[00:00:00] James: Welcome to episode 209 of the Bandhive Podcast

[00:00:04] James: It is time for another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. My name is James Cross and I help independent artists tour smart. This week on the show, we're going to be talking about why you should know how to advance your shows. We've talked about it in the past, but we haven't talked about the why and we haven't talked about the crash.

[00:00:21] James: Course and this is something related to a show that I recently worked. five six days ago as at the time of recording and the show went really well at least for the headlining band Which was better things we actually had brian from better things on the podcast just a couple weeks ago

[00:00:38] James: That was episode 204. Getting creative with marketing. Brian Leclerc of Better Things. If you want to listen to that episode, head on over to bandhive. rocks slash 204, that's the number 204,

[00:00:49] James: this show in my opinion was a massive success for Better Things. But something that I noticed at this show, as well as other shows in the past is that a lot of bands don't think it's necessary or don't seem to [00:01:00] think it's necessary To plan ahead for your shows and have your production information such as a stage plot or input list readily available Which I know a lot of bands like oh, we don't have to do that We're not gonna do that and then they just never get around to it And then they're playing bigger and bigger venues and they don't have one Whereas realistically most of the time you just make one and then you can use that for every show you play as long as nothing changes And it's totally fine to not have this information available if you're playing bars and basements.

[00:01:26] James: Like, no one cares. No one expects that. But if you ever get to play a real venue, you absolutely need to have a stageplot and input list because they absolutely are going to ask you for that information. And if you show up without it…

[00:01:38] James: Especially if they give you two weeks to send that information beforehand, they might think you're unprepared or perhaps even not worthy of playing within their walls. Again, you don't want that to happen. So here's some observations from this recent show that I worked for Better Things, and specifically, I officially was their front of house engineer, but unofficially, I was also their production manager, [00:02:00] not tour manager necessarily because it was just a one off show, taking the duties of like day of manager in a little bit, that was shared among the band, but production manager, front of house engineer.

[00:02:09] James: That kind of stuff. And because the band is on in ears, we were bringing in our own in ear rack, my front of house console, which is actually right here if you're watching the YouTube version, all the mics except one guest vocal mic. So we borrowed that from the venue all the cables needed for the mic lines to our stage boxes, which I also brought in.

[00:02:29] James: I have some stage boxes. Essentially, we brought everything except the PA system, which Higher Ground, where this show was, has a fantastic PA system, so I was really excited to mix into that. But we decided that just showing up and jumping in was not going to be a great idea, and What we did is tech rehearsals. The band had been rehearsing for months, but not only did they rehearse, for the last few weeks before the show, I joined them at the rehearsals, and we did a full tech rehearsal. I mixed the show into [00:03:00] my in ears. We didn't have a PA in the practice space, of course. It would have been nice, but we didn't have it.

[00:03:04] James: I mixed it to my in ears, and we also recorded it so that when I wasn't at rehearsal, I could come home and actually set up snippets for cues on the X32. And Have pretty much everything set for every song, far as the effects go for your vocals, like how much reverb, how much delay, what kind of reverb and delay how much feedback do you want on that delay.

[00:03:27] James: Just fine tuning all those little bits so I could run the show and really make it sound as close to the record as possible. And because of this, I was able to do some really fun stuff with that mix and make it sound like the record actually sounds.

[00:03:41] James: They had a great producer on their full length album called Getting Worse. Ryan Cohen of Robot Dog Studios. And he did a fantastic job. And there's some really, really fun delay throws. on the album. And for the songs that they were playing with those delay throws, I decided that I was going to do those exact things.

[00:03:59] James: I [00:04:00] was going to make it sound like the album. And having all these cues set up is what made that possible. Because I would have been fiddling with delay settings rather than mixing the show if I had to do that without using cues. But with cues, you just call up the song. And then it's there. Those are the settings.

[00:04:16] James: You know, I set the tap tempo because they don't play to a click. And then I know that when I unmute this delay send, it's going to do exactly what I need it to do. and it's going to apply the correct vocal effect to the correct vocal mic.

[00:04:29] James: And that's really the importance of this. And you can do a lot more with cues, but this is what I was using it for. and at certain points, we even had sub cues for other stuff in the songs where it's like, Hey, this one verse, we're going to use a different snare, or in this portion, we're going to take off the snare gate.

