I have performed live at a gig once as part of a band in the Parkside Expressive Arts Evening, an event that the students on my BTEC course organised for our final project. We performed in front of family and friends, nothing as big as this gig, but it taught me the essentials to organising and performing in a live performance well.
Although I have only performed live once before, I have, however, attended multiple live performances of different sizes and genres, for example, whilst at college, the entire course attended a classical piano recital performed by a highly skilled pianist from college who has been offered a scholarship at one of the best conservatoires in the UK. This performance was quite small, smaller than we expect our gig to be, but still nearly the same size, and allowed me to see the skills and techniques used by the performer to make the whole performance smooth and entertaining. Also, after the recital, we were given the opportunity to ask the pianist questions about the performance and his past experiences with performances. As well as this small performance, I have attended a much larger set of performances at Bingley Music Live, where I learned a lot about how the sound and light crew operated around the performers to perfect the performance and make sure that the equipment is operating to the performers expectations and standards to make sure that they can perform at their best. Also, this performance was a lot larger and showed me different techniques for audience interaction and how to improve stage presence as a performer. Finally, the most useful performance I have attended, for this gig at least, was the charity gig in Bradford College car park as it was roughly the same size as the gig we will be performing in, and the context behind the gig is very similar, and the equipment used is also very similar, and so the techniques and requirements are also very similar, and so it taught me about how important making sure that the equipment works well and that all the requirements for the equipment are also there. For example, this gig was delayed due to the fact that the sound crew had no way of getting power for the equipment because they hadn’t been prepared, also, they were having issues the mixing table and were struggling to get the front of house and monitor mixes right because the mixing table was faulty because they hadn’t tested the equipment before hand. So for our gig, we will have to make sure we have working equipment and power, also, having a mock performance would allow us to perfect the front of house and monitor mix sound before the gig so that we’re prepared for the gig before hand and we don’t have any of the issues that the sound crew had with this gig.