17. ON THE DAY: TECHS AND SET UP

I had a group of friends who were willing to help out with setting up for my event, which was discussed months prior to the day
Justin and Ivy were a big help as well as Mario, who carried instruments from Nico’s flat to room M108 in uni
Theo could not make it – he only told me on the day, which I would have preferred to have been told in advance, so I can figure out how set up can work with a smaller group than initially planned
Since I arrived at the proposed time 10am alone, I brought all the equipment from W107 and had to wait for at least Justin to arrive in the room, since I could not have set up everything by myself
I tried to unpack the mic stands and some of the equipment before Justin came – anything that was possible to do alone
I realised that the drum kit was tucked away in the shelves, behind the separation boards – this was blocked by a wooden instrument that I had to have help with to move out of the way
I was not expecting there to be this wooden item in the room, so that was something we had to move around to work with
In addition, I didn’t expect to have to put together the drum kit ourselves
Luckily, I had Justin and Ivy who helped a lot with the drum kit in constructing that together, despite not knowing how to put together a drum kit – having pictures of the drum kit in the studio from the last rehearsal was extremely helpful, so they could set up the drum kit exactly to how it was for the tech run, last rehearsal

Having the stage plot and channel list was extremely helpful when working in a team, so that everything gets plugged into the same inputs and setting up is quicker, so the tech team can just look at the channel list every now and again – though, it would have been easier if I printed these out, rather than having this all on my iPad, where I would have to use for the stage plot, channel list and look at the picture of the drum kit set up all at the same time on one device, which me and Justin were going back and forth to
The stage plot that I initially planned was changed a bit on the day in accordance with where the drum kit was placed, so the sax player was moved to the other side of the drum kit, and the vocalist next to the drum kit – which wasn’t ideal, but I was hoping to use the separators in that room to help with the bleed, but I didn’t want to isolate the drummer too much, since he would have to look at the other band members to keep the flow
Also, after communicating with the musicians, they mentioned that they would look at certain other band members to keep in time with each other, so it was good for them to be placed in a circle for set up
Constant contact with everyone is key to having everyone on the same page and allows everyone to know what will happen and any updates on any changes
I created the group chat of the tech team before I changed the project, and when I changed the date and venue of the show, I made sure to contact that group chat to update them on the changes
Justin also helped with asking for cables for the guitar pedals – I would not have known what to ask for, but I should have asked about this before the event
I was running back and forth to and from the downstairs studios since I had to get more XLR cables – I should have requested for a lot more, since I only requested for four more than what I actually needed
There was also an issue with the headphone splitter, which I couldn’t figure out, since this was the same one that I had used when having the tech run – at first, it made sense to have an issue because I was using a regular instrument cable rather than a TRS cable, to have a stereo output, but even when changing it to the correct cable, there was still only signal coming into the left ear – I had to ask the band if they could perform with just this, since we were on a time crunch and I could not find the issue

Looking back, I could have been making sure all the wires were coiled up and tidy, but I think on the day, I was so stressed about the space and the lack of wires, I wasn’t able to make sure everything was tidy, but rather everything was wired up
In addition, I should have followed up the tech team more constantly to make sure everyone could make it and they could let me know in advance so I could be more prepared next time