Tag Archives: music

Silent Disco

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Booking a disco for your party or event entertainment is generally a no brainer. Almost everybody in attendance will enjoy a chance to let their hair down but should you opt for the traditional disco with loud thumping beats or a silent disco?

Before we begin, we should probably outline what you get when you book a silent disco. Rather than the usual thumping beats emanating from the DJ booth, you simply receive a pair of headphones. The DJ will still be in attendance, it’s just that their decks won’t make a sound. Rather than amplifiers around the room, it’s all about that headset around your head. All of the fun of a disco with none of the noise to keep up the neighbours…which brings us to point number one.

It’s Quiet
Yes, that may be obvious but there is a very important reason for opting to book a silent disco rather than a tradition disco in some cases. That one reason comes down to two words – ‘sound limiter’. Many weddings, events and parties take place in stunning venues and because of their historic significance or the fact that they are situated near a number of private residences, these spaces may have a sound limiter, which means that no music can go above a set level. Because a silent disco is err… silent, there’s no problem!

It Won’t Distract
This particular reason isn’t so much a problem at a wedding where the only activity to be enjoyed is a disco at the end of the evening, but at a party or event that perhaps takes place during the day (yes, it does happen), there may be a number of other activities also going on at the same time. Nobody wants to have their face painted to the sound of a deep bass flooding through the floor and thankfully the silent disco solves this problem!

Change the Tune
When you attend a traditional disco, you often only have the one DJ and you have to dance to his or her tune. Not so when you book the silent disco! Although you can opt for one DJ there is also the option to have two or even three putting out the tracks they love with those dancing in the middle of the venue able to pick the track that they’re listening to. So what’s it to be? Pop, rock or novelty tunes? The choice is yours!

Communication
You know when you go to a nightclub and find yourself shouting at the person next to you? This simply doesn’t happen with a silent disco! If you need to talk to the person on your left, take off your headphones and have a chat at a normal level. Those dancing won’t notice (because the music hasn’t stopped for them) and the two of you can speak as you ordinarily would with no threat of losing your voice or tearing an ear drum.

It’s Hilarious
At a disco, you’ll all too often be dancing with friends, colleagues or family to stop and observe the goings on from the sidelines. Even if you do decide to take a breather, there’s nothing that funny anyway because the dance moves are in time to the music that you can hear. Not so when you book a silent disco! Take off your headphones and take some quality videos of people jumping about in a silent room.

Visual effects

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As with most corporate events, your décor should be key. Your venue needs to wow your guests from the moment they walk in, creating a special and uniquely defined space for your event. Two highly contrasting themes are high tech interactive and natural materials, enabling your company to show off its tech prowess, or boost its eco credentials.

You could extend the theme beyond décor and food into acoustic musical acts, for a more ‘natural’ sound.

Take lighting to the next level and illuminate your event to create spectacle and visual interest. Any venue can be transformed with clever and creative use of lighting even on the more limited of budgets.

Use lighting to throw unusual shadows, to colour tables rather than using flowers, and use wireless technology to alter lighting states to reflect the various stages of your event. Look for party bands and DJ’S with their own light shows, hire function bands that provide their own lighting, and artists that use light in imaginative ways.

For larger corporate events, book artists that have a strong visual impact enhanced by theatrical style lighting, such as dance troupes, ballet dancers or aerial artists.

Choose musicians that blend performances with tech, such as our interactive VJ’S, or a live DJ. Get
your guests interacting with each other playing giant games with your very own theme.

Find ways to make your entertainment a pleasure for everyone by choosing acts that blend superb musicianship with accessible humour, such as a comedy string quartet. Or present musical acts with an international flavour, such as 1920s swing band just make people smile!

Book a live function band

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Nothing gets guests excited like a live music performance as it’s far more interesting & engaging than a DJ or background music. You’ll need to hire a band to suit to the occasion, your guests and the type of atmosphere you’re looking for.

One of the simplest and easiest types of party to organise is a venue or marquee with a hired live band.

Popular types of party band include tribute bands, rock and pop function bands, or for an older audience try Swing and Jive or Rock n’ Roll.

Private parties based around a live band, especially a lively band, are likely to be quite loud so consider how many elderly guests you might have. Venues with sound limiters can be a real pain so before you hand over any money, make sure the venue you choose doesn’t have a limiter fitted (or if it does, that the threshold is set higher than 95dB). Also, make sure there is a dance floor and if at all possible, try to avoid venues where the bar is in a different room to the dancing as this can split guests and leave you with a less party atmosphere.

