Performing at a lousy equipped gig

ceing

ceing

New member
Hello guys, my school invited us to go bak to our school for a gig at our schools 'rockfest'. however, the equipments dey offer are.......as the title of the thread says it.

The drums each of the toms onli have the batter head on while de resonant head is missing and the toms juz sound like plastic, it has a snare with a resonant head with a hole in it and the snare wire (or whatever you call it) is broken. the base drum is still accpetable but their hi hat stand is faulty at times too. Actually they have a better pearl drumset which was rumored that it costs 5k but the band in charge refuses to let out the drums for ppl to play on or even see..which defeats the purpose of buying the drums in the first place.:???:

The sound system of the place (which is the hall) only have 2 or 3 mike jacks or whatever you call it which are working (actually we intend to use our amps to connect to the jacks and which is connected to the school sound system) In the last gig we have in our school, the guitarists and bassist juz bring their own small amps along with them and blast it as loud as it could. (so you could imagine the sound quality of it)
The reason I am telling you guys this is hoping that you guys (who definitely have more experience than us in gigging as we only performed in 1 or 2 gigs all at school) can have some solutions to help us out..
and another question to ask is would you guys perform in this kind of gigs?
Thx
 
Er... might sound harsh but if they're not willing to accomodate our performances, why should we accomodate to their request? I'd turn the gig down on the basis of respect of a musician's duty to perform well and to their best musicality.....
 
i blasted my 15watt amp during the first school gig. Could only hear guitars and drums. Bassist's amp was too soft.
Second school gig, borrowed school's keyboard amp.
Next time, just use school guitar club's amps. Not sure what they are tho. Maybe anyone who went for this year's cjc rockefella can enlighten me cause according to the teacher in charge, they borrowed my school guitar club's guitar and bass amp..
 
Too bad our school don hav guitar clubs or something like dat, i just noe they have 2 very big speakers. Is there any possibility tt we can use those speakers to connect to the amps? do we need a mixer or something?
 
i'm not really experienced in gigging..
only gigged once..

but anyway.. for sound system..
u can either rent amps that are like..2x12" combo..which is super good for school halls..
then mic them up into the PA system..that one i think your school "AV boys" should know how to do it.. for me..i prefer buying amps myself..rather than renting..too expensive..overtime..if u gig often.. better get own amps..no point getting small ones.. its 30watts and 12" minimum for school halls..

for drums..u can rent.. borrow from your school's band cca..if there is one..

a lot of places got offer renting..it depends on your budget.. and what equipments u looking for..

as for mixer..it really depends on your budget..and whether u wanna sound good or not..
no mixer also can one..the "control room" can do it..
 
ceing said:
Hey i thought of tt too! haha but on second thoughts hw am i able to carry my drumset to school. lol
Click to expand...

Take a cab or get someone to drive you down? It's hell troublesome, but if the equipment is as crappy as you described, then I think going through the trouble to bring your own kit down will be well worth it. Even if not the whole kit, you can at least bring your own snare, stands and cymbals. :)
 
hey, i've performed at a few venues and i remembering playing at alot of places where the sound sucked. There was this once where we played at an atrium, there was like only 2 speakers and NO AMPS so we had to plug everything into a mixer i think and just play from that. We couldn't hear ourselves so there were bound to have screwups but yeah dude, what you said is true. Its the experience, after that gig my band was like more versatile in sound areas and learnt to give and take at certain points. But yah, if i were you i would definitely try to gain as much publicly and recognition and go for something like that again. HAHA ((:
 
Very simple solution, though its a little harsh and might reflect badly on you.

Get an equipment list from the organisers, make sure that every thing they promised you is there (learnt it the hard way out when some organisers forgot to bring a keyboard down for a particular gig... ended up letting our keyboardist sit out and our lead covering all her parts). If everything looks good, go ahead and do the gig. If its a little inadequate, see if you can bring your own hardware and gear down... that would be highly recommended because not every gig organiser knows what gear to bring or have the budget to accomodate everything.

If the equipment is shitty and they refuse to change, don't do. No point compromising on sound and making your band look bad just to play a gig. :) you don't owe them anything to play, even if its a paid gig.
 
make sure you're in tune and you're in time, and try to have the sound as balanced as possible volume-wise.

once all that is done, if you still don't sound too good, don't think about it. go out there and have the time of your lives!

there will always be people who say "this band sounds terrible", but nobody can say "i bet i could be having more fun then them!"

have fun and entertain.
 
