Final Gig Review

For our gig, we had to arrive at the venue at 3pm for load in and soundcheck. Before we went to the venue, we came into college at 10 for a final practice. During our final practice we ran through the set several times, and practiced the many instrument changeovers as we wanted to make the set run as smoothly as possible. Then a bit before 3 we left for the venue by car which we used to move all the gear. We arrived at the o2 by 3, and asked at the box office for someone to come and let us in the side door of the venue and moved all of our equipment inside and upstairs. As we were the first band on at 7.50, we were due to soundcheck last, so we left our equipment in the venue while the other two acts sound checked and came back later to do our soundcheck, which was at 4.30. The first band to soundcheck was Mathura, as they played last and Lost In Nonsense did their soundcheck second.

For our gig, we had to arrive at the venue at 3pm for load in and soundcheck. Before we went to the venue, we came into college at 10 for a final practice. During our final practice we ran through the set several times, and practiced the many instrument changeovers as we wanted to make the set run as smoothly as possible. Then a bit before 3 we left for the venue by car which we used to move all the gear. We arrived at the o2 by 3, and asked at the box office for someone to come and let us in the side door of the venue and moved all of our equipment inside and upstairs. As we were the first band on at 7.50, we were due to soundcheck last, so we left our equipment in the venue while the other two acts sound checked and came back later to do our soundcheck, which was at 4.30. The first band to soundcheck was Mathura, as they played last and Lost In Nonsense did their soundcheck second.

The running order for the night was Orange Excuse 7:50-8:30, Lost In Nonsense 8:50-9:30 and Mathura 9:50-10:30. Overall, everyone stuck to the running order and there weren’t any cases of delaying or over running. This was probably mainly due to the acts not having enough material to overrun their sets. It also helped that the second act had a really simple set up. Not much could be done differently to improve the process. The changeovers were also quite quick and smooth with no real issues, which was again aided by shorter set times and Lost In Nonsense having a small set up which gave us maximum packing down and set up time.

My role in set up and soundcheck was to set up and test my guitar and pedal board as well as give feedback to the engineer on the monitor mix. During the performance my roles were lead guitar, rhythm guitar and drums. At the end for the packing down I helped move all the equipment off the stage and pack down my own gear. The connection between songs wasn't very smooth at all as we had an instrument change after every song, which lead to periods of silence, however we did practice these changes to make them as smooth as possible. I was a bit nervous prior to the gig, but not as nervous as I thought I would be. The audience reaction definitely put me at ease. There were a few mistakes throughout the performance, particularly in our newest song which didn't go to plan, but also wasn't as bad as it could have been. I think our performance went fairly well overall. I think our last two songs were our strongest. I couldn’t really hear anything through the monitor, but fortunately I could hear the drum kit acoustically quite well which helped with timekeeping. If I were to do the whole thing again, I would try and minimise changeovers between the songs and rehearse the newer song more. I would also perhaps have asked for my monitor mix to be changed during the performance.

I think Zoe did a good set as Lost In Nonsense, and think the crowd appreciated her songwriting. She had some problems with her set list as the programmed backing tracks had to be played in alphabetical order instead of the order that she wanted. This made it a bit more difficult for her to time the gaps in between songs to speak to the audience in.

I also think that Mathura performed a good set. They asked for changes to the monitor mix which must have meant they were struggling to hear on stage, even though the sound was fine through the front of house speakers. I think the songs worked better with vocals which I hadn’t heard before.

I thought the audience attendance at the event was fairly good on our night, and particularly for our set. There were quite a lot of people in the audience and they reacted well to our music as there was a lot of cheering, however a lot of the audience members left before the last band which left the venue feeling a bit empty for the last set. I think it could have been improved by people staying around to watch the whole concert and performers making more personal invites to the gig, as well as increasing our advertising on both social media and through the use of posters which we displayed around college.

On the whole I think the event was fairly successful, although we did make an overall loss. I think it would have been very hard to make a profit as there were so many people on the guest list which meant ticket sales were't as high. I think that we did draw in a reasonable sized crowd, but it could have been improved through better advertising as I mentioned earlier. I think that the event was a success because there were no major issues with the performances and that all of the sets ran smoothly and on time as well as a very efficient pack down of equipment.

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