Gig Review

For our first performance we were given four and a half hours to meet our band mates and choose a song to learn and practice for our gig, this meant we had to be adaptable and work together well to meet the deadline despite any musical differences, this is useful as a good musician will need to be versatile and meet the needs of the band as well as their own. For the performance we chose the song "I miss the misery" by Halestorm, this was because we had two female singers one of which didn’t listen to rock music and we felt as a band that this song was a good compromise between all of us.

I think the overall performance went well despite any mistakes that were made because nobody had played with each other in the band before and we all had different levels of experience, I felt this was positive because we only had three hours of practicing the song together and the mistakes in the performance were minor or something that may have been out of our control.

Other people thought that we had a good stage presence because we used the space on stage and influenced a good rapport from the audience, this was important because it involved the audience into our performance and was interesting for them to watch.

I could improve my timing and smoothness of playing because I often found myself getting my plectrum caught on the strings which would cause me to go out of time and rush chord sequences to catch up with the song and the rest of the band, to try and fix this I would spend more time practicing to become more fluent and familiar with playing the song, I could also use a smaller plectrum and lower the action on my guitar to prevent getting caught on the strings as I'm playing. Also I felt that I couldn’t hear my guitar as I was playing, this could have been a technical issue or that the volume levels weren't correct, to prevent this from happening we could've done a sound check before playing to ensure that all the instruments could be heard equally by the audience through the PA and by us on stage through the monitors.

Other people suggested that the bass overwhelmed the rest of the band this may have been because the bass had been turned up too loud or that the bass player was playing too hard on down tuned strings; this could be cured by having a quick sound check and by further practice. People also thought that the vocals were off during the chorus which could be improved with more practice of the song and singing together.

Additionally, the guitar was too quiet and couldn’t be heard, this may be because of a technical fault or not having the volume set to the correct level, this could've been fixed during a sound check or adjusting the audio levels.

Next time I'll spend more time practicing to become more fluent and familiar with playing the song, use a smaller plectrum and lower the action on my guitar to prevent getting caught on the strings, have a sound check to make sure that everyone can be heard, change my strings on my guitar to make sure they sound their best, and be more confident to look at the audience to engage them into the performance to look more professional on stage.