thelimpingtoad
Senior Member
My band had our first public gig this past weekend. It was fun since we got to get out and play in front of people at a bar. We played a private party a few weeks ago, but this was the first public performance.
We played 3rd in a group of some 10-12 bands so we were on at like 5pm. It was a charity concert for a scholarship fund. Since there were so many bands playing and we only had 45 minutes to play, we didn't get much of a sound check. So we started playing and after about 5 seconds I realized I couldn't hear the guitarist at all, and i could barely hear the bass or vocals. Basically there was no monitor sound... so after our first 2 songs, our singer asked the sound guy to turn up the monitor mix. he did this but we still really couldn't hear even though i had a huge monitor right next to me... the only thing i heard through that monitor the whole time was when the sound guy asked through his mic "what needs turned up?"
I think all in all we played well but there is one song i COMPLETELY fell apart on (the doors "wild child"). I am so embarrased about this because I'm used to knowing songs really well and practicing them until i can play them perfectly. Unfortunately this song is really lead by the guitar and i rely heavily on our guitarist to know where the cues and transitions were. since i couldn't hear him, even when i pulled back my volume, i basically was on my own. I dropped out 2 times and barely recovered. It totally sucked.
I also was playing on another drummer's kit and i couldn't position the floor tom exactly where it needed to go because he had these broken memory locks on the legs. Since I couldn't adjust the floor tom properly, i had to tilt my ride cymbal back farther then usual so i had trouble hitting the bell correctly... i also ended up hitting the mic cable for the floor tom several times with my stick while trying to get from the bell back to the snare for fills. The other drummer had a fan on stage that was blowing at the drums... at first I thought it would be great to have a fan, but i had some problems with it because it was blowing cold air-conditioned air on my right arm... this caused my muscles to tighten.
Anyway, this was really disapointing to me for our first public gig... i really hope that we can get back on the horse and play out some more so i can recover from this terrible incident.
I got a lot of great advice from people on here about what to take with me since i was playing on the other guy's kit... but i guess no matter how prepared you are, something can always go wrong.
We played 3rd in a group of some 10-12 bands so we were on at like 5pm. It was a charity concert for a scholarship fund. Since there were so many bands playing and we only had 45 minutes to play, we didn't get much of a sound check. So we started playing and after about 5 seconds I realized I couldn't hear the guitarist at all, and i could barely hear the bass or vocals. Basically there was no monitor sound... so after our first 2 songs, our singer asked the sound guy to turn up the monitor mix. he did this but we still really couldn't hear even though i had a huge monitor right next to me... the only thing i heard through that monitor the whole time was when the sound guy asked through his mic "what needs turned up?"
I think all in all we played well but there is one song i COMPLETELY fell apart on (the doors "wild child"). I am so embarrased about this because I'm used to knowing songs really well and practicing them until i can play them perfectly. Unfortunately this song is really lead by the guitar and i rely heavily on our guitarist to know where the cues and transitions were. since i couldn't hear him, even when i pulled back my volume, i basically was on my own. I dropped out 2 times and barely recovered. It totally sucked.
I also was playing on another drummer's kit and i couldn't position the floor tom exactly where it needed to go because he had these broken memory locks on the legs. Since I couldn't adjust the floor tom properly, i had to tilt my ride cymbal back farther then usual so i had trouble hitting the bell correctly... i also ended up hitting the mic cable for the floor tom several times with my stick while trying to get from the bell back to the snare for fills. The other drummer had a fan on stage that was blowing at the drums... at first I thought it would be great to have a fan, but i had some problems with it because it was blowing cold air-conditioned air on my right arm... this caused my muscles to tighten.
Anyway, this was really disapointing to me for our first public gig... i really hope that we can get back on the horse and play out some more so i can recover from this terrible incident.
I got a lot of great advice from people on here about what to take with me since i was playing on the other guy's kit... but i guess no matter how prepared you are, something can always go wrong.