Gig Checklist

Are your gigs plagued by problems? Do you feel your gigs are coming across as a little unprofessional? Are you thinking of doing your first gig? Here we look at ways to ensure your gigs are as good as they can be.

Gig Checklist

This is a checklist of things to remember if you are relatively new to gigging. If you are an experienced live musician, you will see exceptions to some of these rules that become possible with more experience and confidence. This list is based on all the things I've most often seen mess up an otherwise potentially good gig from a new band.

1) Label all your wires, and all the places where they'll be plugged into. Use white sticky labels with easy to read large black pen. Don't be afraid to put sticky labels on your gear. Remember that the lighting conditions on stage may be far from ideal. Put labels with marks on the front panel of your amp and effects, so you can see where the knobs should be turned to.

2) Always pack 2 extra audio leads and and extra midi lead (if you use them).

3) Remember that there may be a band on before you, so anything you set up during the sound check (like sound levels), may be lost by the time you actually get up on stage to do the gig. So be prepared to adjust levels etc... during the first couple of numbers.

4) Make large easy to read set lists (lists of all the song titles with notes about patches or settings for each song) for every member of the band. Its usually easy to find a place to hide set lists on stage, so that you can see them, but the audience can't.

5) Make sure, if you're a guitarist, that your strings are new, but that they are well played in and tuned up in the dressing room just before you go on (use the same tuning meter that everyone else in the band uses). Have a tuning meter permanently plugged into your effects chain on stage, so that you can be silently tuning up between numbers.

6) If you use a combo amp, put it on a chair or beer crate or two. Try to get it up to at least waist level. If its on the floor, you may have to turn up so loud in order to hear yourself, that it will be too loud out front.

7) Get a friend to stand out in the audience during the first number and tell you how the levels out front are, either using hand signals or get them to come up to the stage between numbers to tell you. Get this friend to tell the sound engineer to turn things up and down as necessary - this looks much better than you, or someone else in the band, announcing to the engineer (and the audience) that you, for example, need more vocals in the monitors.

8) Check with the other band members during the first couple of numbers, to make sure they can hear everything well enough. Be prepared to for example, turn your amp towards to drummer if need be, since monitoring may well be inadequate at the venue.

9) Use the last three or four rehearsals before the gig to run through the whole set, as you'll do it on the night.

10) Don't succumb to last minute whims of change of guitar, or heaven forbid, change of song structure, before the gig.

11) Do a good relaxation before the gig. Also, use relaxation techniques to keep your tension level as low as possible as while you're in the dressing room waiting to go on.

12) Try to keep a sense of humour about the gig, don't take yourself or the performance of the music too seriously. If you are relaxed and in good humour, you will play at your best, even if the music is serious in nature.

13) Even if the place is almost empty, try to play your best and enjoy playing your music. Sod's law for musicians says that, when you least expect it, there will be someone important in the audience, and when you expect someone important to turn up, they won't make it.

14) Try to have a good time on stage, if there is any social chemistry in the band, try to make the most of it. Remember, the audience want to see you enjoying yourself. If you look like you are having fun, the audience will have fun. If the audience is enjoying themselves, they'll have a much easier time getting into your music, even if its serious music. If you are not enjoying yourself, the audience will sense this, and it will make them, tense.

15) Finally, even if you have an absolutely abysmal gig, don't worry, just learn from your mistakes. Think about what went wrong and why, correct your mistakes next time. Most great bands had a few bad gigs in the early days, but they just worked on improving every gig.