Band & Gigging Advice

dubund

here's some random pieces of advice to bands:

- when attending gigs, ask bands what they thought of any particular venue to play in (equipment-wise, engineer, sound quality etc)

- if contacted by an unknown promoter, check their website/myspace listings for bands who've played for them before and find out what those bands thought of them. allowing for occassional personal disagreements or sh*te gigs for random reasons like equipment failure or such, if the feedback is mostly positive then go with them

- always check out the bands you'll be playing with and work with them as closely as possible. dont view them as rivals and if you like their music then support them when they play.

- dont play too often, and vary the venues you play in. your gig should be an event, something that your fans/support will be waiting for. 1 big gig a month in your hometown is plenty unless you'll defintely be playing to a fresh audience. playing 10 times a month in same town/city is a waste of your time unless you're supporting established bands of a similar genre to you whose fanbase are likely to be into your music. playing too often risks burning out your mates/family/work colleagues who are invaluable to you in the early days for support until you have built up an independent following.

- never leave home without a CD, or at least a flyer with your myspace link. one to one promo or just chatting to people when out boozing is much better than posters or flyers left lying around. in general, taking time out to talk to as few as 10-20 people directly at gigs is better than randomly handing out 500 flyers to people who'll just throw them away. the personal touch goes a long way.

- when promoting your gigs and band in general, try to work out who your target audience is. dont blanket bomb people who arent likely to be interested. build up a mailing list of people who actually want to hear about the band. dont waste too much of your money or time on flyers & posters or generic myspace/bebo messgages as these only work well for established bands & large events with a broad appeal. if people dont recognise the name on the flyer or poster, chances are they'll pay no attention to it. keep your promo as personal as possible, talk to people directly or encourage friends to bring their friends along. if every band member could bring 5 brand new people to every gig, you'd soon build a large following. i've done this in previous bands, and it works

- don't use sh*t equipment when playing live! a venue's sound system and engineer can only do so much. i've found in general that engineers lose interest very quickly when un-rehearsed bands or bands with crap equipment play

- always listen to the engineer, if he tells you to turn down an amp or to stop cupping the mic or whatever, he's doing this so that he has more control over the stage and can make you sound better. its shocking the number of bands who dont listen to enigineers and then wonder why levels were fcked up!

- hook up with bands/promoters outside your city/town and abroad, help them set up a gig where you are, and they can do the same for you


...that's all off the top of my head and not following any particular logical order, but if i can think of anything else, or find the time to present it in a better format, i'll re-post.

michi12

i wont bother linking you to my bebo or anything cus its just pointless.

anywho the story thus far is that i was in a band for about a year and then i left when they started to go metal. i was a very inexperienced guitarist but now i'm fairly confident in saying that i've gotten better.

now tho i wanna start up my own band. i do hav the apropriate friends ie, i know a guitarist bassist and drummer. we wont actually start practising for about a month or two because it'll only be then that we will hav the space and drummer is getting new drums.

but where do we start? how long should we wait until we play a gig? should we learn 1000 covers along with writing our own material (i do write my own stuff so i kinda have a half start already).

i am quite aware that i shouldnt rush things because no good will come of it and i do know a bit about being in a band too. i just wanna make sure that i dont mess up.

cheers lads

Michi

miju

learn about 15 covers which will get you through most sets and work on originals to boot.

as for how long to gig? thats all up to when you guys feel ready there is no right or wrong answer for that one

michi12

cool, cheers man

Doozie

There seems to be a lot of bands looking for gigs in this forum and I thought I'd let them know how I found bands for my gigs.

I accessed music websites eg irishmusiccentral.com, myspace, cpu, thumped, connected etc listen to a few good bands then see if the ones I like wanted to gig (they usually did)

Start the night at 9 with the singer/songwriters who were a bit moany while the crowds were coming in then get the bands on after that to liven the place up.

Bands who did come and brought a crowd I would ask back after a few months. Asking bands to bring a crowd was my only stipulation and generally worked well atmosphere wise and money wise!

I would only allow bands or singer/songwriters to play who had an ep or website that I could listen to so having something to give potential gig organisers is an obvious must have although you'd be surprised at the amount of singers who came in with nothing.

I also learned, for any budding event organisers....never..ever put a night on that there is a football championship/league final on!