[00:04:48] James: So you can hear the little soft ghost notes that Mark the drummer is playing, that kind of stuff. And that's the kind of thing that theoretically you could do without a cue, but it's just easier having that cue [00:05:00] because you hit next and go. And then at the end of the verse you hit next and go and it goes back to the way it was it's So nice to have that capability and that's why it's important that if you're working with a band on a regular basis Or on a big comeback show like this or any big kind of show you want to do these tech rehearsals The other advantage though is that pretty much everything for their sound was dialed in now When I'm working with a band and I don't know how organized or put together they are, I generally allow two whole hours to get them into the venue, set up, and soundchecked.

[00:05:34] James: With Better Things, we had an hour and a half at this venue and we nailed it. We were even able to do two songs in soundtrack, not just one. And I do have to say we had help of the amazing house deck getting things patched that saved at least 20 to 30 minutes Because I could focus on setting up front of house while they were patching the stage, which was really nice But in that 90 minutes, I got front of house going band got everything on stage We got the in [00:06:00] ears going, we got the stage boxes going, and we soundchecked those two songs.

[00:06:04] James: If we hadn't been prepared, if we hadn't done tech rehearsals, it would have been a lot longer than 90 minutes. Like I said, I usually plan for two hours, and if a band knows what they're doing, it can be a lot less. But if they are clueless as to how to soundcheck and what needs to be done, or if they're just walking away without communicating, then it absolutely does take the full two hours, and that's why I typically schedule that.

[00:06:26] James: Because I know that most of the artists that I'm working with at this point aren't that knowledgeable and it's up to me to teach them like hey, this is what you do during a soundtrack and this is something that honestly, I wish would be taught to artists a lot sooner by other artists, but it's one of those things that no one really talks about it and you just learn it from experience, which is unfortunate because It does have the potential to make you sound worse at your shows if you run out of time, or perhaps even burn bridges if you end up taking too long and doors get pushed or something like that and it's your first time at a nicer venue.

[00:06:58] James: On the other hand, of [00:07:00] the other three bands on the bill at this show, only one of them submitted their production information. It was asked two weeks in advance to, hey, can you please send this information over? Only one other band did that, which I got to say, shout out to Suburban Samurai, the band of former co host Aaron Gingras.

[00:07:17] James: He's on top of this kind of stuff because he also is in the industry. That's why he was on this podcast for so long. That just goes to show that the local bands who know about this are the ones in the industry. The other two bands aren't in the industry and they just didn't do it. They just showed up.

[00:07:31] James: As far as I know, the show went fine for the other bands, it sounded good, like, there was no issues that I heard of, but it was noticeable that they weren't necessarily prepared to take the stage at a larger venue. So, when you don't have your own crew, which, let's be real, what local artist has a crew, unless it's for something like this show where I talk to Better Things and they wanted to record, so they hired me for that and I said, well, Let me mix your set too.

[00:07:56] James: If I'm going to be there recording, I might as well do the mix. Cause I know your songs. I've played [00:08:00] with those guys a bunch of times, but if you don't have a crew, which is probably the case, you have to know how to advance your own shows, which includes making a stage plot and input list. So we're going to do a.

[00:08:11] James: Quick crash course on this because we've talked about it at length in past episodes, but we've never done a quick episode on this. So if you want to hear more detail about advancing your shows, check out these two episodes. The first one is number 13 pre show communication could save your show. and your life.

[00:08:28] James: And that's actually with Aaron from Suburban Samurai. He's on that episode. That's one of the ones he co hosted. You can find that at bandhive. rocks slash 13. That's one, three, and check out that episode. And the second one is number 178, avoiding disaster at your next show with Robbie Litchfield of Saving Vice.

[00:08:44] James: And you can find that at bandhive. rocks. com slash 178 and Robbie talks a lot more about systematizing your advances so you have a solid system how you can share assets for marketing with those venues and talking about the production as well. It's a much more [00:09:00] detailed advance for a touring band and most of the time you're not going to need that as a local artist.

[00:09:04] James: But it's good to have that information anyway and understand how the system works or how it could work for you so you can do it easily and not be kind of taken aback by somebody asking for your advanced information. but here's that Quick crash course. Let's talk about your input list first. And essentially an input list just says what you have that needs to go into the PA. And please, If a venue is asking for this, they don't want to just hear, Oh, we have three vocals because this is a venue that takes things more seriously than a basement where maybe, yeah, a basement you just put three vocal mics up and call it a day

[00:09:35] James: because you have amps and you have drums, you don't need anything in the PA aside from the vocals for venues that. are large enough, you are going to need a lot more than just amps and drums. You want the mix to sound good, right? So, your input list is going to start with drums, then bass, then other instruments.

