Putting together a band is a dream of many children, teenagers, and even adults. It is a dream life full of fame and wealth but more importantly, you get to do what you enjoy the most: playing music. In recent times, bands and public music performances, in general, took a nose dive due to the pandemic. However, as things start to reopen, people are looking forward to live music more than ever before.

Being in a band is about doing what you love, but it is also about being a performer and an entertainer. You can create the most amazing music, but if people in the audience don’t enjoy their time there, you won’t have much success as an entertainer. Bands are all about dealing with large, live audiences. The bigger the audience gets, the more the operational challenges grow. These are some important bits of equipment you will need regardless of how small or large your gig is.

Lights

Having good lighting is one of the most important things in a stage performance. With bands, there are multiple parts of the stage that you want to focus on, and you also need lights that will make the performance look good. You should get a good mix of lights that are used for lighting the stage, the audience, and also a light controller to add some effects. As you scale up your performances, you can even hire a lighting specialist that can create better lighting for your show and also complement the music with different lighting styles and different types and colors of lights.

Mics

Another critical part of a performance in which people are there to hear you are the mics. This is the first part of getting the right sound to your audience; the other is the speakers that the sound is pushed out through. The kinds of mics you use will depend on the kinds of instruments you are playing and also the style of the performance.

If you plan on walking around a lot, or you have musicians that are changing places during the performance, then wireless mics will be the best option. If you are performing a less-active show, then a wired system can do the job. Also, keep in mind the space that you need to be using, as wireless mics can only operate within a certain range and wired mics are limited by the length of the cable.

MIDI Controller

If you want to create some truly unique sounds, or you want a simpler interface in which you can artificially create sounds of instruments you don’t actually have, then you need a MIDI controller. These are most commonly found in keyboard formats. With the aid of the novation controller, you are given a 25-key interface together with some pads that give you plenty of room to play around with sound. You can load the interface with any kind of input you like, and then you can play the instrument through the interface. This can also be very handy if you need to create loops while you play to complement your music.

Speakers

Stage performances are all about being loud and fun for the audience, but there is a lot that goes into making a speaker sound right for the situation. When selecting speakers, you want to look out for a few key traits such as whether it is an active or a passive speaker, what its SPL rating is, the sensitivity level, power handling capability, and other metrics. More is not always better for speakers, and you need to find something that will perform in your particular situation. Also, speaker placement can play a huge role in the quality of sound that the audience hears, so be sure to show up a little early and try out a few different settings to get the best result.

Amplifiers

Amplifiers are important for all instruments, not just electric guitars. In fact, you can have a dedicated amplifier in the sound management area that will help clarify and amplify the signal from all the input sources and generate a crisper signal for the speakers to convert into sound. Amplifiers can be quite expensive, but you get what you pay for. If you don’t need to be too loud and are catering to just a small audience, then smaller amps will suffice. But as your gigs grow and lead to you needing more amplification, you should invest in quality over quantity. Poor amplifiers will ruin the sound, no matter how good the mics and the speakers are.

Audio equipment can be expensive, so you want to invest in the right solutions right from the get-go. You can always hire a sound expert to manage the audio for you, but this also comes at a premium price. You should invest in some of the basic things you will be using the most often. This will give you the freedom to perform wherever you want, whenever you want, and you will also have a great setup to use during practice.