Task 1 - What makes a successful music event

[ORGANISING A VENUE]

When organising a venue, you have to make sure that you pick a place that will have enough space for a decent crowd. If you are performing locally and usually have around 30-50 people then it would make sense to book a venue that holds around 50-75 people to make sure that there is plenty of space for people to dance around, and make sure that there is some form of bar that serves drinks. 

When picking a venue you also want to make sure that you price the tickets fairly and that you as a band are also being paid a fair amount, unless you are performing for free and just want to be able to get your music out to others. When pricing the tickets fairly, you have to think about how well you truly are and think of how long you are playing for. 

You also want to make sure that you have made a good set list and you try hard to stick to it. If you try your hardest to stick to the set list and stay for amount of time that was intended then you will have set a good representation of the band and they know that you stick to your word and will most likely want you to come back if you bring enough people and the music is good enough.

[Having good equipment]

Having good equipment is a must when performing at a venue. It shows the audience that you take great care of the equipment and the venue doesn't need to worry about covering anything or lending out a drum kit or something to the band. This will set a good representation and also just make you look a bit cooler on stage while performing.

Not just equipment but having a good sound engineer helps quickly change the sounds of the bands instruments. For example, if you play a more jazzy song but then the next song is a more metal song, your sound engineer could add distortion to one of the guitars and more bass to the bass. It makes changes songs much more manageable and shows the venue that you are on top of everything and everything is under control with the band and sound, nothing will go wrong.

Security and Safety

If you are trying to put on a successful event then you have to make sure that everyone in the venue, including yourself and the band are safe. This would be done by making sure there are security guards of sort around the stage so that no one from the audience can just jump onto the stage mid performance or no one can try and attack anyone on stage.

With the aspect of Health and Safety, when putting on a musical event you want to make sure that there are no drinks on stage, or very few just away from wires to make sure that none of your equipment gets damaged. Making sure that there is enough room in the venue and no one is feeling over crowded because if there isn't much space then there wont be anybody accidentally bumping into each other and to ensure that no one is getting hurt by being pressed up against anybody. You can also keep the ticket selling to online and make people write if they have any accessibility needs to ensure that they get the proper care that they need. 

This is all done to ensure that everyone at the venue is having a good time, nothing goes wrong and that all the people they're feel safe.

Promotion/Advertisement

With performing at a venue, you want to make sure that you promote and advertise your band AND the venue so that you both you and the venue are getting paid fairly and are having a good enough profit for the venue to want to get you back to perform again.

You can promote the venue and you band on social media by making some Instagram posts and Facebook posts. You can also make a website for your band so that people can go on there and see where you are performing, when you are performing, and you can even put a link for the tickets and promote the venue outside of the event so that people can see how good the venue is and can buy your tickets easy and its easy to find where they are so no one is trying to find where to purchase tickets and not be able to.

The Purpose of Performing

Finding the purpose for performing at an event or setting up an event will make you be able to make clear goals about where you want the event to go. For example, some people use music and perform music as a form of self applied therapy, and some people do it for the enjoyment and like making music and showing it the world, and some people like making and performing their own music on stage and like seeing the crowds faces whether they like it or not because performing and seeing the crowds reaction is a form of feedback to the performers on whether the audience likes the song or not or if the band is good or if there is a part of the original song where no one is quite as hyped up and enjoying it as much because then they know they either need to change that part of the song or just remove it entirely and add something different.

Some people do it to make themselves feel better and because it gives themselves enjoyment as well as the audience they are performing to. Even if you are only performing for your own self esteem you want to make sure that you still give of a good vibe when performing and really interacting with the crowd and putting a big smile on your face when you perform.

Preparation for the event

When putting on an event, you want to make sure that you are fully prepared. You can make sure you are prepared by practising regularly, even more when you come closer to actually performing. You want me make sure that you are getting enough sleep to ensure that you have all the energy you need and that you are doing useful exercises before performing to make sure that you are prepared and can perform to the best of your abilities.

You want to make sure that you are fully prepared before walking in, if you are not prepared, I wouldnt suggest cutting off any songs, I would suggest trying to improvise or something for the songs that still need work, this shows that even if you are an amazing band, some of the best musicans can make mistakes and the only thing that you can do is just get on with it.

Stage presence

When performing, you want to make sure that your stage presence is at an all time high and that you are actively engaging with the crowd. Crowd work is one of the best things to consider in stage presence because it means that you are actively getting the crowd involved with the performance, this can be by getting them to sing along with the song or even just getting them to dance. Every part of crowd work means a better and more fun experience for everyone, including the band.

You also want this to way in with having really good equipment because if you have really low quality equipment it will make you look like you don't really care how the music sounds, but it is also understandable that some people just can't get a hold on good quality equipment.

Although you may not look as cool with bad equipment, you can still give off a message that even with bad equipment, people are capable of making great things. Music can sound amazing without needing to have a really good quality guitar, or a really cool looking amp.