3 Best Live Performance Tips Every Artist Must Know
Posted in: Blog, Music, Working in Entertainment | No Comments | March 4, 2012
I think now is an apt time to discuss some of the best live performance tips I have with our dear fans. Last night J.Kap performed at the Basement @ Graveyard in East Atlanta, one of our favorite venues in the city. As always, we had a blast performing for our fans and the capacity crowd that came out to see him and Cousin Dan. Generally speaking, the show went quite well, but technical issues in real-time can often have a way of throwing a wrench in the spokes of any performance.
Live performing becomes easier with experience
Make sure you put on a "winning" performance.
Live Performance Tip #1: Bring your own gear!
Never rely on what’s provided at the venues. Often times, house equipment is janky, shorted or abused. The most nightmarish scenario for any musician is being in the moment, killing a riff – and all of a sudden, your instrument goes completely silent to the audience. If you’ve never peed your pants before, you might be in for a new experience if your sound shuts down. Don’t let it happen, bring your own gear!
Live Performance Tip #2: Control your own levels as much as possible
This live performance tip is a bit of an extension of the last tip. From a live performance standpoint, often everything is reliant on the house live sound engineer. Sometimes you get lucky and the venue provides a great engineer, but generally speaking, most are under-paid and apathetic to your dreams of putting on the most audibly spectacular performance in the venue’s history.
The more control you have, the better. After the show last night, Kyle Dreaden, a good friend of ours from the band The Wolves (also a true audio ninja) gave me some fantastic advice I’d like to share:
J.Kap is very theatrical and dynamic with his vocal delivery. An issue we ran into last night was his lack of audibility during his more quiet vocals in the lower register. The house engineer has a compressor to level out the dynamics; pulling up the lows and wrangling the highs, as well as a gate for preventing feedback, but guess what? It still wasn’t good enough. On Kyle’s advice, from now on, we’re bringing our own compressor and gate.
Tip #3: When Performing, Keep Drinking Water On Stage
Last night, J.Kap almost vomited in the middle of a verse because his mouth got so parched. Unless you’re going for that “edgy” vibe by puking all over your adoring fans, keep a couple bottles of water handy when performing live.
Well, those are the best live performance tips I can think of for now. Hope you found this article useful. Thanks to everyone who came out to see us last night for supporting the movement! We’ll see you guys next time. For updates on future shows, “like” J.Kap’s fan page.
Sometimes it's ok to get live performance advice from seasoned vets.
