A making of a concert - Episode 5: The Day

Hi Everyone !

I had a problem with my phone, so I couldn't update this blog today. It's actually 2:30AM, and as this day is ending, let me tell you about the day of the concert.

A concert is the moment we all wait, it's the moment when we show everyone the work we have done during the past weeks (see the other posts about the making of a concert).
Tonight, no way to go wrong, everything is live, we can't make any mistakes !

Here's how I live a concert day:
First, I prepare all my gear for transport, making sure I don't forget anything. It's always embarrassing to miss something when in the venue.
Then...I load my car, that's not a very interesting work, and it could be very tiring depending of the gear I carry, but I don't have a choice.
I'm in the venue two to four hours before a show, and I always start...by unloading my gear into the venue.

Depending on how many bands play, the first to go on stage is the last to play. This way, the last band to do sound checks is ready to play when the doors open.
Today, two bands are playing, and we are the second one, so we start to install our gear.
Depending on the size of the stage, everyone has a place more or less imposed.

Once everyone found a place, we start to plug our gear, with the help of the sound engineer. There is patchbay on stage, it's a big box with inputs and outputs, directly plugged into the mixer, usually several meters away. This patchbay is important, because, as musicians, we only have to carry cables long enough to plug in this box. As the longer a cable is, the heavier it is, it's nice not to carry several 30 meters cables. Once everyone is plugged, we can start the soundcheck.

The sound engineer begins to set the level and the sound for each of the mixer's inputs. We usually start with the bass drum, but sometimes, we start by the first member ready...
Once the sound engineer found a sound which he finds correct, he switches to another input, and so on with every inputs, usually ending with vocals.

Once done, we start playing some pieces together, and ask the sound engineer to set our monitors. These monitors allow us to ear everyone correctly, and play well with the others. Depending on the venue, we could all share a few monitors, or we can have several monitors for each musician.
As a keyboard player, I always insist to have my own monitor, because unlike guitars, drums or bass, I don't have a sound without a monitor, so I really need one to ear myself (that's less important if I play an acoustic piano, of course).
While we play together, the sound engineer sets the audio levels of everyone in order for the audience to hear everything fine. It's almost never true, but it depends a lot of the venue, the placement of the audience, the acoustics of the room...

Once our soundcheck is done, it's the other band's turn. We leave the stage, trying to move the less gear as possible. The other band will then do the same thing as we just did, but it's usually faster, as everything has already been checked before, so the gain levels, inputs,...are basically the same.

You now know everything about the preparation for a concert. I will not post about the concert, because it's something to see, to hear, to live...so feel free to come and see us playing.
If you missed this one, you can also come next week, friday 13th, on another boat: La Dame de Canton.