What makes a successful live performance?

To have a successful performance, we need to find an audience to base the event on and perform to. To find a target audience, we can base it on the music we are playing and who we think is going to the venue anyway, for example, for us, we were playing pop and rock mostly, and we expect our families, other students, and teachers to come, we can presume that the only other audience members would be around 15 – 25 years of age and into pop and rock music. Also, to get an audience, we can promote the event via radio, social media, and posters, etc. For example, Dan, Sarah, Shyan, Jada and Kelsey performed live as their band The Cassettes on Bradford Community Radio (BCB) and answered some questions and spoke about the event to promote it. After promoting the event and securing an audience, we need make sure the performers are able and ready to give an entertaining, smooth performance to the audience. To make sure that the performers know their pieces, we can print music out for them and hold rehearsals where the bands practise the songs part by part until they know the songs as well as they can, and then, to perfect the bands transitions and performance skills, mock performances are organised where all bands meet at the venue and play the whole set through without an audience until they are confident that the set will be smooth and entertaining to the audience. For example, we rehearsed everyday at college as a band until we were confident that we knew our songs, and then still practised every day to make sure we definitely knew our pieces, and then, the year two students who organised the event organised a mock performance where we ran through the whole set to ensure that we could perform and transition smoothly throughout the whole thing, as well as doing a sound check to make sure everything sounds good to the live sound engineer and monitor mixes are good for the performers. Also, some live performances, like ours, can benefit from audience interaction, for example, Veronica made the audience clap on the final event, this got everyone more engaged in the song and they enjoyed it more.