How to Use Equipment During a Stage Performance

Performing on stage, you need to look and act like a professional with your equipment. This means giving all you've got while being careful and familiar enough with your musical equipment that you can easily facilitate your movement on stage.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Sidestep the temptation to gyrate your guitar and body all-around in an extreme fashion. Try to remain in control, being careful. As soon as you knock or bump the guitar about in an extreme fashion, a string goes out of tune. When the string goes out, getting back in sync with the rest of the band takes some doing. By then, you look like an amateur.

2. Keep your attention on how you treat the mike. Swinging it over your head could cause the cable to disconnect or worse, you might hit a fellow band member. If swinging the mike disconnects the cable, you'll have silence, which is not entertaining to the audience, other than to make them laugh or groan. Hold the mike with respect so the cable stays attached to the microphone. Even consider using duct or electrical tape to tape the cable to the microphone.

3. Stay aware of your feet and the wires on the stage. Watch what you step on as you perform. If you get carried away into the music, you could forget about the cables at your feet. Next thing you know you're face to face with the stage floor or flat on your back looking at the ceiling with your legs wrapped in cable wires, appearing even more like an amateur.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't bump the guitar strings against the stand that holds the mike. At times you stand close to the mike, so be cognitive not to bump the guitar. Just scraping the stand once could cause a string to warp.