Make sure the guy who loans you the sound equipment isn't equal to dribbly cow excrement and completely unreliable....

anyway...maybe this is no help...I could go on but it was a few years

The Volt

Personally we're getting into the habit of coming together with 3 or 4 bands we've gotten to know and just putting the gig on ourselves. As far as I know these are the main prices, feel free to add to this list.
Dorans: €300 (friday & saturday) 150 (monday-wednesday) 250(thursday) 1000 (All Ages)
Radio City: €350 or €1000 all ages
The Village: 1800 for all ages (Not sure about normal nights)
Whelans: €250 during the week, not sure about weekends.

We usually just pick a date out, give ourselves a month or so to promote the heck out of it, delegate the equipment and take it in turns headlining.

I'd love to hear some of your opinions on making sets better and more professional (Ie crowd interaction, linking songs, going out with a bang)

BangedUpDrummer

hows things..i was wondering if anybody would know the people who run the street v.i.p billboards or have an idea on how to get a poster up and the cost,id like to promote the odd whelans or dorans gig but dont know how to go about it! thanks!

future-shade

Hi folks,

Don't know if this is the right place to ask, but just wondering has anyone, in particular vocalists ever seen a particular mic stand?

Basically, the idea of it is if the singer decides to take the microphone off the stand, the clip stays attached to the microphone so as to allow it to be placed back on the stand easily. I'm sure they are common enough for touring acts to use. I don't know if it's the stand which facilitates this or if the type of clip in question can be fitted to a standard mic stand?

The singer in our band would like to have one. Even if I knew what they are called, it would be a place to start. Also, does anyone know where we could locate a white mic stand, a lá Bon Jovi?

Cheers!

miju

future-shade wrote: »

Also, does anyone know where we could locate a white mic stand, a lá Bon Jovi?

Google is your friend http://www.thomann.de/ie/sm_pro_audio_mic_stand_white.htm

Shonagh

Hey everyone,
I joined a band, in about December of last year, and we have a gig coming up in February. I have absolutely no idea what to wear, and I'm not just being a typical girl here, I really have no idea lol. I usually wouldn't be going to many gigs, and I have no clue what is practical and what isn't. The place we're playing is quite crowded, and will be fairly hot, and when I get too hot I tend to faint.. =/

I play keyboards, if thats relevant?

Lol thanks =]

raindog.promo

Hey folks, great thread.

I was speaking to a foreign singer/songwriter recently. He has perfect english and does a lot (especially Irish - Damien Rice, Dempsey, Frames etc) of covers.
He was talking to me about playing a few gigs over here for about a week, only wanting to make enough money to keep going and get home.

I suggest he do cover gigs in pubs/venues that would pay him for his time and get opening slots with other bands to play his own material (or slip one or two originals into a covers set for pubs and vice versa for opening sets).

My idea at the moment is for him to send over a demo of him doing covers and send copies to pubs with a covering letter stating he is looking for one-off (presumably) paid gigs.

I reckon Temple Bar would be the best place to start.
Does anyone have any advice in general and in particular the name of good pubs inside and outside of Dublin, whom I could approach?

I have a feeling that it would be easier to get paid gigs outside of Dublin.

I'm still going through the old threads and haven't found much info, but plan to check out Miju's articles on goldenplec. Kudos for the work you've put in here by the way.

Any advice much appreciated.

Squidgie

BangedUpDrummer wrote: »

hows things..i was wondering if anybody would know the people who run the street v.i.p billboards or have an idea on how to get a poster up and the cost,id like to promote the odd whelans or dorans gig but dont know how to go about it! thanks!

Try the big ones-jcdecaux & ferrell. You can see the names above or below the ads. Also there's a crowd that do the bus shelter adds-adshel.

wild one

Anyone know who I could talk to about getting on the line up for one of the up and comming tents in [snip] and to do support for acts in the O2 arena?
Thanks.

miju

Yes I do but 3 things:

1: no mcd related discussion is allowed
2: they wouldnt appreciate their contact details being put up on boards
3: lineup for all tents is well decided on by now

With regards 02 you wouldnt be contacting venue management but the management of the bands themselves. Be prepared to be asking about buying on though.

MichaelJos17

miju wrote: »

Yes I do but 3 things:

1: no mcd related discussion is allowed
2: they wouldnt appreciate their contact details being put up on boards
3: lineup for all tents is well decided on by now

With regards 02 you wouldnt be contacting venue management but the management of the bands themselves. Be prepared to be asking about buying on though.

Buying on? What do you mean by this? Like paying to support? Is that common practice?

MGSman123

Here's my big Q for the day:

I'm putting together a big-ish gig (The Village or The Button Factory or something like that) this summer and I was wondering does anyone have any ideas/resources to help me promote it? I'm looking for sources of cheap enough advertising and/or promotion. The gig will be for charity. I'm considering doing it in August, so that give a good bit of time.

