4 Ways for Musicians to Improve Their Live Shows

Creating music is a great hobby that can provide endless hours of fun. But for some people, it's more than that. If you want to make it as a musician such as a singer-songwriter, you will likely need to put in a lot of work, maybe write some incredible songs, and most importantly, play plenty of live shows. When you are first starting out, playing live shows is the best way to find new fans and get people interested in your music. If you can build a big enough following, you can start approaching record companies and trying to get signed. But a lot of musicians fall at the first hurdle because their live shows are not good enough. Having the songs there is obviously important, but there are some simple things that you can do to make your shows a lot better. These are the best ways for musicians to improve their shows like using backing tracks or perhaps a drum machine for live performances.

Invest in the Right Equipment

The cheap guitar and amp you bought second hand might be fine when you're sitting in your bedroom writing songs, but they won't cut it when you are playing a live show. If you want to sound your best, you need to invest in the right equipment. If you are serious about pursuing music, you should spend a bit of money on good quality amps and guitar cabinets and better quality instruments. The improvement in sound quality makes for a better show and makes you appear a lot more professional.

Tune Up Properly

This seems like an obvious one, but you'd be surprised how many musicians are up on stage playing out of tune instruments and sounding awful. If you're playing in a band, it's so important that you are all in tune with one another. You need to invest in a good tuner with a bypass function because the crowd typically doesn't want to hear you tuning up. Make sure that you can do it quickly as well so that people don't get bored waiting around. If you notice something that is even slightly out of tune during the show, take the time to fix it before you start your next song.

Monitor Your Volume Carefully

When it comes to playing live shows, louder isn't necessarily better. If you're playing in a heavy rock band and you want to create a wall of sound, pushing the volume up works well and the crowd will enjoy it. But if you're a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar, drowning out the vocals by turning the volume up to full will ruin the show. Always do a sound check before the show, and make sure that you use appropriate volume levels for the music and the venue.

Record Your Shows

New musicians are always going to make mistakes, and that's fine. It's a learning curve, and you need to play a few shows before you get into the swing of things. If you really want to improve, you should be taking high-quality recordings of all of your live shows. Then you can listen back to them and find ways to improve.

Once you find your feet and start nailing those live shows, you will begin building a following and your music career will likely take off.