in itunes and put them in order, and we didn't have to pay for someone to do it. I thought I would share this to you all who are planning on using ipods for your reception music.

Thanks!! I am doing this as well. I am definitely not a DJ so any advice is appreciated.

 

Is there any way you can post the playlist? Did you mix in fast and slow songs? What ratio did you use (like 4 fast then 2 slow). Sorry for all the questions but this is my next big DIY project!

This is one of my big DIY projects as well! Did your fiance edit the songs using itunes or GarageBand? Unfortunately I do not have a MAC so I'm hoping I can do this with itunes. I grouped my playlists into six catagories.

 

1)Ceremony

2)Cocktail Hour

3)Reception

4)1st Dance

5)Dance Warm-up

6)Dancing Fools

 

Other DIY iPod playlisters - how are you organizing your music

 

Thanks for the tips - I am having so much fun creating all of our favorite tunes into our playlists I stayed up late last wkend getting started on this and I was already getting all teary eyed picking out ceremony music. Towards the end of the night we had a full dance party in our living room - I LOVE IT!

 

Rachel

We need to do this as well. Its going to be a BIG pain in the a$$ I think. I'm dreading it. So, I'm excited to hear all of your ideas! I'm so technologically challenged its not even funny.

Thanks for this information. I'll be sure to use all of it!

Well Michelle, I guess we are both waiting till now to do this.. yeeeeeaahhh we are in the same boat and today at work was all about the playlist and what order.. just to be sure incase something happens... now I just have go to itunes tonight and buy half the songs.. LOL

 

Gotta love how we wait till the last nanosecond to this.. too much like!!

Thanks for the heads up on this one. I am planning to show your post to FI... he is in charge of this one :-)

I'll have to copy the playlist from Mike's itunes since he hasn't updated mine yet. We didn't include our first dance, father/daughter, and mother/son songs in the mix since we will play those first and then the mix will start. We started with Electric Slide since I figured after 3 slow songs we'll need a faster song to get people going and I figured that would be a good one to at least get all the girls on the dance floor. Then from there we did about 10 fast songs and then a slow song. I like fast songs much better than slow songs, but I wanted to have a couple breaks and some songs for the older guests to be able to dance to.

We created a playlist for pre-ceremony, ceremony, cocktail hour, and reception and organized the songs in the playlist. You can edit the start and stop times of each song in itunes, but to do the mixing part where the end of one song overlaps a little with the beginning of the next song needs to be done in Garage Band. However, if you don't have a Mac and just edit the start and stop times of the songs there won't be a big gap between the songs if you just play it straight from your playlist like there would be if you didn't edit them. Some songs had a few seconds of dead air so playing it in a reception type setting where people are dancing it would be really noticeable.

My FI did all the work, but I was watching him do it and it didn't look that hard to do. You just have to make sure you have the songs in a good order so they flow well into the next one and that you don't stop the song too early or it will have an abrupt stop.

If it wasn't for the DJ going MIA we would have been done with it. I'm glad it's done though, one less thing to worry about. Now I just have to finish those damn programs!

Does anyone know if you can download songs from Limewire to an Ipod? Is that a ridiculous question or what??

It doesn't matter where you get the music from (I actually rip my own from CDs and add them to my ipod) but you DEFINITELY have to go through itunes first, because ipods don't play mp3 files, they play mp4 files, so they have to be encoded through itunes first into the mp4 format. Sounds complicated, but it's not. Just take any songs already on your computer, load them into your itunes library, then transfer from the library to your ipod

Hope that helps!