Tips for first time performers

Session 5 said:
Vito, you need one of these..

2018-micstand.jpg
Click to expand...
Yup. Had that. It slipped out and I think a swatted it while trying to catch it. I probably too somebody’s eye out in the audience.
What I really needed was
9271EF87-7394-4902-BE6C-452BA4B40F57.jpeg
 
Clockworkmike said:
For whatever it's worth man, I haven't played live since I was 16 so dont feel bad lol but, I did play a few of clubs and local festivals along with @froman5150 ( garage band!).

Minus playing at my highschool talent show that ended in a full scale riot ( true story regrettably but that's a whole other tale for another day lol), the first show I happened to play was at a very rough ass redneck bar when i was still 15 ( place was cool and let us perform for a cover cage while underage, as long as we stayed away from the bar and had an adult with us). Minus the bikes, its kind of the place you're talking about: rough crowd, very drunk, most of them angry and even got threatened by a group of 3 dudes while on stage lol

The absolute best advice I can give is the following man, again for whatever this is worth, whether you want to follow my little knowledge or not is totally up to you lol

First thing: obviously, talk with the owners and go in early, set up your gear and do a soundcheck. This is one of the best ways to fight the jitters early, cause you get a feel of the place, the stage itself and the acoustics. Makes you feel a lil more at home I guess.

Second thing: before you go on, do a lil warm up if you got the space to do it and I didn't have this fortune back then; but there is nothing in the world wrong with having a few drinks for "liquid courage". Obviously, don't get smashed cause that's a whole other can of worms lol

Third thing: now it's show time, game on! You say this is an instrumental show? Not a deal breaker man, it happens a lot! Best thing? Interact with the audience. The old schticks of " How's everybody doing tonight?!?" "How's the drinks?!?" "Everyone having a good time tonight?!?" etc, just anything to get them to interact back with you, cause then you both take the edge off of yourselves but you ease the crowd up too by making them think you aren't scared and there to have a good time too.

Fourth: Now your into the set. Best advice if you got stage fright like everyone has? Don't shy away from the audience and just look down at your instruments, but look THROUGH and ABOVE the crowd when you start off. Looks like you are looking at them but you are really looking beyond them, near the back of the room, kinda seeing them in your peripherals. As you get a lil more relaxed? Start with the eye contact and focus on one specific person at a time, kinda get them into what your doing. You'll begin to win them over quickly. By the end of the night? You'll probably be just having a full on hang out with the crowd

Most of all man? Have fun! It's a blast getting on any stage, I don't care what size it is. It takes brass balls to do that and I commend you already!
Click to expand...
Good stuff here, thanks.

I was in band all through school, played trombone. We'd do Christmas programs and march in the parade and all that, but that's a different experience with 20 or whatever kids than it is with 3 other dudes in some biker bar

I remember being about 14, having just started playing guitar, and I learned some ridiculously simple 3 chord song, my dad thought it was really cool and asked me to play it for his friends at his 40th birthday party. So I got my brother to play bass, and a couple different cousins of ours, one to man the drums, and the other also on guitar, terrified me and I really hated every bit of it, but I did it. And then I NEVER did anything like that again lol
Guess technically this makes me a liar and I actually have performed, but I don't really count that as a "gig", I guess lol
Thatbastarddon said:
Choose water. Choose not to indulge in the leaf. Until the game is over….no celebration. Then…go to town if you like…
Click to expand...
As much as I like to indulge and party, I think I may be viewed as somewhat hypocritical by my band mates for agreeing with you about this. Luckily I don't foresee this being a problem with these guys. Myself, I'm going to have to keep an eye on me lol

Actually we'll technically be across the state line, where leafy greens are still looked down the nose at by LE, so we may be better off abstaining from that altogether for this one.

But yeah, we're there first to play, not to get loaded and make asses of ourselves.
Session 5 said:
I don't like hot dogs..
Click to expand...
Wrong answer.

One of the best sandwiches.
 
Last edited:
mcblink said:
Good stuff here, thanks.

I was in band all through school, played trombone. We'd do Christmas programs and march in the parade and all that, but that's a different experience with 20 or whatever kids than it is with 3 other dudes in some biker bar

I remember being about 14, having just started playing guitar, and I learned some ridiculously simple 3 chord song, my dad thought it was really cool and asked me to play it for his friends at his 40th birthday party. So I got my brother to play bass, and a couple different cousins of ours, one to man the drums, and the other also on guitar, terrified me and I really hated every bit of it, but I did it. And then I NEVER did anything like that again lol
Guess technically this makes me a liar and I actually have performed, but I don't really count that as a "gig", I guess lol

As much as I like to indulge and party, I think I may be viewed as somewhat hypocritical by my band mates for agreeing with you about this. Luckily I don't foresee this being a problem with these guys. Myself, I'm going to have to keep an eye on me lol

Actually we'll technically be across the state line, where leafy greens are still looked down the nose at by LE, so we may be better off abstaining from that altogether for this one.

But yeah, we're there first to play, not to get loaded and make asses of ourselves.

Wrong answer.

One of the best sandwiches.
Click to expand...

I prefer these Harvey's burgers..


3031018@2x.jpg
 
ibmorjamn said:
Cool stuff, Blink. I know nothing about the band.
Tell me what and who?
Click to expand...
It's myself, LRT, and two other guys from a town over who had/have been pretty active in the music scene over there when it was still more alive. Had a vocalist for a while but he's discovered that his health is rapidly declining due to years of heavy alcohol consumption so he pulled out a couple months ago.
Started jamming together a year and 3 months ago, and would have already played if I hadn't gone and broken my knee. That slowed me down a bit for a while. But now I'm back. We're all around the same age and kinda grew up listening to all the same kinda stuff so we're all speaking the same sort of musical lingo which is nice. Original music, no covers, mostly stuff that LRT and I had already put together, but there's a couple that have been written as a band with some input from all members. Not much else to tell yet!

