Okay, so… I have a gig… and yes! I thought about you! I’m sure you guys have gigs as well, and you might have your ways of getting ready for a gig, but I wanted to show you mine. What do you think about that? Anyway, here we go…
These are the steps I follow once I get a gig:
– Find out how long the gig is gonna be & calculate how many songs I need: This is important, because you don’t want to go with a loooong set & then you have to leave out songs you like or the other way around, you don’t have enough material to cover the whole set and then you have one pissed off promoter. Make sure you add between 5-10 minutes to the total running time of the gig for you to talk (are you serious? You DO talk in between songs right?).
– Make a list of the songs you want to perform: Without any specific order, just make a list of the songs you want to perform. It is a good idea for us independent artists to add a couple or three cover tunes that people that don’t know you will recognize and will be able to sing along.
– Think about the order of the songs that you want to perform: I always think about what I would like to listen to. Of course, I wouldn’t like t listen to all ballads together or all dancy tunes together, so try to vary a little. It’s a good idea for you to place you latest single as the last song of the show, since it is the one they will remember the most &… you know what that means! Sales! đŸ˜‰
– Make sure you promote your event via Twitter, Facebook, etc.: Use all social media to promote your show. A great way is to use twitter & hashtags of the club you’re performing or the city you’re gonna be at (i.e. #barcelona or #oscarspub). Lots of people use hashtags to find out what’s going on in their favorite club or city that night. Also, make sure you open a Facebook event in your music page & invite all of the followers from around the area, and tell them to invite their friends as well!
– Merchandising, have it ready!: They can say whatever they want to say, but people STILL love physicality. Not only I would recommend for you to still press your CDs (in small amounts) to sell them on the shows, but people like to have merchandising like t-shirts, pins, calendars, etc. Spend a little money on creating some nice things, I love www.vistaprint.com, they have some awesome stuff & every week they offer something for free, it’s a great way to see how a pen or a mug would look like & test it!
ALSO, ALWAYS MAKE SURE ALL OF THIS HAPPENS WITH A CONTRACT THAT STATES THE MONEY THE PROMOTER IS GONNA PAY YOU & ALSO ADD A RIDER WITH THE TECHNICAL NEEDS FOR YOUR SHOW.
This is all I can think about today! I will try to film a little bit of my show on the 26th for you to see, but I can’t promise anything! If you’re around VinarĂ³s on that day (hey, it can happen, right?) make sure you RSVP on my Facebook event! I would love to see you there!
Also, I’d like to give a big shout out to Social Media For Musicians for featuring this Diary on their website as well as giving great tips to indies like us!