It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
6pm: load-in
Sometime between 6:30pm and 8pm - set up rig on stage, soundcheck, break down again (roughly 15-20 minutes)
Stage time: 5 minutes to load everything on stage, play set, 5 minutes to break down again
Bear in mind that we usually use the house PA, and the drum kit is usually shared between all the bands on the bill (it's set up at the beginning of soundcheck).
The other guitarist has stage right, and the bassist and I are stage left. That means that the other guitarist tends to get his rig on stage on his own, whereas the bassist and I alternate setting up our pedalboards and amps - ie while he's setting up his board, I'll set up my amp and then we'll swap just so we don't get in each other's way.
Once we're set up, all bags go behind the amps so we can grab them as soon as we're done and get off stage ready for the next band.
One important part is that we all tend to keep our main leads in with our pedalboards and our backup leads somewhere nearby. That means that what goes on stage is exactly what's needed, and no more - so there's no confusion or searching for stuff.
Does that help?
From arriving at the venue we can be loaded in, set up & ready to go within 45 mins.
Load everything in (safer than leaving anything for later), drummer sets himself up, rest of us set up the pa & lights, then back line in front of all cables. Run cables to front of stage, pedalboards down, tune up.
Bass player arrives, load his rig in.
Pint
Play.
After a few gigs it starts to flow.
We quite often don’t soundcheck as we’re out quite regularly. A sound check is usually only needed if we haven’t gigged for a few weeks or someone announces “hey guys, I’ve completely redone my patches”.
I feel that your band set up process may not have been thought through. I say this as a band which I have reached for had drums, keys guitar, bass, ekectric violin, saxophonist and vocals and is gig ready a lot quicker than 1 hour 45 mins.
The guitarist I do stuff for, once we're told where he's going, he's usually ready to rock in about 5 minutes, then I'm helping out wherever I can.
I hope this helps .
In my experience people who gig all the time tend to set up and soundcheck quicker than more casual gig'ing bands because A : they have worked out the easiest way to load in (for example if loading in to the front of a stage pack van so backline and drums come out first, then wedges \ IEM racks then finally FOH PA ..... if the load in is to the rear of the stage then it's the other way round) ..... Oh and B: people who gig all the time don't generally feel the need to treat the pub \ club to 15 minutes of playing in order to get their patches right etc .... they basically just want to line check and get a beer.
I personally like to play about 4 chords for 20 seconds for the soundman and show him how much boost for solo's I'm using if any and that's it. I have played with guys thought who endlessly jam away, fiddle with the amp, jam away etc sometimes in completely inappropriate styles to what we are gonna be covering on the night ..... drives me mad .... especially people who play while the soundmans doing you (I mean getting your PFL .... not litterally doing you ! )
I can't remember why but I actually set up a camera once to record the process of setting up my band at a typical club gig and then sped the video up so the 2 hour setup was condensed to 2 mins ..... to the tune of the Benny Hill theme ..... which is er here
The actual setup times depend what band I'm playing in. With the top band the lighting guy turns up first in his van and puts up shit loads of lights then I turn up an hour laster with the main band van ( 4.2 Transit Jumbo ) and we load in our amps which are all hardcased and thus 2 man lifts, then IEM rack \ drums and finally 6 box HK Actor DX and 2 Dart wedges. Some things are time saving, all vocal mics are wireless and already connected to digital stage box in same rack, as are all the wireless IEM receivers so connecting all that to the mixing desk is one ethercon cable. But fact is we have a ridiculous amount of gig and it does take around an hour from load to line check even though we have been doing in 14 years.
Other bands I play in use 2 SRM's on poles for the vocals, nothing's mic'ed and it basically takes 20 mins to set up. Personally I'm happy either way
We're actually looking at booking some time in a larger rehearsal space/village hall to "dry run" the entire setup in the hope that the rest of the band might learn how to do certain simple tasks. I find it takes me longer to tell them what to do than it does to just do it myself.