Good quality function bands will provide all of the equipment you’ll need, so all you need to do is ensure they have enough space and some light refreshments. Expect to pay upwards of £1000/£1400 for a really good 4-5-piece band.

Any private hire venue with a cool bar and space to dance would be suitable, but bear in mind parking and accommodation for those guests traveling beyond a taxi ride.

For most private parties a really early arrival is not necessary so if you ask the band to arrive around 6pm they should be set up, sound checked & ready for guests to arrive by 7.30pm – 8pm. Most function bands will play 2 x 60 minute performances, and we suggest the first to start no earlier than 9pm so guests have time to get a drink and have a chat before the music starts.

Party ideas for the Elderly

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When planning a party for an elderly adult, you’ll want to consider having the guest of honour in on the planning. While surprise parties are fun, they can sometimes be “too much”. Only you know what your special person will be able to handle. An important consideration when planning a party is to schedule the party for a time of day that when the guest of honour will be at his or her best.

If a party will be “too much”, consider throwing a playing card party instead. It is a great way to remember the occasion, but without any stress for the guest of honour.

Some fun party ideas…

Before the party, ask guests to tell you something about the guest of honour – something they did, something they said, something funny…anything special that they remember. Compile these and add them to the slideshow presentation, or read them aloud and mount them in a memory book.

Have a sing-along! Try singing gold old-fashioned songs that everyone will know. This is something old folks did for entertainment before TV. Have sheets with the lyrics printed for younger guests. Songs like “Roll out the barrel”, “When you’re smiling”, “It’s a long way to tipperary ” and other similar songs will be fun for everyone to sing.

For easy games, use printable birthday games.

Show a movie. Pick something that is funny or entertaining (and a favourite of the birthday person). How about the Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Hope and Crosby, Red Skelton, Danny Kaye, Abbott and Costello, Lewis and Martin, etc. Classic TV shows, such as “I Love Lucy” are always a hit too, Project it on a wall, a sheet or on a large screen so that everyone can enjoy!

Sometimes it can be difficult to find birthday party games for elderly adults. If you are looking for a fun game that everyone from young to old can play, how about Birthday Bingo? To do this, create bingo cards where each square is something that is of interest him/her, such as “Crossword Puzzles”, “Golf”, “Nature”, etc. Have all the square possibilities written on slips of paper and placed in a bowl, then play like any traditional game of bingo.

Other fun games for older adults include playing trivia games (especially when playing them orally) and games such as Chess, Bridge, and Dominoes. (These are great fun for any party, not just a 100th birthday!)

Heavy Metal history

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To the uninitiated, any loud music is called heavy metal. In reality, there are a multitude of heavy metal styles and subgenres. Heavy metal is a wide umbrella characterizing a style of music that is generally loud and aggressive. There are genres that are very melodic and mainstream, and other genres that are extreme and underground. Here’s a brief overview of heavy metal and its many styles.

The term “heavy metal” was first used in a musical sense in the ’60s song “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf when they referred to “heavy metal thunder.” Although there are debates among experts, most consider groups like ​Black Sabbath, ​Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple to be the first heavy metal bands.

From there the style evolved and branched into many different genres and subgenres. Heavy metal remains a vital force in music today, with sellout concert tours and CDs selling impressive numbers of copies without any radio airplay or MTV exposure.

The backbone of heavy metal is the electric guitar. You can’t have metal without at least one guitarist, and many bands have two or more. Certain genres have some quiet and mellow parts, but most metal is loud, intense, fast and aggressive. The vocal styles in heavy metal range from melodic singing to aggressive singing to unintelligible screaming, depending on the genre.

At the beginning, there was just traditional heavy metal. Shortly after it evolved and splintered into many different styles and subgenres. This site has a series of articles on many of the genres that will give you a more in-depth look at that particular type of metal.

As time has gone on, there are literally hundreds of subgenres

New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM)
This genre has influenced almost all metal that has followed it. These were the metal pioneers that took the original sound of groups like Black Sabbath and took out the rock and blues influences to make the traditional metal sound that we’re familiar with today.

Examples: Def Leppard, Diamond Head, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon

Nu-Metal
Combining heavy metal riffs with hip-hop influences and rapped lyrics, this genre became very popular in the late ’90s through the early 2000’s and then fell from favor. There are a few bands of this style still doing well, although most have come and gone.
Examples: Korn, Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, Slipknot

Power Metal
A very melodic form of metal that utilizes soaring guitars and strong vocals, usually in a higher register. It’s also an epic style, with long songs and many lyrics about mythology, fantasy, and metaphysical topics. Most power metal bands also have a keyboardist.

