SOLO SET
PRE GIG EVALUATION
Because the venue is quite small and intimate with a tiny stage, I have decided to do an acoustic set.
I have asked two of my friends to play with me, one violinist and backing vocalist and one acoustic bass player. Both instruments can be DI'd so I would need three amps (one for my semi-acoustic guitar as well) and two microphones.
I'm going to do four songs, three originals and one cover, all within the folk/country/pop genres:
1. Crazy
I am starting off with this song, because I think it is my best original piece and it will hopefully trigger enough interest to hold the audience's attention throughout the rest of my set. In this song there will be vocals, backing vocals, violin, guitar and bass.
2. My Friends
In this song my bass player is going to play guitar for me as I am not able to play the guitar and sing at the same time. It will only be vocals, backing vocals and guitar but the song is up beat and happy. I am doing this song second because I do not want to take the audience down too early in my set as I might loose their attention.
3. Saving Grace
This song is quite slow and sad, which I will be mentioning to the audience before hand to get them in the right mind set. This song will be vocals, guitar and backing vocals. There will be no bass but the bass player will be singing just a few harmonies, but he can share the microphone with the violinist as it is quite unnecessary to set up an extra mic for just a few lines.
4. Is This Love - Bob Marley
I think it is good to end with the cover, because it is a song that everyone knows and it will be fun to do some crowd participation, swing the mood back up and people will remember it. I am going to ask one side of the audience to clap on every beat of the bar and the other half of the audience to clap on some of the off beats to get the rhythm section going. The song is up beat and happy and in my opinion it is good to leave the audience in a good mood rather than with a sad one.
The only time needed before the gig is for rehearsals with the people who will be playing with me. As we are all playing acoustic instruments and I live with them, I can easily set up some rehearsal times and I will not have to book a rehearsal studio. We will probably need aprox. 4 1 hour rehearsals together and hopefully the rest can just be self practise. There are only 4 songs and they are not particularly challenging to teach/learn and they are both session musicians so I reckon this will be enough time. Sound engineer is provided by the college and so is the equipment excluding the instruments, which we will be bringing ourselves so I do not have to worry about that either.
POST GIG EVALUATION
Because I had played 3 of the songs before on different gigs, I knew them by heart. However, the bass player and violin player hadn't, so we came together to rehearse. I gave both the violinist and the bass player the sheet music and a recording of the songs and told them what I wanted them to do some time in advance, so they could go through it before hand. As my set was going to be completely acoustic, we could rehearse in my room. As what I had asked them was pretty straight forward, they got the hang of it pretty easily. I hadn't really thought about what I wanted the violin parts to sound like in the 'Crazy', so when it came to the rehearsal and we had played the song through a few times, she on the parts that I violin until we came across a melody line we all agreed with. 'My friends' was going to be with the bass player playing guitar for me as I realised I was not capable of playing and singing this song at the same time. He had practised it quite well so we got the hang of it pretty easily.
For the third song I only wanted the bass player to sing a few harmonies.
'Is this Love' was a song that we all knew very well and the song is really easy to play. We decided to take some of the reggae elements out of if to make it a bit more suitable for my set. We just played it and adjusted it here and there until we were all happy with the result. We had also discussed doing some crowd participation in this song.
In the end, we came together twice for 1.5 hours each time.
The night before the gig, my bass player pullet out, which meant my set would be lacking a solid base and I thought that would negatively effect it. That is why I decided to call some of my friends, and, after a few attempts, someone came back to me saying they could play cajon for me.
This also meant I had to scrap 'My Friends' and add a new song as I was not capable of playing it by myself.
The song replacing 'My Friends' had to be me by myself as it was too short notice to get the violin player involved, which made me decide on changing the order of my set. Rather than starting with Crazy, I started 'Saving Grace', which was now me by myself. Then I would invite the Cajun player on stage and play the second song, which would now be 'Something Good'. The only thing I wanted him to play was a basic rhythm underneath. Then I would Invite my violin player on stage and play the third song, which would be 'Crazy' and we would still play 'Is This Love' at the end.
On the evening of the gig me and my band had a quick rehearsal outside as we had not rehearsed with the cajon player before.
Me and the Violin player did a very quick sound check so that the sound engineers were sure everything worked properly and knew the levels. As the violin's pick up was broken, she had to play it in front of a microphone. In the set she was not playing and singing at the same time so she was using the same mic for both. The Cajon did not need a mic. My guitar was DI'd and I had a vocal microphone as well.
I made sure I introduced my band and all of my songs and did some crowd participation in the last song, asking one side of the audience to clap on the beat and the other side to clap on some of the off beats.
I think overall my set went pretty smoothly. I think I definitely could have done with a few more rehearsals as there were a few errors that could have been prevented with that, but I managed to stay calm and not show the audience too much. I had lots of fun, learned a lot from this experience and realise what I need to work on to make my set more successful.