Dude, mine was even worse. Even though my band did not perform at prom night in the end. Haha. During the PAE posting day, we all had to go back to the school and then the student organizers wanted an audition for all aspiring performers.

A few weeks back then, I told the student organizers to rent amplifiers, specifically cabinet amplifiers. And bloody hell, I was thinking, "I seriously think they do not know how to find one!" and I was spot-on. On the day of the audition, there were only the concert band's drum set and a keyboard. The keyboard was the most hilarious. It did not even come with a stand, the treble keys produced no sound and the line-in wire was so badly damaged. And we did not see any amplifiers. The bassist could not perform and luckily, my best friend and I had bought our own pedals. But the PA system was still bullshit. My pedal could not work well with the PA system and in the end, I had to borrow another band's small 15 watt amplifier which they bought along.

At the end of the show, my whole band was so pissed that we walked right out of the lecture hall. Actually it wasn't just walking out... We stormed out.
 
Its hard for part-time 'hobbyist' musicians to play proper gigs in Singapore. I personally played my first gig in school with a 15watt amp, along with my other band members.

I think most of you know that in overseas everything is bare and you gotta bring your own drumkits & amps to the venue. Kinda sucks but they really put in their money and effort and time into the whole thing to make it work.
 
pedialite said:
I think most of you know that in overseas everything is bare and you gotta bring your own drumkits & amps to the venue. Kinda sucks but they really put in their money and effort and time into the whole thing to make it work.
Click to expand...

Yes. but it makes you want to put on a proper show after lugging all your gear down to the venue itself. hence the higher committment level and better playing standards.
 
=kerplunk182

Oh that was for CNY concert. For Rockefella's rehearsals the students brought their own amps. Rehearsals always sucked primarily because of this reason of weak powered monitors used for loudspeakers and 30 watt unmic'ed amps.

For the real concert they're getting the same thing as last year, getting a $1.5k equipment list (est. market price) for $500 (haha don't ask me whose lobang it is). Two 100 watt valve state Marshalls, Some insane half stack Peavey bass amp, 7-mics for drumset, and a whole load of sound reinforements etc. Haha I sorta chose the equipment for last year but was afraid it was way beyond budget, then this student council teacher had this crazy lobang for almost 33% of market price. It sounded quite solid. Hope this year will be the same!

The concert is this friday evening but too bad it's closed to cjcians because the VP and some teachers had a shock/phobia after inviting Ronin (of all local bands and with Levan's solid line of words not suitable for old folks) for grad night 3 years ago... But I'll try to get some footage and will upload it to Youtube (that's if I don't screw up haha).
 
empihsrow said:
And bloody hell, I was thinking, "I seriously think they do not know how to find one!" and I was spot-on.
Click to expand...
Did you know how to get equipments and/or done it before? Why didn't you help them, ask them about their budget or something. Tell them a good gig at least least least $500 (to help them get an idea of the cost, because it seems people with zero experience think renting equipments are like $10/hr?). Get some quotations from equipment rental guys and see what they can provide for $500 for the occasion (describe the event and venue)

Well, I did that last year because I knew the SC aren't fulltime (or part time for that matter) gig-organisers and and didn't want the concert to sound shitty and get screwed up when 800 was paying $10 each to watch CJ combo bands play (firstly there's the reputation, secondly the gig HAD to go on). So I decided to extra a lil and worked with some SC ppl in getting quotes and proposals for the teachers-in-charge. In the end, we got a pretty good lobang from a teacher one week before the event and the whole gig was teh sex. It was almost comparable to Rock for Wayne (but of course not as good cause no Leonard around). Still, thanks to the sound techies from this Sembawang jamming studio (Lee Kwong Seng?) we got the equipment from, everyone had a great experience and the extra trouble was worth it.
 
i realised my school's pretty helpful and generous compared to what i see here

we had the full support from teachers for whatever we wanted

they rented a kickass mixer. got their PA team to help us mic up everything and wth. even rented stage monitors for us

i appreciate them so much more now hahaha
 
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