Blog Archives

How long has Selective Sound been in business?

Since 1987. We started the company with the name “Music in Motion” and changed in 1989 to Selective Sound.

Where did the company name come from?

Honestly, I can’t remember!

What is your role at Selective Sound?

I am the marketing director, accountant, human resource manager, scheduler, promoter, performer, worker, operator, technician and… owner!

Why did you start to DJ in Cleveland?

In 1987, I joined a youth group because I was able to play the music on the sound system at the youth group school dances. By the touch of a button I was able to make 300 people go crazy and by that same touch of a button I was able to also calm them down. For a moment I felt like a god.

How did you get your company started?

I bought my first mixer/amplifier and rented speakers. I was using cassette tapes. I made $25 for my first gig, $60 for my second gig and the rest is history. We’ve done over $2 million in gross sales since then.

Where do you DJ now?

In Northeast Ohio for private affairs. Ninety percent of our business is weddings but we also do corporate events and bar/bat mitzvahs.

How many DJs do you employ every weekend?

We can do a maximum of five weddings and two other events per evening. Our busiest weekends are usually holiday weekends and we’ve done up to 19 events in one weekend!

How many weddings does your staff work in a year?

We average about 160 weddings per year.

What does your set-up consist of?

We are more refined in the DJ world. We use the new Bose l1 series 2 systems and a few Yorkville Unity systems (for the big events), a few wash LED lights and a compact computerized touch screen DJ system. Our systems are designed to blend into the decor, not be gaudy or noticeable.

How/where do you buy music?

Once a week we get CD with the top songs from each category from TM Century Prime Cuts. We own every song we every play.

What is a common misconception about your work?

That we just show up and play music. People don’t know about the 5 to 6 hours, pre-planning, coordinating, and music programming and so forth that we do before we even set up a speaker.

next week: part 2.. About the Jay r (CEO) of Selective Sound Entertainment.

Wedding of : Denise La-Riccia and Jeremi Woodruff
Location: Casa Di Borallys
Date: February 20th, 2010
Photographer: Perfect Image Photography

What an amazing and fun wedding this turned out to be. I mainly worked with Denise in the planning at the beginning, however when we met with Jeremi and Denise together, Jeremi became very involved. Here is their story.

We arrived at about 4.30pm to set up and as soon as we had our equipment loaded in, I looked up and guests started arriving. We were a little confused, but after about 10 minutes of set up we had some music playing so they had some form of entertainment.  After completing our set up at about 5.10 we sat down with our friends at Casa Di borally and went over the evenings agenda.

The evening was set up to be very unique food service wise. When the wedding reception officially began, they Borally’s hand passed their famous pizza for O’deuvre hour.  Dinner, however was going to be a bit unique, because they did Heavy O’Deuvre stations around the room.  There was to be an amazing spread of finger type foods of many different varieties including a Borally’s famous  chef carved Beef Tenderloin. These stations were to be set up around the room, to avoid the “buffet” style type dinner.

After the Bridal party arrived we met everyone and lined them up for the grand intro.  We did not seat the guests, because we did not want that type of atmosphere with the O’deuvre stations.

The grand introduction was high energy as the bridal party walked into Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne After the introductions we went into the cake cutting with the song Adam Sandlers When I grow old with you Following that, we had 2 Toasts from the Best man and Maid of honor and then into A blessing. We then announced for the guests to visit the O’Deuvre stations at their leisure.

Twards the end of dinner, Borallys cleared the Head table off the dance floor so we could get started right away.

First dance was done while guests were still finishing up eating and we went into Denise and Jeremi’s first dance together as husband and wife. Their First dance song was Making memories of Us By Keith Urban

We followed that with a Father daughter dance to Heartland I loved her 1st and then to some Kenny Rogers and Through the years for the mother son dance.  After the formal dances we got started right away by inviting all the guest to the dance floor to join them for a slow dance. The entire floor was packed 1st song of the night.

We then went into an array of dance music for all age groups and there was dancing the entire night. This group of guests were incredible and we played everything from the Twist to Bone Thugs and Harmony. Great Couple to work with and play for. They were very energetic and fun the entire night. Borallys was great to work with and they were very accomadating. The Bar is on the 2nd floor in that room, which is a perfect placement in my opinion. Special thanks to Greg and Kathy from the Perfect Image Photography for allowing us to post their amazing work.

Another great wedding in the books. Amazingly enough we are doing the Maid of honors wedding in October as well. She called us and didn’t even know we were the DJ’s. Here we come Nicole.