[00:09:54] James: You could do keys or guitars first, doesn't really matter at that point, at least not to me. And you're going to list anything that there's [00:10:00] multiple of left to right in house perspective. This means when you're looking at the stage left to right. So an input list structure, for example, would be kick, snare, tom 1, tom 2, if you have it, tom 3, but most bands just do a four piece because it's much nicer in my opinion.

[00:10:15] James: Then you have hi hat and overheads. That's your drums right there. Then you have bass. Then you would do guitar 1, which is stage right, guitar 2, which is stage left, keys, vocal 1, vocal 2, vocal 3. That's just an example, but I hope that gives you an idea of what the input list would be for your band. One thing to note is don't listen to the church engineers who tell you drums go anywhere but first.

[00:10:38] James: They will put them on like channel 17 or 25 or whatever. Don't listen to that. They do not understand the industry standard, which is drums first. There's a lot of church sound engineers online saying, put your vocals first, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, you don't do that. Because if you go to any venue, they are going to have a standard patch, and that's [00:11:00] going to have drums first, probably 99.

[00:11:02] James: 9 percent of the time. This is not factual information. I'm just making up that percentage. I can 100 percent tell you. Of every venue I've ever been to, kick drum's on number one. That's that. That's just how it runs. I've seen some people do in ear racks, including my own Rustin Fettig from my band, Taken Alive, where vocals come first.

[00:11:22] James: Maybe it's guitars. I can't remember. But guess where he learned that? YouTube videos from a church sound engineer. That or Reddit. One of the two. And a lot of church engineers end up making content or talking about it on Reddit, which I'm sure a lot of the stuff that they talk about is really totally fine.

[00:11:37] James: And I've learned a lot from church guys, Including drew rashler who has an amazing channel for the x32 So if you're using an x32 look up drew brashler on youtube, he doesn't do kick on one though And that is one thing I will forever disagree with him on that because kick on one is the industry standard That is just how you do it And if you are patching things in a non [00:12:00] logical sequence, it might cause some issues.

[00:12:02] James: People might be confused, It's not as easy as just saying, kick one, snare two, blah, blah, blah. And I'll be honest, I have somewhat of a non standard patch list because I have kick in, kick in two. Then I have a blank channel for… A little magic I do in the board and snares actually on four and then snare bottom on five now I don't run every show this way, but for any bigger show, that is how I run it.

[00:12:24] James: And yeah, it's a little different that's how I do it and it still follows that logical sequence it just has more stuff in between and it wouldn't make sense to have kick snare other kick mic Snare bottom or something like that. So that's why I do kick mic 1, kick mic 2, my kick magic. I'm just gonna call it kick magic. Then I have snare. I'm not mixing things up there. Now that we've covered that, let's talk about your stage plot. This is also going to be in house perspective. When you're looking at it. The bottom of the stage plot is going to be the downstage edge.

[00:12:56] James: This is the portion of the stage that's closest to the audience. [00:13:00] So let's talk stage directions real quick. We've covered downstage, which is closer to the audience than there's upstage, which is further from the audience. That's where the drum set, for example, would typically be set up. Then left and right are actually.

[00:13:12] James: Stage perspective. That means if you're on the stage facing the audience, stage left is to your left and stage right is to your right. Anything that goes on stage, you talk about in stage perspective. But when you make the stage plot, it's in house perspective. And this is so the engineer can visualize what's on the stage just by looking at it.

[00:13:30] James: Looking at the stage, look at the stage plot and see where things go. They don't have to turn it around or anything like that. That is how you create a stage plot. House perspective, but everything you talk about is in stage perspective. I know that's confusing, but that's just how it's done.

[00:13:43] James: Now, I use an app called Stage Plot Pro to make stage plots, and it's fantastic. Like, not bug free, but it is better than anything else I've ever used, and the free trial is more than enough to make your first stage plot. So I just want to give a shout out real quick to the band Valerie Falls, [00:14:00] as of the day I'm recording this episode, I'm working a show with them and three other bands in about a week and a half. And of the four bands that I emailed last night to get production information, Valerie Falls is not only the only one who actually replied so far, but they also said, we're going to go make a stage plot right now.

