Music for a Wedding with Will Taylor

All about Strings Attached and Music for a Wedding - Why have live music?

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:30:00 +0000

Welcome to the very first MusicForaWedding podcast from Will Taylor and Strings Attached. I am Will Taylor and I am here with my wonderful assistant Amanda Cevallos. Hey Amanda!

Amanda: Hello.

Will Taylor: And this is the first podcast to help you figure out the music for your wedding and all the ins and outs you want to make this fun and if you have any questions for us, send an email to Will@WillTaylor.com and put in the subject field ‘Wedding music podcast’ to anything you want to know. We’d love to help you out, love to hear from you. Just send us an email toWill@WillTaylor.com, any question you have about wedding music.

Today’s main topic, this is our first podcast and we are just going to talk about the role of music in a wedding. Why should we have music anyway in a wedding? What makes it important in a wedding? But before we get to that I want to tell you a little bit about myself and about Amanda.

Since 1989 I have helped couples realize their wedding music dreams and I have played the violin, viola and guitar professionally in the Austin area for over 24 years, including 20 years with the Austin Lyric Opera orchestra. With my group Strings Attached I have worked with artists like Bob Schneider, Shawn Colvin, P Diddy, _______[1:55], Tish Hinojosa, Carolyn Wonderland, Gary Clark Jr. - we bring a lot of experience to the table in helping the couples figure out what they want for their wedding.

Amanda Cevallos went to college at the University of Montana where she studied dance choreography and performance as well as entertainment management at the U of M School of Business. In 2009 she came back to Texas where she was raised and in March 2010 she joined the team at Will Taylor and Strings Attached.

Your musical event planning needs are her first priority. She knows the ins and out of the Strings Attached repertoire built over our 20-year history in the business. But she also has her finger on the pulse of what’s current and popular culture, which makes her an ideal booking agent and a facilitator.

So welcome Amanda. I am so glad to have her here. She has been with us for over an year now. I think we have a really great thing going on and she has a lot to turn in on and I am just going to invite her to interrupt me when appropriate.

Let me talk about music and let me share a few quotes:

“Music is the shorthand of emotion” – Leo Tolstoy.

“Music is what feelings sound like. Music is the universal language of mankind” – Longfellow.

So what is the role of music at a wedding? When you think of a wedding ________[3:22] that is kind of like planning a major life event, in a way it’s like a movie production or producing a play. It’s not unlike that. This is an event that’s going to happen one time in your life and what would it be like if you went to see a play or a movie and there is no music accompanying it? It’s just people talking to each other.

From my standpoint it might not have as much emotional impact and for me the role of music at a wedding is to help the emotional impact. A wedding is very emotional experience. So music can help the emotion be experienced more deeply by not just the couple but all the people that are attending, and that’s one thing to remember is that as you are planning your wedding, this is for your family and your friends as much for them as it is for you and you want them to have this memorable emotional experience.

Now for most people it’s also a religious experience and music is a big part of the emotional impact of spirituality. So it’s like setting the scene. It’s a soundtrack for a grand production that you are planning. So I’d like to ask you to think in your mind and visualize the scene, like a scene in a movie. What is your soundtrack going to sound like?

At this point it might be nice just to talk about one of the parts of the other wedding where there can be music, the different scenes, like in a movie you have a scene. So you start from the top of the movie, of your wedding. Usually the first point of contact is when the guests are walking into the ceremony location. In some cases it will be a church; in other cases it might be an outdoor wedding. So you set that scene with maybe a string quartet. If that’s not your particular style, maybe you have somebody singing middle-eastern music or folk music or you have a solo singer – something to give the guests maybe a little entertainment while they are sitting down and getting adjusted to the ceremony.

Amanda: Something to set the tone so when they walk into something, they walk into something special. As soon as the door is open there’s this beautiful sound coming from wherever the setting is and it really sets the tone.

Will Taylor: Yeah, so think about what is the first impression musically you want to get your guests. Again, I’d like to focus on getting away from traditional should be’s if you have that luxury. Now you may be doing a wedding where the church gives you a specific list of pieces then you want to follow that and share that with your music organizer, whoever is playing to your music.

At Strings Attached we can handle the music from the beginning to the end and we are very experienced in handling these kinds of things. We have done music for up to 20 years. So you want to lean on your provider, lean on your wedding coordinator. We have done anywhere from 100s to over a thousand of these and so we are going to know things about putting together the music and we are going to be able to save you time and effort, so lean on your professionals.

And if you are the asked scenario [7:02] check out stringsattached.org. We love to help organize and make your wedding dreams come true. Amanda will answer the call. You can call her directly at (512) 944…

Amanda: 8407 or you can email me at bookstringsattached@gmail.com and just very quickly before we go I just want to be sure to mention our wedding reception band because I think that’s we get calls for above. We get calls to play strings but we also have a wedding reception band that is fantastic.

