Legal performances

When you are planning an event, you will need certain things such as an event licenses before you can put any event. This will prove that you are legal to put on any event that you like.

Alcohol
If you want to sell alcohol at your event you are going to need a license to decided whether if it can be sold or it cannot be sold otherwise you will be responsible whether if something happens to the customer's or not due to drinking,.

Age limit
In certain events the age limit is about 13/14 years old. You will definitely need an Age limit in events because for the safety of kids it is not safe for under 13 years old to go to an events especially when if there is alcohol.

The age limit determines whether if person has the right age to go into the event or not, in some cases you will need an adult to go with if you're child is under 13 years old.

Security.
In the majority of events they have bouncer's, the reason they have bouncer's is because if something happens in the event.. for example a fight occurs the bouncer's job is to stop fight and kick them out, but this is in certain  special events. They also are there to check peoples I.D's for proof of age.

If you're putting an event of your own, you should always have security depending on where the venue is. If your venue is outside with loads of space then you wouldn't necessarily need a bouncer maybe a security team would be more useful.

Technical Team.
In loads of events there is always a technical team. Why? No Technical team would mean no event this is because the technical team is the people who deal with the sound, they make sure everything is right and nothing goes wrong with the music. They mostly deal with the microphones, wedges, sound checks mixer's and so on.

The Technical Team are the ones who always need to contribute with the artist to make their performance a success.

When you're putting on an event you will always need a technical team. They would make your life much easier in terms of the sound.

Risk Assessment.
Creating a Risk Assessment is always important because if something goes wrong or something happens in your event for example people are tripping over wires constantly then the risk assessment would be able to help you... the way it would help is that you write a situation and next to the situation you write a solution so it'd make things easier. So if people are tripping over wires is a problem then you would have to look at what you wrote for your solution and sort it out.

Limiter's.
There is many limiter's in a lot of loud events, these limiter's are installed in the events. These limiter's are really really important because let's say a bands performance is really loud the limiter's will react and squash/turn down the sound by a little bit. The audience would need realise it has been turned down / squashed which is an excellent thing.

Transport.
Transport is really needed for artists / bands. If your artist / band lives far away then it's the promoter's/organiser's role to make sure they get to the venue safely and on time, however most of the time it's the artists manager's responsibility. But if they do not have a artist manager then it's promoter's/organiser's responsibility. If there is problems in getting to the venue then they would need to the promoter's / organiser's asap.

Communication / Positive Attitude.
Everyone would need to have brilliant communication and a positive attitude in order to have a successful event. Band / Artists need to have communication with the audience and with the technical team.A positive attitude would make the audience feel overwhelmed at being in an event. Communication would be needed with the technical team as well because they are responsible with the sound and they must always engage with each other.

Medical support.
People often have accidents at events, this could involve cuts, bruises, scratches and more. First Aid kit is always needed at events for the safety of the people, also someone who knows how to do deal with medical services should be there as well.

Also just incase someones child has a cut then the first aid kit would always be available for them.
it is really important to make sure that the people are safe and unharmed.

Mostly adults who get drunk have accidents so having a first aid kit is a good idea to have. Although if damages are severe then phoning an ambulance will be needed.

Conclusion...
If I was putting an event, all these above would be very important. It would be my job to make the event a success, to get feedback and to make sure the people also have a good time. Everything would need to be perfect.

Evaluation for Grant (Gigs/Tech'ing)

In this evaluation I'm going to tell you how the shows went altogether.
My responsibilities were:
- Setting up equipment for the main stage
- Spectating the sound ( to see if it sounded okay or not)
- Using the mixer's

What went well
- The set up of the equipment was all set up correctly and were in the right place
- The volume of the performance were on point, nothing was too loud or too quiet it was all perfect.
- All of us had good communication skills while spectating the areas.

Thursday
This was the day when East Kent college came to perform. We had to Rig up the instruments/mixer/microphone and so on.  One of the things I did I set up the acoustic drums with Danilo, the microphones for the sax and the Key-tar.
I also helped out with the soundcheck too.

This was our first time Tech'ing for another band. I mostly did the mixer with Elliot and I was also spectating around the room just to check whether the sound volume is right, if certain instruments are loud enough or not. I would tell Elliot and he would do the mixing. I also did some of the acoustic stage, which I wasn't that familiar with at first but I got used to it.

There was no Technical problems, that issued here.

Wednesday
This was the day when Level 3 Music & Music Production, had a gig. I helped out with the soundcheck, by playing instruments such as the electronic drums and the Juno.Elliot wanted to do the levels as I was playing them. I was mostly spectating the room and shouting at that Yemesi's vocals were too loud.

There was only one problem which was the Reverb wasn't on for the acoustic stage and we couldn't figure out why it wasn't working, So we was unable to resolve this, but in some of the performance's we didn't really use the Reverb.

Thursday
This was the day when it was the level 3 music gig. We held sound checks here again. We had to set presets for the main stage on the mixer, so it could be easier for us to manage on the main mixer ( main stage ).

There was one technical problem that was happening which was on the DJ mixer, when Baran was performing the backing track wasn't playing for some reason so we had to wait for about 5 - 10 mins while Kieran was sorting it out.
Friday
I mostly did the acoustic stage, I found using the mixer on this stage much easier than the main stage because there wasn't that many controls/knobs to touch/turn which made things quite easy. That was one of my responsibility to do. Also I had to spectate around the stage, which means I had to do a lot of moving around in the crowd to check whether the vocals / guitar was too loud,too quite or the FX (Reverb) was too loud. I was also in partner's too, so I did the spectating while my partner was doing the mixing, I'd tell him/her whether things are okay or not.
One of the artists vocal range was very dynamic, so I had to control the fader on the mixer manually, I couldn't leave it one play otherwise whenever she got louder then the overall volume of the vocals would be too loud.
I also did some of mixing on the main mixer (main stage) when things needed turning up or down... although sets on the mixer were already saved it made life much easier and it saved us a lot of time.

Technical Problems issued + solved.

-There was a couple of things that did go wrong in the show. In the first couple of performances on the acoustic stage the reverb wasn't on at all. The reason the Reverb wasn't on was because the FX output volume was either turned down or it wasn't on at all. We sorted this just before the show went on again.

- The last show everything was going perfect except that on the very last performance of the night... as soon as the guitar played it almost blew everyone away off the stage because it was so loud - it was roaring. Kieran tried to mute the guitar/turn the fader down on the mixer but it was still very very loud. It seemed that it wasn't the mixer it was the amp and the pedal, the amp volume was turned all the way up + when she pressed the pedal while playing it increased the volume as well. We was all panicking, Sashani had to run to the back and turn down the amplifier.

Conclusion
I personally think that the show went really well because everyone had a brilliant time especially me. We got great feedback about our engineering skills upon the stage from the performer's and audience.
In my opinion for future reference I would like to do more controlling on the main mixer so I can get the hang of it a bit more... I'm already used to controlling the mixer for the acoustic stage.
I did learn a few things, I learnt that you must be 100% engaged with the sound and not to be distracted by other little things, things such as your phone. I got distracted with my phone quite a lot so to resolve this I had to switch it off. I learnt more about the mixer as I got to use it a bit more (mainly for the acoustic stage) and how to mix manually on stage - controlling the volume of vocals/instruments and fx.
Although things did go well I wasn't that happy with my input in the group this is because I didn't get to do that much, sometimes I wanted to do more which means I wanted to try and use the main mixer more so I can become confident with it... even when Elliot wasn't on the mixer and it was just me and my partner I still didn't get to use it as much which was really disappointing. In future I would like to use the main mixer more so I can become more confident with it.