Live Performance Tips
Here you will find some useful tips for any sort of a Live Performance. If you have a tip that could help other musicians, don’t hesitate to share it with us – just use the form below! Thanks!
Last updated: 07. January 2021
(The newest entry on top!)
It sounds like a rock song and a lot of artists and bands have done it excessively! Almost every musician has tried this (some more, some less) in some manner. I can only speak for myself here and maybe for some of my friends and colleagues with whom I have spoken on the subject. One thing is to drink one drink before the gig just to loosen up a bit and then drink one or a couple of them after the gig to celebrate a successful performance. A completely different thing is going on stage totally wasted, not performing well, afterwards not remembering a thing about the gig you’ve just played and maybe then even convince yourself how awesome everything was. Not the greatest idea but you be the judge…
You are waiting to go on stage, your heart beats faster, you’re slightly sweating, you’re breathing faster… Recognise that? People call that “stage fright” and I used to do that, too. Now I call it excitement. Where’s the difference? Only in the definition. Well, not quite…
There’s one key difference and that is preparation. If you ask top athletes before the game or race if they are scared they will answer you that they are excited. They know they’ve worked hard for this and they are well prepared so there is no need to be scared. If you as a musician have learned and rehearsed your stuff well there’s also no need to have stage fright. You should be excited to go out there, show people your art and enjoy yourself while doing it!
Always keep the contact to your audience. And I don’t mean just the front row where the superfans and pretty girls and boys are but also the rest of it. 😉 Keep an eye contact but try to look everywhere throughout the venue. A friend of mine who’s a bass player told me a story what his bandleader said to him on his first gig: “Don’t look at your feet all the time! There’s no audience there…” If the frontman or somebody else in the band is a good speaker then he/she should talk to the audience from time to time, maybe tell the story behind the next song or just a short joke. But don’t do it too often and you should always be short so you don’t interrupt the flow of the performance. Then, of course, you should always go back and use some “classic moves” like sing-along and clap-along – they work most of the time…
Oscar Wilde said: “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”
What that means is: be authentic! It’s the most valued personal virtue today. Show the real you the whole time as an artist and especially on stage. Well, you can try playing a role or a character the whole time through but that’s just very hard to do 24/7. If you show the real you it’s true that you are more vulnerable to the outside world but you’re real and don’t lie to your fans and they can feel that, trust me! That’s why my suggestion is: be as you are! Why not?! It’s just who you are…
Mistakes happen – you are human! Live performances are full of them. Some are smaller so you don’t actually notice them and some are bigger and unfortunately sometimes VERY noticeable. But don’t let them bother you too much – they happen, they’re gone and you move on! Period. When I started playing live my older bandmate told me a trick. He said: “If you make a mistake playing on stage – smile! The bigger the mistake, the more you smile!” That was one of the best tips I got in my career as a musician. Your bandmates usually notice your mistake, see you smiling and they smile right back and if somebody in the audience noticed your mistake when he sees you and the band smiling he’s not even sure anymore if that was a mistake in the first place…
After you’ve planned your gig you have to plan your actual performance. Make the best setlist possible and try to create a good flow through the songs. If your frontman is a good speaker you should let him talk to the audience but not too much so he doesn’t interrupt the flow. Try to connect some songs so there is no break in between. Leave some good songs (maybe even the best one?!) for the encore. Talk to your bandmates what you should do if something goes wrong. Maybe you play with the click in your in-ears and it’s gone. Maybe you have some backing tracks running on the computer and it just died. What do you do? Stopping is the worst idea! Maybe you just stay on that one chord when the problem occurred and jam?! Or you agree in advance on a chord progression to play and improvise on until the problem is solved?! In a nutshell: plan as much as you can in advance! Most of the time everything will go smoothly but if something goes wrong everybody on stage will know what to do.
When you get the gig you should plan everything possible in advance. A good idea would be to go and visit the venue, check how big the place is, how strong the PA should be, how big is the stage, how many and what kind of lights do you need, talk to the place owner about the house rules, arriving time for the band, opening time, when exactly does he/she want you to start playing and for how long, should you do sets or not, and so on… The more information you gather in advance the less problems you’re going to have afterwards.
I know, I know… Slowly but surely I’m getting on your nerves. But you have to understand that there’s nothing more important than to warm up. If you don’t do it and just go on stage and perform you could hurt yourself and jeopardise the whole gig, maybe even the whole tour if you have other gigs planned! Trust me, you don’t want something like that to happen and neither do I, so: WARM UP!!!