And we have another thing called ‘TheClassicRockSeries.com’ and it’s a series of tribute shows and we use a lot of the songs from these tribute shows for the wedding band but we also have other tunes on that website.

Will Taylor: We’d also like to mention, like I said in the beginning of the podcast, Strings Attached can handle the music from the beginning to the end of the reception, the very last note. We are sort of a one-stop shopping source for your live music or live wedding music needs here in the Austin central Texas area.

So we talked a lot about the ceremony music and the cocktail music and we also have a really versatile, exciting, dynamic wedding music variety band and it’s about a six piece ensemble. We can do anything from 60s Motown to 80s pop tunes to Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, a bit of country music, a bit of folk music…

Amanda: Swing, Jazz…

Will Taylor: Pretty much everything that you can imagine we can do at really exhaustive song list online and you can check and see that variety right now. We provide really beautiful lighting systems. We also have a sound system that is high quality and bring our own sound man. We come early and setup and make sure everything is ready to go way ahead of time. We will also MC your event if you have special announcements that you like us to make. We are able to do all that.

Amanda: We’ll create the scripts based on your schedule.

Will Taylor: We’ll create a script based on your schedule and everything will be taken care of – the high quality, it will be dynamic, and if you have any creative ideas we can customize it to your event.

I had a wedding in 2008 where I had a 9-piece band and the client picked every single piece of music. Now we did have to charge for that but we made it happen for them and they had four sets of music and they picked every single piece of music and we worked with them and made it work. So we can go from the extreme, working out every little detail or we can also help you and design with suggestions.

Amanda: We have a client right now that loves us and hired us because they came to our tribute shows and they know what we are capable of. They also have their own ideas too so they are allowing us to be creative and then they are adding a list of songs that they just can’t live without and so we have added eight tunes through our set list for them for a fee of course, but that’s an option. So don’t rule anything out with your wedding band.

Will Taylor: Exactly, and if you want to hear us live we have a monthly residency at the Nutty Brown Café here in Austin, Texas. If you just look up ClassicRockSeries.com you will see a schedule of shows. Our next show is coming up on July 30. Again, that’s ClassicRockSeries.com and also I want to mention that a lot of this information we have talked about, our Frequently Asked Questions, our worksheet – all that is available at celebratewithstringsattached.com or you can email us and we will send you any of this.

If you have any questions, again, just email Will@WillTaylor.com and we will mention these on the podcast in the next episode. If you’d like to record yourself saying the question we will have you on the podcast.

Amanda: If you have a booking inquiry just email Amanda@bookstringsattached.com or you can call me or text me at (512) 944-8407 . I am available after 5:00. I have a lot of clients who work all day and can’t really plan their wedding until after they get off work and I make myself available for those clients. So just keep in mind from about 5:00 to 8:00 I am open to texting, calling or emailing.

Will Taylor: Well that’s it. We are going to sign off for now from MusicForaWeddingPodcast with Will Taylor and Strings Attached. Subscribe to this podcast by clicking one of the buttons over there on iTunes. There will be more episodes coming up when we talk more about choosing the music for your wedding and what we do. So we will talk to you and we will see you in the future on the podcast.

Free music for this podcast is available on iTunes. Search for ‘A Bridezilla’s Guide to Classical Wedding Music’. That’s on iTunes at ‘A Bridezilla’s Guide to Classical Wedding Music’.

Need live music for a wedding or event?

Celebrate with Strings Attached

Austin Cover Bands Tx Wedding Soloist

Sheep May Safely Graze by J.S. Bach

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:44:00 +0000

Panis Angelicus by Cesar Franck

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:43:00 +0000

March from the Queen of Sheba by Handel

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:43:00 +0000

I Will Go for Guitar Duo Will Taylor

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:43:00 +0000

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:43:00 +0000

bridal chorus from lohengrin richard wagner

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Brandenberg Concerto Movement in G

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Ave Maria by Bach Gonoud with Guitar

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:42:00 +0000

Allegro Maestoso Water Music Suite 2 Handel

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:41:00 +0000

Air from Water Music by Handel

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:41:00 +0000

Keri Wootton interview part 1 - Outdoor Weddings, listening to vendors and Murphy's Law

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:40:00 +0000

Subscribe to the Podcast - Download the Podcast

Here is a transcript of our discussion with Keri Wootton
Part one of Two
Welcome to the MusicForaWedding podcast with Will Taylor, where we help you realize your wedding music dreams. Please check out our new app – My Wedding Music- on the Apple App Store. It’s a free app that has over 40 songs for you to listen to and to help you organize the music for your wedding. That is the -My Wedding Music- app on the Apple App Store.

Before we get started with our special guest, Keri Wootton, today who is a wonderful, experienced wedding coordinator in the Austin area, we’d like to encourage you to send in your letters and let us know your questions and maybe we’ll read them out over our podcast. Please send your letters to Will@WillTaylor.com.

