Getting to know your live music gear

Once you have chosen the tools of your trade you need to spend time getting familiar with it. I don't mean you should take it out to dinner and buy it a few drinks, however you do need to treat it all with respect - so no snogging on the first date. Seriously there is an analogy here. You wouldn't take a new partner out and expect to know everything about them and how they were going to behave, what they liked and didn't like and then take them to meet your parents after five minutes would you? The same goes for your stage set-up.

Whenever you start using new equipment you need to spend a good few hours getting used to it before you go out and gig it in front of an audience. Knowledge is power and lack of knowledge with sound and lighting equipment is no power - Literally. You could end up having no sound or a dark stage if you don't know what you're doing. Or even worse you might start a show with a great intro, brilliant lighting, then you open your mouth to sing and.... nothing.

In his second autobiography, 'Saturday night Peter' he tells a great story about a Meatloaf tribute act he once worked with who made three attempts to start a show. Lights, sound effects, smoke etc. The Meatloaf impersonator rode into the club on a big motorbike, jumped up on stage, grabbed the mic and... nothing. The mic hadn't been faded up on the mixer. This happened two more times before he started screaming at his poor assistant who was running his mixing desk and obviously didn't know what he or she was doing.

If you are just starting out or you have purchased a new P.A. or some posh lighting, it will pay big dividends to hire a hall or a function room for a few hours and use it as a dry run for rigging, testing and de-rigging your stage equipment. Put the whole lot together as if you were about to perform a gig. Work out roughly how much time you need to set up and break down. Set all your volume levels to an acceptable gigging level and make a note of the fader, tone control, and effects positions on the mixer. Perform with the system for a few hours to get a feel of the sound and it's capabilities. I may be teaching grandma to suck eggs here, but you will save yourself the trauma of arriving at a gig and having gear not do what you expect it to do!

I'm speaking from experience here. There is nothing worse than turning up for a gig, rigging everything and then starting to the show with volume levels that are all wrong, or lights that don't work or worst of all - howling feedback the minute you start singing. Punters really dislike 105 decibels of high pitch squealing blasting at them from a P.A. - and it upsets all the dogs for miles around. If you don't know your gear - it's going to be one more thing to worry about. You should walk out on that stage / corner of the pub / function room etc., confident that all you have to concentrate on is your performance; Not whether the sound system is going to start whistling Dixey as you run around panicking on a pitch-black stage! Finally if you are lucky enough to have someone who comes with you on gigs and you've asked them to take control of your mixing desk, make sure they have plenty of experience or they have at the very least been with you for a few dry runs first. Giving an inexperienced person control of a mixing desk would be like asking a monkey to drive a car - you wouldn't do it would you! Seriously though, you wouldn't...

I once saw a young singer performing at a charity function. I had been asked along to compère the evening and I was talking with the young lady's father who told me that she was just starting out and that he'd given her a new P.A. system for Christmas and this was her first outing with the new gear. He was obviously very proud of his daughter but the smell of disaster wafted from his lips. I hadn't arrived in time for the sound check, but I presumed that everything was sorted. The girl was the first act on and every other act that evening was to use her P.A. system. I walked on stage to introduce her to the audience. As I approached the microphone there was a massive amount of feedback from the P.A. I ran over to the mixing desk and managed to tame the noise, and introduced the girl. She walked out on stage to much applause - however this soon turned to stony silence as people covered their ears. She kicked off with ('Black Velvet' - not a good choice I fear for a first song!) and it exploded like a distorted fart from the P.A. Both the input levels to the mixer and output to the P.A. were way too high and the system was peaking all over the blimmin' shop. A look of sheer terror spread across her face and she rushed over to the mixer to fiddle with some faders. After a few seconds she managed to tame the backing track slightly. The song has quite a long intro so she stood looking unsettled on stage looked upon by an equally nervous audience. Her microphone had a mute button on it, and she un-muted it just as she was about to sing. There was a howl from the P.A. that nearly shattered every piece of glass in the building. At this point I rushed on stage and pulled all the faders down on the mixer. She stopped her performance and I spent a few minutes re-setting her rig. By now the audience had lost  patience and they were stood at the bar chatting amongst each other - Charity or no charity they were obviously un-impressed. When everything was sorted she re-started her show. The final nail in the coffin was the fact that the poor young lady had very strong lisp and the opening line of Black Velvet is: "Mississippi in the middle of a dry spell..."

One final point, whenever you set up a stage rig, make sure you take the dreaded 'Health and Safety' issue very seriously. Firstly you should make sure your public liability insurance is up to date and all gear is electronically P.A.T. tested. Secondly when erecting speaker and light stands always assume that some idiot could fall into them. Make sure your stands are sturdy and set up with plenty of spread on the legs to support whatever they are holding without being unbalanced.

You should make sure that all leads are taped down. That is what gaffer tape is for! Keep a few rolls handy. Even if your rig is up on a stage and out of the way of the general public, taping cables and leads down ensures that you don't trip and go flying off the stage and into the lap of the audience.

You should realise by now that knowing how your gear works and how to set it up is just as important as knowing your material and looking after your voice. You have been warned!