Bass player initially signed us up as "Mudbucket" because it was the only thing he could remember from the lengthy list of potential names I have pinned on the wall in the jam space, and they needed to be able to put something down....but I couldn't handle that and I told him to change it haha!
....in retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have fussed about it too much, because while the name he changed it to is less stupid in a way, it's also not really a good representation of what we do, I think. It's now "Wretched Assault" which would make me think of some extreme metal act, and while we are metal, I wouldn't necessarily call it an extreme variety. Oh well. All band names are stupid, right?

Anyway, that's pretty much the story so far.
 
mcblink said:
It's myself, LRT, and two other guys from a town over who had/have been pretty active in the music scene over there when it was still more alive. Had a vocalist for a while but he's discovered that his health is rapidly declining due to years of heavy alcohol consumption so he pulled out a couple months ago.
Started jamming together a year and 3 months ago, and would have already played if I hadn't gone and broken my knee. That slowed me down a bit for a while. But now I'm back. We're all around the same age and kinda grew up listening to all the same kinda stuff so we're all speaking the same sort of musical lingo which is nice. Original music, no covers, mostly stuff that LRT and I had already put together, but there's a couple that have been written as a band with some input from all members. Not much else to tell yet!

Bass player initially signed us up as "Mudbucket" because it was the only thing he could remember from the lengthy list of potential names I have pinned on the wall in the jam space, and they needed to be able to put something down....but I couldn't handle that and I told him to change it haha!
....in retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have fussed about it too much, because while the name he changed it to is less stupid in a way, it's also not really a good representation of what we do, I think. It's now "Wretched Assault" which would make me think of some extreme metal act, and while we are metal, I wouldn't necessarily call it an extreme variety. Oh well. All band names are stupid, right?

Anyway, that's pretty much the story so far.
Click to expand...
Cool, I hoped LRT was part of it!
As Bill &Ted would say "Excellent "
 
Mudbucket is awesome.
You could just go with Wretched or The Wretched if you feel Wretched Assault is too bombastic.
The band I was in as a kid started off named Brutal Sex (insert laughter here). Then the line up changed, we got a singer that didn’t have stage fright and new lead guitar and it changed to M.S.I. (More Stupid Initials). The demo we cut was titled “You Bought it, You Name it” all the singer’s ideas. I left soon after.
A few years later they ended up opening for Pantera as a local act. That’s pretty much as far as they got.
Still thought it was very cool they opened for Pantera.
Can you imagine if they made it big. I’d be known as “the guy” who was the original bassist.
I don’t know where I was going with that.
I guess sometimes the name of a band don’t really matter.
 
mcblink said:
To be clear, I don't have any. I've never performed before.
I'm gonna be getting my cherry popped in about a month. Our band booked a gig and we've put together a set and have been practicing at least once a week, more if everybody can make it. Gonna have to be an instrumental set. We had a vocalist once but he quit due to health issues.

But I'm still terrified and it's causing me to stress out about it. I'm not enjoying it. This is supposed to be fun, right? Well right now, it's not fun at all lol

It's at a biker bar. You can ride your Harley inside, right through the place. Pull up and park right at the bar. Seems like a cool place, if I liked going to any bars, but I really don't. I do like beer, but I don't like going to the bar to drink it lol

So now I'm supposed to go to a place I hate and do something that scares the poop out of me and this is supposed to be fun?!

I think I'm maybe overthinking myself into a minor mental crisis? Lol


Okay so help me guys. Everyone has heard stuff like "oh, just pretend the audience is all in their underwear" and stuff like that, but I wanna hear about stuff that real people with real experiences use to deal with jitters, butterflies, whatever the hell this is...
Click to expand...
Stay away from biker bars.
 
LiveeviL2000 said:
Mudbucket is awesome.
You could just go with Wretched or The Wretched if you feel Wretched Assault is too bombastic.
The band I was in as a kid started off named Brutal Sex (insert laughter here). Then the line up changed, we got a singer that didn’t have stage fright and new lead guitar and it changed to M.S.I. (More Stupid Initials). The demo we cut was titled “You Bought it, You Name it” all the singer’s ideas. I left soon after.
A few years later they ended up opening for Pantera as a local act. That’s pretty much as far as they got.
Still thought it was very cool they opened for Pantera.
Can you imagine if they made it big. I’d be known as “the guy” who was the original bassist.
I don’t know where I was going with that.
I guess sometimes the name of a band don’t really matter.
Click to expand...
I'm not too worried about the name just yet. Nothing is permanent unless we record an album or something. But I would like to have something that doesn't sound like an angsty 14 year old's band name if it should ever come to that
 
Clockworkmike said:
Fourth: Now your into the set. Best advice if you got stage fright like everyone has? Don't shy away from the audience and just look down at your instruments, but look THROUGH and ABOVE the crowd when you start off. Looks like you are looking at them but you are really looking beyond them, near the back of the room...
Click to expand...

One thing I do is to wear sunglasses. That way I can look out at the crowd and know that nobody can actually make eye contact with me. We bring our own lights and I've never had an issue seeing through the sunglasses, even on stage at night.

I wear glasses so I ordered a pair of prescription sunglasses. They work great.
 
Amp Mad Scientist said:
Stay away from biker bars.
Click to expand...

This is the most salient piece of advice so far.

But really, the first time is less scary than the first time you get in a girls pants for real, so just have fun with it. At least you actually got to practice for this first time. And no, wanking alone in your room is not practice for either scenario.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top