Any help would be much appreciated.

-MGSman123

Neptune City

We're a new originals Dublin based band looking to play our first gig...only bother is were a bit unsure about how to go about getting one!
We've begun recording some demo material but don't have it finished yet.

Could anyone give us some advice on getting a gig?

cerebis

Neptune City wrote: »

We're a new originals Dublin based band looking to play our first gig...only bother is were a bit unsure about how to go about getting one!
We've begun recording some demo material but don't have it finished yet.

Could anyone give us some advice on getting a gig?

ditto ! would like to find this info as well!

MGSman123

cerebis wrote: »

Neptune City wrote:

We're a new originals Dublin based band looking to play our first gig...only bother is were a bit unsure about how to go about getting one!
We've begun recording some demo material but don't have it finished yet.

Could anyone give us some advice on getting a gig?
ditto ! would like to find this info as well!

Well, I have advised many other bands on this before (but never on this forum) so I suppose I can give you a hand. Let me first get the nasty fact out of the way: You are probably going to have to pay money -- and not get it back. You will essentially be working for promoters and it's he most difficult part of the whole thing. The first thing that I tried doing was setting up my own gig for them, but I just barely made it and just broke even.

What I did then was very simple, and that was to get them gigs with promoters. I got them their second gig with Dublin Underground. They're okay to work with, but only really base themselves out of Doran's anymore. They're good if you're starting off. At the same time, you should try and do a few things with other promoters such as Debasement, Gigsmart and Radiator Nights (I still don't know how to get in contact with them). Once you have gained experience with gigging and have developed a bit of a fan base, you can then move onto your own gigs. From doing those other gigs, you should have some friends in other, similar bands. Do the gig with them! And also, with regard to your own gigs, make sure that you put a band who is honestly capable of headlining in the headlining slot!

Best of luck to yas!

-MGSman123.

not yet

Hi,
Been asked to to a gig in my local on sunday night. I play guitar and sing.
I have been asked to include my daughter, She's 16 so no nerves etc.


Just looking for any tips/hints on what to expect. I'll do 5-6 numbers
Then she will do same, then 6-8 together. The crowd will all be 35+

P.s it's the first gig for either of us.

colmmeister

howdy, need to find good rehearsal space in galway, new to all this. any pointers would be much apreciated.

crashbangwollop

colmmeister wrote: »

howdy, need to find good rehearsal space in galway, new to all this. any pointers would be much apreciated.

Forge recording studio and rehearsal rooms, all the bands in Galway use it. Ask for Bernard on 091 561446

Jammyc

MGSman123 wrote: »

promoters such as Debasement,

Did anyone else get this when they clicked that link?

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colmmeister

Thank you!

AMPSound

dubund wrote: »

- always listen to the engineer, if he tells you to turn down an amp or to stop cupping the mic or whatever, he's doing this so that he has more control over the stage and can make you sound better. its shocking the number of bands who dont listen to enigineers and then wonder why levels were fcked up!

Here here! Well said! We have a whole section dedicated to tips for bands, especially young ones. A lot of the tips have already been mentioned here, but there are loads more to soak up!

DeBunny

Neptune City wrote: »

We're a new originals Dublin based band looking to play our first gig...only bother is were a bit unsure about how to go about getting one!
We've begun recording some demo material but don't have it finished yet.

Could anyone give us some advice on getting a gig?

Give Dublin Underground a go, if they're still going. They're good for bands that are starting out.
You don't have to pay and if you bring more than 20 people you get a cut of the ticket price after that.
The gigs themselves don't usually have a lot of attendance but this can a good thing if you haven't gigged much.
http://www.myspace.com/dublinunderground

DeBunny

Here's a couple of blogs that give good gigging and marketing advice for new independent bands.
http://blog.discmakers.com/
http://www.musicthinktank.com/
http://www.knowthemusicbiz.com/

CaptainSnipes

Hiya,

First time poster here, saying there is some fantastic stuff on the forum! Thanks all for your contributions.

So, I was wondering... I'm a troubadour/singer/songwriter from Finland, coming to Dublin in a couple of weeks. Was thinking that I'd bring my guitar & try to get some trad./ballad/cover gigs in Dublin pubs.

My question is how much can one expect to get paid for playing in Dublin? I especially want to avoid distorting the market by charging too little.

Cheers,

-Snipes

rcaz

Hey CaptainSnipes, this thread is really old so I'm going to close it. I copied your post into a new thread though, you'll probably get some more useful responses in a new thread!