*****

Will Taylor: All right, I am here with Ms. Keri Wootton, wedding planning extraordinaire, wonderful person that she is, right here in the room with me and we are going over funny stories from our wedding history. Basically what I am trying to encourage people out there to do is to trust in your vendors and trust in their experience. They have probably done a few more weddings and organized all of the minutiae a few more times than the client has. Do yourself a favor and listen to us. So here are a few examples of things that have happened:

“Why? Why? Tell me this, I have to know, do people plan outdoor weddings in Texas? It’s not fair to the guests, okay? In 101 degree weather…”, and I see this happen all the time. I am setting outside; I deal with it all. I will go with my tux and set up in the shade but then I see these elderly folks coming in off the bus and they are in their 60s or 80s and maybe they have a little couple of fans to pass out, but still, how do they convince their planner that they are going to do? “Oh, it’s only going to be 20 minutes outside. The ceremony is only going to happen 20 minute…”

Keri Wootten:    I have one couple who is getting married July 23rd at Star Hill Ranch on Amy Arbor. The arbor itself is covered for them but their guests are all sitting out in sun. I said, “We can do this”, and this is a couple that’s on a budget I said, “We are going to do this but we are going to have the EMS on sight”.

Will Taylor: Well that’s good, yeah.

Keri Wootten: What we actually did was we went out to Star Hill Ranch on a Thursday evening at the same time in which their wedding was going to be, to see what the wind was like, see what the breeze was like and we waited from 6:30 to 7:30. Guest invitation said 6:30; we waited until 7:30. At 7:30 it was actually quite lovely and it was okay and where this arbor was, they actually made a believer out of me.

So we did and I have actually been talking to Adam from Star Hill every day, “How was your wedding last weekend? How were the guests? It was hot…” and we are also going to have a lemonade bar at the ceremony site.

Will Taylor:    Awesome, okay.

Keri Wootton:    So lemonade and cold drinks – they are going to cocktail hour since the invitation is at 6:30 and it will really start at 7:00. We are going to have them in this shaded area to have lemonade, relax inside with air-conditioning and then we are going to take them out right before the ceremony.

Will Taylor:    Okay.

Keri Wottoon: If you are going to insist on an outside ceremony you have got to talk to your professionals and if you are going to have a musician or a cameraman, you have got to make sure you provide them the shade, not just for their bodies but for their instruments,. I had a chat with Will Taylor and he told me, “Gosh, my instrument’s $80,000.00”, who knew that an instrument can cost that much?

Will Taylor:    Absolutely.

Keri Wootton:    A frequently asked question: “Why is a DJ $900.00 for that or $1000.00 or a musician this much for the day?” What you have to realize what it takes for them to give you the quality of service you want. It costs money for them, whether it’s the software that is in their computers to give you a professional contract. It is the staff it takes to run their office to give you a professional experience. It’s the equipment that they are going to have to make sure that everything works. It’s the backup equipment that they are going to have – all of those things take money and so we all as vendors, have to price ourselves accordingly so that we can give you a level of service that you want and expect.

Will Taylor:    Absolutely. I always like to say is if you are going to have an outdoor wedding you are basically increasing the unknowns that are going to happen and you need to accept that they are there.

Keri Wootton:    And you need to have a backup plan.

Will Taylor:    Yeah, have a backup plan like you said, support not only your musicians but your guests; you want them to be comfortable, like this idea of the lemonade – that’s fantastic, because it could be like you said, you went out there but that might be 104 but then you’ve got the air-conditioning inside, that’s great. So if you insist on that, that’s wonderful. Have some understanding for things like Murphy’s Law. Murphy’s Law of wind is one of them. Murphy’s Law of rain, of extreme heat, of sweat!

    The other thing with musicians is that we actually are just sort of moving, swing players move a lot. The sweat comes off of our faces and down on our instruments. It’s not a beautiful picture. I have actually done these weddings outside.

Keri Wootton:    Yeah, and then the photographers mapping pictures of all of us.

Will Taylor:    Right, we don’t look great in these, right, our tux is sweating all over our instruments.

Keri Wootton:    And inevitably your musicians, when they are positioned next to your altar are going to be in all of your wedding photos.

Will Taylor:    Exactly.

Keri Wootton:    And you want the musicians to look stellar.

Will Taylor:    And hair – hair goes all over the place with the wind, music…

Keri Wootton:    Sheets of music.

Will Taylor:    Sheets of music is very hard to organize.

Keri Wootton:    Close pins in my emergency kit, just for that reason.

Will Taylor:    Awesome, that’s good, yeah. We just found some great new clips that are like plastic see-thru that do a really good job of keeping the music down now so we have with Pro-gigs [6:49]. They look much better than the close pins. They are a little more stylish. They are really good. What they call them, they are called ‘Musicmaide clips’ and they are very important [6:58], believe it or not.

