I’ve been focusing on hardware live track making and live events for a few years. I’ve been invited to play a range of interesting events and gotten good feedback/responses, but I feel like I’m missing something.
What’s your experience with live event invitations, reinvitations, feedback, washback (how that feedback actually helps you), and community interaction between events (or any other topics/experiences you feel relevant to share).
Can you be more specific?
What is it you think you’re missing?
I get feedback and praise, but it doesn’t seem to hold weight. Many people approach me to ask for bookings and future bookings, but they rarely book me twice. I never play the exact same set twice and always add new material.
This could well be novel, but I want to know other people’s experiences (good or bad). I don’t have many other live acts to ask. I usually play alongside DJs.
From my angle, that’s giggin’, doOd. Lots of smoke gets blown in all the holes. Don’t think too much about it and keep booking, keep playing, keep creating. I feel you.
There’s really no such thing as a bad gig, except if you blatantly get ripped off or gear stolen. Played to plently empty rooms. If you get asked to play/on lineup that speaks something, …what you are probably missing?
Might be years of experience with the usual “show business” business. You can neither invest too much in pats on the back nor being ignored.
There’s a saying: “He who is worthy of praise is also worthy of blame”.
All of the above points have made me wary of playing in the Techno/House club scene and instead focus on concert venues, with a project that is a hybrid of electronic hardware and band.
What does getting “ripped off” mean? Me and most people I know play pretty well attended gigs most of which have entrance fees. We never get paid or rarely ever even a free beer. I’m not trying to toot our own horn, but we all perform well and know our shit.
I hear you there. The odd thing is I usually bring in a crowd. I play pretty damn close stuff to most of the DJs. I usually don’t play at club events, though. Maybe this would be more lucrative, but I’m not a fan of the crowd as much.
You are right. It’s what my friends and I keep telling ourselves (DJs and Live acts), but sometime life grinds you down and gigging starts feeling reward-less. 
Gotta just keep on moving. Thanks.
a) specifically tell the DJs to keep it low-key before and after your set
Good luck with that!
Me and most people I know play pretty well attended gigs most of which have entrance fees. We never get paid or rarely ever even a free beer.
Time to start getting paid!
It happens rarely, but for whatever reason, the promoter may verbally promise a fee, and at the end of the night, somehow the money disappears. So get a contract, if you are in the position to negotiate. But this happens not very often, due to social media/word on the street about rotten promoters, and, for the most part, unless you are a headlining/signed act, most musicians are just happy to perform and get exposure and possibly sell some merch which you are directly in control of any income.
Especially if you are hitting the road, a little bit to cover food and fuel is nice, say, if you are losng income for that day on your day job and if the promoter is passionate about artists, will only be happy to compensate you for your efforts. Most everyone just wants to have a good time and keep a positive vibe.
Yeah I’d agree, either play for free and expect nothing in return other than experience and profile (and 100% free drinks, always free drinks), or get an agency you are on to send the contract and have no financial interaction with the promoter. If your manager/agency is half decent they will also have other artists on their roster and know other agents so the promoter won’t want to get a bad rep. If you played a good set and people came to see you (i.e. made the promoter money) and you can maintain your profile with new releases you should expect to be booked again in a year for a similar event in the area by the same promoter. That’s how I always worked anyway. If you play for money without an agent and you are promised a fee you should take half upfront before you even set foot outside your front door, you should definitely pretty much always expect hotel/food/drinks covered if you are travelling, otherwise you may as well get rid of all the worrying about money, play for free, make some new friends and get drunk/high for free, then hopefully when the promoter puts on a bigger event he has your number and remembers you smashed it and gets you back for cash. If you are promised money and the promoter doesn’t pay you this is very f**king bad, you should make it an absolute point of principle to always get paid if promised - there is always money. If there wasn’t the promoter shouldn’t have booked you. Things may even get ugly, but you have to get your money, there is always money in the till at the door that the promoter can dip in to, or the promoter can go to the ATM. If you get ripped off once it will continue to happen. My experience is 10 years as a touring DnB DJ (which I’m not involved in anymore) but the principles are the same in any genre and whether performing as a DJ or live act.
I have a different experience, where the sound of machines stands out positively from the over-compressed, over-engineered sound of “mastered” tracks.
I also prefer dynamic music, mostly. (Unless people are trying to kill my ears with high mids and treble, super sharp transients)
But in a club this added range interacts with so many factors… room, sound system, limiter, time of the night, audience’s level of alcohol and drugs, your set, etc.
If the djs before and after you bang out at 110dB or more, there’s not much room for subtlety. People will walk away if they don’t feel the „energy“, even if it’s making their ears bleed… I have my methods to get around this, ofc, but it can be a real pain to be sandwiched between djs sometimes.
…hmmm…i always get compliments all over the place, even when i think…whoo, that was a bad perfomance tonight…in fact i hear more positive resonance on bad nights than after good ones…
so, that’s preety much saying nothing at all…
what counts is the feedback of the event organizers, or the club and venue owners…
and even that, is nothing u could count on for granted…
aslong there is no booking agency they have to deal with, it’s pretty much rolling the dice…really.
so next step for u should be, getting offered to events by an official booker of some sort…
no matter how small or big he/she is or what’s the agency might standing for, as long they do their job halfway pro…
to get them tickled and in the game for u, show them ur work…good option here is, to take a friend with u next time u perform somewhere and let him do some footage of that…drop a few little pieces on you tube and proof them, u get a crowd moving or banned or whatsoever…
a smart brand of ur own also always helps here…give them a ready to go kind of product so that they still can spin off their own creative thoughts on u and where u might fit in best and where to send u next…
…and yup…it’s always hard to compete, as a live act, with the common dj out there…especially because they run pretty much any kind of dj mixer into red overblow full on…
so make sure u got an xtra line straight to pa…and start from scratch in ur sets, to make clear this is a different thing up to come…make it obvious and built up a nice tension before u hit hard…if there’s a beat missing at least for half a minute, the difference in loudness and punch, if that is an issue, will be way more subtle…
this !
We have a policy of no kick for the first 3 minutes 
As my old Grandad used to say “a bit less kick, a bit more acid son”
If I find a dj playing before me running the mixer into the red, I ask them “Is this your last one?”, if the answer is “yes”, I then gently take down the level until it’s in the green and slowly pull out the treble and bass. By the end of their last track, it’s mids only, below 100dB and my intro (no kick, indeed, how did you guess that?) is already running over the track. I guess our approaches are not that different.