Playing
solo, you can't rely on killer beats or sheer
gut-thumping volume to convince the unconverted.
Alone and exposed on an emotional tightrope (with no
safety net) you have to win people over with guile,
great tunes and sheer force of personality. Watch
other performers, steal their techniques or learn
from their mistakes. And visuals, presentation,
lighting - even the seating plan - all drastically
affect the way your performance is perceived by an
audience, much more so than with bands. Put in enough
thought, preparation and commitment, and you'll wipe
the floor with the opposition every time.
Choose an area on the stage where you can see, and be
seen by, the whole room. If there's no stage, mark
out your performing area on the floor with a line of
black gaffa tape. And always carry your own black
gaffa tape. Move all unneccessary guitar cases, beer
crates, mike stands etc. out of the way to give you a
clear working area of floor space. Also, move any
chairs and tables in the venue closer together and
nearer to the stage. You always get the best audience
response when people are comfortable, close to you
and close to each other.
Buy ten metres of thin lightweight black fabric at
your local department store. Cut it into four and
hang it along the back wall of your stage, covering
all the usual scuzzy, gaffa-flecked wallpaper. A
black backdrop absorbs stray light and looks
instantly professional. Watching the stage, an
audience sees you and nothing else. Carry your own
Shure 58 mic and use it always. However crap the PA
is, a decent mic gives you a fighting chance. You'd
spend half a grand on a decent guitar or keyboard,
why not a couple of hundred on your voice? And no, I
don't have an endorsement deal with Shure.
Even a small PA can be drastically improved by
"tuning" it to the room. Most systems feed
the front-of-house desk output through a 31 band
graphic equaliser for this purpose. If possible, get
to the gig early, take your mic out into the middle
of the room and send it through a flat (no EQ)
channel on the desk. If the PA sounds reasonably
hi-fi, you're home and dry. But if (more likely) it
sounds muffled and boomy, you'll need all your tact
and diplomacy to get your hands on the house
graphics. Boost each frequency in turn, talking down
the mic, until you find all those nasty ringing
overtones (160 hz is a common culprit). Work by
subtly subtracting ugly frequencies, rather than
boosting the sweet ones. A well tuned PA is more
important than any amount of flashy reverb, delays or
compression.
There are far more foldback systems in the world than
good engineers (and most of those end up behind front
of house desks). Result: with cheap PAs at small
gigs, your monitors are almost guaranteed to sound
like shit. If they're unbearable at soundcheck, they
won't improve by showtime. Don't be afraid to turn
them off, move the PA speakers back and inwards, and
listen to the front of house sound instead. The
monitor dickhead will tell you this "causes
feedback". It won't.
If you're serious about your front of house sound but
can't afford your own engineer, consider doing it
yourself. What's there to mix, your voice, your
instrument and maybe a bit of reverb? Carry a
portable mixer and do it all yourself from on stage.
If it sounds good to you, chances are it'll sound
good to the audience. Ultimately though, there's no
substitute for a great sound engineer of your own.
When you finally find one you like and get on with,
hang on to him for dear life.
Even if the venue's half empty or stuffed with drunks
at showtime, don't write off your audience in
advance. Perform with style and dignity for anybody
out there who's interested and listening, even if you
can't see them. Acknowledge it when someone claps,
joins in, or laughs at one of your jokes - a little
flicker of applause needs nurturing, fanning,
feeding. Look over to where it came from and grin,
wink, bow ironically. In years to come, people will
come up and say they first saw you at the Turd &
Truffle in 1999. Even gigs that feel like a complete
disaster can win you lifelong fans.
Anything you do, do big. Don't be feeble or
apologetic. Take possession of your performing area,
own it, fill the space. Who the hell wants to watch
something half-hearted? The world's not waiting for
another sensitive songwriter to perch on a stool,
pick lifelessly at an acoustic guitar and warble
inaudible platitudes about man's inhumanity to man.
The essence of great performance is energy, passion
and total commitment, whether you're Suzanne Vega or
Henry Rollins. You don't have to be note perfect, or
even massively talented to pull it off. But whatever
you do, it does need to be very, very real.
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