    So I had a wedding yesterday…

Keri Wootton:    Always have a backup plan. That’s the backup plan. If you don’t have a coordinator make sure you discuss it with your caterer, your musicians, your videographer, your photographer and your site location. Trust the people that are giving you advice around you. We have done hundreds of these and we are not trying to crush your wedding dream; we want you to have a beautiful wedding. We don’t want you to have something that people are going to go ‘Gosh, that wedding was really funny’ or, ‘Gosh, that was very hot’.

Will Taylor:    And then have a sense of humor because something might happen. If you are going to have an outdoor wedding it is very possible. Again, something might happen – just laugh it off. If the sheet music goes flying or you know…it’s one day.

Keri Wootton:    It’s a happy occasion and you are getting married and the two of you look so beautiful that no one is going to think it less of you if the sheet music flies off. That is not a reflection of your plan.

Will Taylor:    Yes, and your guests are going to actually, maybe a little bit of that would make your wedding more memorable, I mean when your guests slip back to it, they are like ‘Oh I remember the bride’s hair was flying off and this one…’

Keri Wootton:    Yeah, I have had a wedding that was indoors at Star Hill Ranch. It’s in a little chapel and we had an aisle runner rolled out. We opened the backdoors of the chapel for the couple because that’s how you deal all of the men, right?

Will Taylor:    Yeah, right.

Keri Wootton:    But you know, you shut the doors and make the big dimensions of the couple, big huge gusto went right through those doors; the aisle runner goes… going up. I had have all of the guests step on the edge of the aisle runner with their feet and they are holding along and then it was fantastic and funny and it was wonderful and it wasn’t a big deal. This is an introduction to what is about to be your life as married couple.

    When you are married, I have now been married 12 years. I have a beautiful child, that these things are going to happen in your marriage. This is it. You’ve got to have sense of humor and all with a vengeance.

Will Taylor:    That’s really like, the first thing I would say is, have a sense of humor and then you will have a good time and you will look back. I mean it’s just one day. It’s the marriage, right? What do they say about that? It’s one day. It’s the rest of your life.

Keri Wootton:    It’s the rest of your life, and you know what, I have been doing events for 18 years and I have never done an event where we didn’t have something. So it’s almost like it’s bad luck if something doesn’t occur.

Will Taylor:    See, exactly. All music on the podcast can be purchased on iTunes under the album ‘A Bridezilla’s guide to classical wedding music’, or you can get it contained within the free app at the Apple App Store called ‘My Wedding Music’.

    For any of your questions we’d love to help you out. Just email us Will@WillTaylor.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Keri Wootton Part two - Trust your vendors and outdoor weddings

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 19:03:00 +0000

My Wedding Music - Free Wedding Music Contest

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:22:00 +0000

Want to win free live music for your wedding or our complete recorded wedding music catalog.?

Watch the video below or click here if you're on an i-phone.

There's an app for that! from will taylor on Vimeo.

The new My Wedding Music app is here:

http://budurl.com/myweddingmusic

Can you make a promotional video like it telling the wedding world about the new free My Wedding Music app?

Prizes:

1 wedding ceremony music package from Will Taylor and Strings Attached for a wedding in the Austin, TX area. Up to 1 hour of music and up to 3 musicians.
1 complete collection of Strings Attached recorded wedding music

Rules

Video must promote the new My Wedding Music app available on itunes.
Use one of these sites to make the video or make the video or do it with live actors.
GoAnimate.com or xtranormal.com
Upload the video to your youtube channel or post to the My Wedding Music Facebook page here.
Send an email to us at improv.will@gmail.com with your full name, email address, contact phone number, and a link to the video
Two videos will be choosen as winners.

Subscribe now for free

music@willtaylor.com (Will Taylor) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:20:00 +0000

Podcast Link

Download our FREE Wedding Music Planner at http://Musicforawedding.com

This is a podcast to help you choose the music for your wedding.

All music can be purchased on itunes from the album A Bridezilla's Guide to Classical Wedding Music.

Here's partial list of songs we cover: Pachelbel's Canon in D, Bridal Chorus, Wedding March, Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, J.S. Bach Ave Maria, Amazing Grace, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, Sheep May Safely Graze, Allegro Maestoso by Handel from Water Music, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, Music for Solo Classical Guitar, Air from Water Music, Winter from the Four Seasons, Beau Soir by Debussy, Engelbert Humperdinck, Borodin, Haydn, Bartok, Schumann, Tartini, Massenet Meditation from Tais, Praetorius Bouree for Classical Guitars, Beethoven Menuet and more to come. To book us for your wedding in the state of Texas, contact will@willtaylor.com 512-775-2371 or our website at StringsAttached.org