Thoughts about musical performances
I’ve been on stage for more than a decade. I did most of the gigs as a musician with a cover program. This area is quite demanding insofar as you are constantly working on your repertoire and constantly expanding it. For weddings, marriage ceremonies and other events I have already worked out countless songs and arranged my own interpretations of well-known songs.
the evergreen-business
This area, which falls within the service sector in the broadest sense, offers many opportunities. You can set yourself up in a wide variety of niches, be it as a wedding musician, party band or more specialized in company events. I have played most gigs at private events such as birthdays or weddings. Once you’ve found your audience, it’s usually a rewarding job. Over the years I have only had satisfied customers. But the service provider sector also brings with it hardships.
playing all night IS hard!
If I’m booked, it’s usually for the entire evening. That will easily be 4-5 hours, so minus breaks sometimes up to four hours of pure playing time. As a guitarist, this gets on your fingers (especially with 12 strings!) and as a singer, it gets on your voice. Now I use both. Accordingly, such evenings are a great strain, both physically and vocally.
The fingers build up a corresponding callus very quickly and the pain subsides after a few days – as far as I know so far without consequences. However, a regularly overloaded voice does not improve over time.
Full-length performances on two consecutive days are usually an ordeal and you inevitably don’t perform as well on the second night as on the first. My personal maximum was an event weekend where I had to play solo over a period of 6 hours two days in a row. Since then, I’ve capped the max playtime at 5 hours, and that’s just for one evening.
How much music do we need?
There is also another factor: often you don’t have 4-5 hours of attentive or dancing audience. Taken together, you usually get maybe 2 hours, if that.
Due to the restrictions during the corona pandemic, I had a few performances with smaller audiences and shorter playing times (approx. 1.5 – 2 hours). It was noticeable that the audience was either much more attentive (concert character) or enjoyed the music much more by dancing and partying.
When you rock harder than the Rolling Stones …
If you compare these playtimes with those of well-known artists, it quickly becomes apparent that their concerts usually last “only” 1-2 hours. How else are they supposed to survive continuous touring with multiple concerts in a row with consistent performance?
It is also interesting that until now it has happened very seldom that someone has spoken to me about the high workload at performances. Most take the “banter” for granted. Only rarely did someone speak to me, e.g. with “take a break”.
As blu12 it is clear that the program does not go beyond 2 hours. And also with regard to the cover music, I will probably think about new concepts in the future in order to make more lasting music with shorter durations, but higher quality.
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