Examples: Blind Guardian, Fates Warning, Helloween, Jag Panzer

Thrash Metal
This genre evolved from NWOBHM and became heavier and more extreme. It’s characterized by fast guitar and double bass drum with aggressive but understandable vocals. Some of the most popular bands in metal started as thrash bands, although most evolved as they went along.
Examples: Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer

The great thing about heavy metal is that it is continually changing, evolving and improving. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more extreme, something new comes along. Whether you prefer the melody and complexity of power metal or the aggression and intensity of death metal, it’s all part of this widely encompassing genre called heavy metal.

The History of A cappella

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A cappella is a style of vocal performance without instruments. The word means “from the chapel” in Italian, as a cappella takes its roots in early religious music. A cappella singing has been used in Christian, Islamic, and Jewish religious music for many centuries; references to Jewish a cappella chanting date back as early as 20 BCE. Today, the term “a cappella” encompasses many different secular styles, including doo-wop, the barbershop quartet, and the pop a cappella common on many college campuses today.

The history of a cappella in religious ritual is long and deliberate, as many sacred texts in both the Judeo-Christian and the Islamic tradition can be interpreted as forbidding instruments in worship. Christian musical worship was traditionally a cappella. Instruments were not introduced into the church until 670 AD, when Pope Vitalian brought an organ to his cathedral, and many Christian pop a cappella groups remain popular today. For Jews, the use of musical instruments is prohibited on the Sabbath, and informal Jewish worship often includes songs sung a cappella, known as “zemirot.” The Muslim religion also has a long tradition of unaccompanied worship songs, known as “nasheed.”

Barbershop music, one of the few exclusively American vocal styles, is characterized by its taut, consonant four-part harmonies and ringing overtones. The word “barbershop” was first used to describe this a cappella harmony style in the 1910 song, “Play That Barbershop Chord.” Early barbershop music was closely associated with African-American gospel quartets like the Mills Brothers. In the ’40s, barbershop music became widely popular, and in 1954, the Chordettes brought barbershop into the pop mainstream with their song “Mr. Sandman.”

After the middle of the century, bands like the Persuasions and Manhattan Transfer brought a cappella and acapella elements closer to the center of pop music. Songs such as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” released as a debut single in 1981 by the Nylons, became wildly popular. Billy Joel’s “nearly a cappella” song “For the Longest Time” became a hit in 1983. Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” which features a South African a cappella ensemble, won a Grammy for Best Album in 1986; Rockapella was formed later that year. Boyz II Men “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” which is entirely a cappella, became an enormous hit in 1991 and remained in the charts for 133 weeks.

Viking Entertainment

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Vikings worked hard, but they also played hard, and in much the same way men do today, by playing ball, wrestling and holding competitions to display their strength and skillfulness. Many of their games were violent and often became bloody, sometimes resulting in death. They mainly served to show how “manly” a person was and showcased the competitors’ strength and dexterity

Vikings often tested their physical strength with stone-lifting competitions, which could be considered the equivalent of weightlifting today. One of the most popular ball games mentioned in Viking literature was called knattleikr and involved full body contact.

Sometimes wooden bats, similar to those in baseball and cricket, were used. These ball games also ended violently.

Surprisingly, intellectual prowess was also regarded highly, and archaeologists have found many boards and game pieces from board games at many different Viking sites. Many Viking sagas have described people playing board games as nobles, and it has even been suggested that a prerequisite for becoming a king was being skilled at board games. Not so surprisingly, drinking games were also popular, with the Viking women often joining in on the fun. Finally, Vikings also enjoyed live music entertainment, mummery (similar to a play) and miming,

The History of the DJ

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Whilst everyone knows what a DJ is, few people know the rich history regarding the rise of the DJ over more traditional forms of live music and entertainment. What most readers definitely aren’t aware of is that the history of the DJ goes back to the 1800’s before radio’s were even invented.

The precursor to the DJ was the invention of the phonograph, the first device ever invented to play music. Invented in 1877, it was closely followed by the gramophone records in 1892. Soon after, these records went into commercial production and marked the first time ever the public was able to purchase music.

The tipping point happened in 1906, when the first ever radio transmission was sent. This was not only a defining moment in the world of the DJ, but in human history itself.