[00:14:16] James: So shout out to them for that. Thank you for being on top of it. And they're actually playing higher ground as well. but I'm not mixing their set for that show. , And hopefully they will say, Hey, we made a stage plot for this other show.

[00:14:27] James: So we're going to send it to you too. Here you go. I really hope that's what happens. I don't know if it will be, but would be cool if higher ground gets a little more information out of the advance for that as well. Something else you can do though, is label your gear as for where it gets placed on stage.

[00:14:42] James: Really simple. You use stage directions. And, for example, drums would be U S C, upstage center. Your vocal mic could be D S C, downstage center. Now you're probably not gonna label that, but maybe you label the little pouch you keep it in if you take your own mic. You have an in ear rack that goes to the [00:15:00] right of your drummer.

[00:15:00] James: So you'd say upstage U S, center right, U S C R. So it's a little bit to the right that kind of stuff. Anything that goes to monitor world would be labeled Mons. Anything that goes to front of house would be labeled FOH. And obviously you want to have your band's name on here as well, not just. The area it gets placed, but this way anybody who's loading can look at this and say, okay I know where this goes that makes it a lot easier Last but not least if you have a lot of gear which let's be real you do How do you protect that gear and the short answer is by using the Dewey decibel system?

[00:15:36] James: I talked about the system at length in episode 94 Which was called keeping track of your gear the Dewey decibel system and essentially what it does is gives every piece of gear or case if you're using cases a number that is unique to that piece of gear or that case and this number is logged into a spreadsheet along with information about that gear including the serial numbers and photos that way if it ever gets stolen or lost or damaged you [00:16:00] have a record of that gear to submit to anyone you have to submit it to.

[00:16:04] James: It's super useful, and honestly, PetterThings, there was kind of a cool moment there. we got to their rehearsals, and this was the first band I'd ever used that numbering system with eight years ago. And half their stuff… still had the labels from 2015 on there. And that was just so sick.

[00:16:20] James: Like seeing that and thinking, Oh, cool. I put that there eight years ago, and they're still using that now. Granted, I don't think they're using the spreadsheet. They are still using the labels. So that was kind of cool.

[00:16:32] James: one other thing that you can do to protect yourself and your gear is use a checklist to pack for your shows and also during loadout.

[00:16:39] James: It can be super useful. And to learn more about that, listen to episode number 92. It's called never to leave your bass player behind the power of checklists. You can find that at bandhive. rocks slash nine two. That's the number 92. So just to recap, we talked about several other episodes here. Number 13, pre show communication could save your show and [00:17:00] your life.

[00:17:00] James: Bandhive. rocks slash 13. Then number 92, never leave your bass player behind. The power of checklists. Bandhive. rocks slash 92. Next we have number 94, keeping track of your gear. The Dewey Decibel System. Yes, that is an MC Large reference, by the way. you can find that at bandhive.

[00:17:18] James: rocks slash 94. Then we had number 178 avoiding disaster at your next show, Robbie Litchfield of saving vice. Go to bandhive. rocks slash 178 to hear that one. And then last but not least, 204 getting creative with marketing Ryan Leclerc of better things. You can find that at bandhive. rocks slash 204. I hope this crash course is helpful to you because I really saw how.

[00:17:42] James: Even at larger venues a lot of bands just come in unprepared and I don't want that to happen I want those artists to be prepared so they can sound as good as they can so they have As much time for soundtrack as possible, because the engineer knows what to have ready for them.

[00:17:56] James: What to have prepared. So, anything you can do to make [00:18:00] the lives of the engineers and production staff at the venues you play Easier, you should do that. Because you will sound better. You might not think it's a huge difference, but you know, three minutes in a soundtrack can make a massive difference.

[00:18:13] James: So please, please, please, please, Do this, make your input list, make your stage plot and send them to venues who ask. And even if a venue doesn't ask, have them prepared to send them out via PDF in a Dropbox link or just hand over a paper copy to the engineer. Whatever's easier for them. You can just ask, Hey, do you want a paper copy or do you want us to text or email it to you?

[00:18:35] James: Whatever works, whatever they accept, that's how you should do it, but be prepared to do Either one. Even if there's no official advance and the venue doesn't ask before the show, the engineer might still ask you. So please just have these documents ready and I can guarantee you that the engineer will be happier to work with you and you will almost definitely sound better in the house.