Because the venue is quite small and intimate with a tiny stage, I have decided to do an acoustic set.
I have asked two of my friends to play with me, one violinist and backing vocalist and one acoustic bass player. Both instruments can be DI'd so I would need three amps (one for my semi-acoustic guitar as well) and two microphones.
I'm going to do four songs, three originals and one cover, all within the folk/country/pop genres:
1. Crazy
I am starting off with this song, because I think it is my best original piece and it will hopefully trigger enough interest to hold the audience's attention throughout the rest of my set. In this song there will be vocals, backing vocals, violin, guitar and bass.
2. My Friends
In this song my bass player is going to play guitar for me as I am not able to play the guitar and sing at the same time. It will only be vocals, backing vocals and guitar but the song is up beat and happy. I am doing this song second because I do not want to take the audience down too early in my set as I might loose their attention.
3. Saving Grace
This song is quite slow and sad, which I will be mentioning to the audience before hand to get them in the right mind set. This song will be vocals, guitar and backing vocals. There will be no bass but the bass player will be singing just a few harmonies, but he can share the microphone with the violinist as it is quite unnecessary to set up an extra mic for just a few lines.
4. Is This Love - Bob Marley
I think it is good to end with the cover, because it is a song that everyone knows and it will be fun to do some crowd participation, swing the mood back up and people will remember it. I am going to ask one side of the audience to clap on every beat of the bar and the other half of the audience to clap on some of the off beats to get the rhythm section going. The song is up beat and happy and in my opinion it is good to leave the audience in a good mood rather than with a sad one.
The only time needed before the gig is for rehearsals with the people who will be playing with me. As we are all playing acoustic instruments and I live with them, I can easily set up some rehearsal times and I will not have to book a rehearsal studio. We will probably need aprox. 4 1 hour rehearsals together and hopefully the rest can just be self practise. There are only 4 songs and they are not particularly challenging to teach/learn and they are both session musicians so I reckon this will be enough time. Sound engineer is provided by the college and so is the equipment excluding the instruments, which we will be bringing ourselves so I do not have to worry about that either.
POST GIG EVALUATION
Because I had played 3 of the songs before on different gigs, I knew them by heart. However, the bass player and violin player hadn't, so we came together to rehearse. I gave both the violinist and the bass player the sheet music and a recording of the songs and told them what I wanted them to do some time in advance, so they could go through it before hand. As my set was going to be completely acoustic, we could rehearse in my room. As what I had asked them was pretty straight forward, they got the hang of it pretty easily. I hadn't really thought about what I wanted the violin parts to sound like in the 'Crazy', so when it came to the rehearsal and we had played the song through a few times, she on the parts that I violin until we came across a melody line we all agreed with. 'My friends' was going to be with the bass player playing guitar for me as I realised I was not capable of playing and singing this song at the same time. He had practised it quite well so we got the hang of it pretty easily.
For the third song I only wanted the bass player to sing a few harmonies.
'Is this Love' was a song that we all knew very well and the song is really easy to play. We decided to take some of the reggae elements out of if to make it a bit more suitable for my set. We just played it and adjusted it here and there until we were all happy with the result. We had also discussed doing some crowd participation in this song.
In the end, we came together twice for 1.5 hours each time.
The night before the gig, my bass player pullet out, which meant my set would be lacking a solid base and I thought that would negatively effect it. That is why I decided to call some of my friends, and, after a few attempts, someone came back to me saying they could play cajon for me.
This also meant I had to scrap 'My Friends' and add a new song as I was not capable of playing it by myself.
The song replacing 'My Friends' had to be me by myself as it was too short notice to get the violin player involved, which made me decide on changing the order of my set. Rather than starting with Crazy, I started 'Saving Grace', which was now me by myself. Then I would invite the Cajun player on stage and play the second song, which would now be 'Something Good'. The only thing I wanted him to play was a basic rhythm underneath. Then I would Invite my violin player on stage and play the third song, which would be 'Crazy' and we would still play 'Is This Love' at the end.
On the evening of the gig me and my band had a quick rehearsal outside as we had not rehearsed with the cajon player before.
Me and the Violin player did a very quick sound check so that the sound engineers were sure everything worked properly and knew the levels. As the violin's pick up was broken, she had to play it in front of a microphone. In the set she was not playing and singing at the same time so she was using the same mic for both. The Cajon did not need a mic. My guitar was DI'd and I had a vocal microphone as well.
I made sure I introduced my band and all of my songs and did some crowd participation in the last song, asking one side of the audience to clap on the beat and the other side to clap on some of the off beats.
I think overall my set went pretty smoothly. I think I definitely could have done with a few more rehearsals as there were a few errors that could have been prevented with that, but I managed to stay calm and not show the audience too much. I had lots of fun, learned a lot from this experience and realise what I need to work on to make my set more successful.
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