1909, however, was the year in which the 1st ever DJ spun a record. Ray Newbie from California is officially recognised as the 1st DJ to ever hit the airwaves (and that is a pretty cool name to have by 1909 standards.) Although just 16 at the time, Ray or “DJ Newbie” used to pump the music, as him and his team kept the music going 7 days a week, with the exception of a bit of downtime during World War I.

It wasn’t until 25 years later, however, that the term DJ or Disc Jockey was ever coined. Prior to then, the guys behind the scenes were called “record men” instead of DJs.

Up until this point, the DJ was in charge of selecting music, not mixing it. What brought the DJ out of the shadows and into the mainstream however was the growth in bars, nightclubs and discotheques, as well as the fact turntables and DJ equipment became cheap enough for average people to afford.

Shortly after, DJs were transformed by the Hip Hop culture by Afrika Baambaata who invented the 5 pillars of hip hop music and culture, of which DJing and turntablism is one. (For those who aren’t aware, the 5 pillars are DJing, rapping, breaking, graffiti and knowledge.)

Today, however, the best DJs are from the electronic music genre, in particular trance music with DJs such as DJ Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, and Paul Van Dyk.

Wanna your track to be heard by thousands of people? Club Dance Mixes gives you the opportunity to promote your music!

Music entertainment in the1920’s

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Some referred to the 1920s as The Roaring Twenties. At the time, business was booming – many Americans were developing a taste for a new, faster lifestyle. Modern music became popular as a result of developments in the media (radio, records and films). People had more money to spend and more time to listen to the music of the time.

Jazz Music Entertainment: its development and impact
Jazz originated from the southern states of the USA, from the blues and ragtime music of the black people. Young people had had enough of their parents’ old dances, eg the waltz.

Jazz was much more rhythmic and sexy, and it was easy to dance to. This led to young people smoking, drinking and, according to some, behaving indecently. College students, especially, were willing to challenge their parents’ values and lifestyle.

A number of black musicians became very famous, including Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, The Empress of the Blues. But racism was still a major problem: when Bessie Smith had a serious car crash, she was taken to a hospital that was for white people only. The hospital refused to treat her because she was black and Bessie Smith died.

The impact of the radio and gramophone
Before the cinema became popular during the 1920s, the radio was the main medium of entertainment in America. By the end of the 1920s, 50 million people had a radio set.
Not everyone could read, so the radio became a very important means of communicating news and information to the people.

Also, as the popularity of jazz increased, more people bought radios, records and gramophones so that they could listen to jazz any time they wanted to.

People could also listen to their favourite team taking part in sports matches, especially if it was not possible for them to travel to the game or if they couldn’t afford the cost.
The radio was able to grow and succeed because companies paid to advertise their products on the medium.

Dancing and the speakeasy culture

More daring dances became popular after the First World War.

These resulted from swing dancing that developed alongside jazz music, and so black people had a huge influence.

Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom became very popular with young people.

Because many of these new dances were sexually suggestive, parents were shocked by their children’s enthusiasm to dance them.

The Lindy Hop also became a popular dance – this dance honoured Charles Lindbergh for crossing the Atlantic in an aeroplane in 1927.

Jazz had been prohibited in a number of cities, for example New York and Detroit. So, the performances moved to the speakeasies, making the young people even more determined to rebel.

Hire the perfect entertainment

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There are reasons for engaging an entertainment directory. In the first place, you may not have time to make the right choice when hiring a band or a DJ. We at Red Masque entertainment agency will have the perfect choice for you on our website. We can link you up with the best bands in town. You are sure to find a reliable DJ that can handle your event.

It’s never an easy thing to organize an event no matter how small the size. The event may be a wedding reception, concert, corporate event, private party, fundraising and the like. You need to entertain the guests if you really want to make them happy at the event. You can’t do it all alone. You need to engage the services of an entertainment directory such as Red Masque.

You can be sure of proper accountability when you engage a reliable entertainment directory. Red Masque will give you accurate details online regarding the entertainment aspect of the event.

Often at times, some entertainment agencies offer band and DJ services. They do have artists who specialize in different areas of music. Such an agency can offer DJ and band services at affordable price. They also have MC’s that can make people happy at events. All you need is to get in touch with the right agency like Red Masque that can tailor make your special event.

Professionalism is our game and trusted services when you engage with us. Your guests will be thoroughly satisfied with the acts you have chosen. You don’t need to suffer sleepless night once you have one of Red Masques acts at your event or party.

Indeed, there’s a lot to gain when you hire from a reputable entertainment directory. You don’t have to be in a hurry when searching for the very best. Now that you have found us we will guarantee that you will not book from anywhere else. We wish you a successful event!!