Health and safety

Cables –

Make sure all cables are tied down to the stage, and visible to the performers so that the trip hazard is reduced. To aid this, you could also tie cables together using cable ties in order to reduce the number of cables on the stage and once again reduce the trip hazard that is possible for the performers and the technicians on the stage. Another thing that can be done to help cables stay tidy, is the guitar and bass players can tuck the link cable from the amp through their guitar strap into the guitar, this makes it so that if the player accidently steps on the cable, it wont pull out and create a trip hazard.

Noise –

make sure all noise is monitored by a technician or the live sound team, This is because exposure to large amounts of unfiltered sound can partially or permanently damage the hearing of both the performers, and the audience watching the gig. This can be aided by the performers on stage using earplugs in order to reduce the sound that is coming through to their ears. In addition to this, most live performances now will have the band individually using in ear monitors, so that it both protects their ears and allows them to have their own mix of instruments available for them to hear. Make sure that when guitars/D.I boxes, bass’ are being unplugged, to have the channel muted so it doesn’t feedback and pop the speakers.

Rigging –

Make sure that all lights and the rigging around the stage is securely put up so that the hazard of anything falling is severely reduced. an example of this not being done correctly can be the 1990 case study of Curtis Mayfield in where he was paralysed from the neck down after a light fell down onto his head due to an error by the technicians.

Electricity –

In order to make sure the electricity is safe for use, technicians can go around and perform a PAT test on all of the plug sockets tat are being used. This ensures that all of the plug sockets are safe to use by the performers and that they don’t give out too much or too little electricity, making the unstable and unsafe. With electricity being used, we must make sure that water is kept contained and away from the plug sockets to avoid electrocution. Another thing to be aware of is how many plugs are going into a single extension chord, if many are plugged into one single extension it can become very unsafe.

To make sure everything I have listed above is safe, we can conduct a “risk assessment” to make sure everything is fine and suitable to perform on for the safety of both the performers and the audience watching the live performance.