In the last few installments of The Open Mic Guide, we’ve covered all the equipment you need to get started with an open mic night. If you’ve followed the guide so far, you’ve accomplished these things:
- Found a Location for your open mic night
- Invested in a small P.A.
- Learned how to work a simple mixing board.
- Decided how you want to mike things up
Now we’re ready to set everything up.
Find Your Corner
Find a comfortable corner to set up a place to play. If your location already has a stage, or an elevation of some sort then great. Otherwise just find a corner that has enough room for 1-3 performers, far enough away from any main path of traffic. You don’t want to have people playing in the way of the route to the bathroom.
Once you’ve found a good corner then try your best to make both speakers stand on the left and right sides of the performers. Sometimes you have to compromise by moving one speaker to the other side of the room, but do your best to make it look like a stage. Two speakers with a musician in the middle just looks better and gives the audience the sense that they are at a concert.
Make sure you position the microphone “inside” the speakers. Keeping the microphones inside the stage reduces feedback from the speakers. If you are singing you don’t want see the front of the speakers. Follow this simple rule for a feedback free lifestyle.
Connect Everything
Ok, now you’re ready to connect everything. In order to keep the signal flow simple, follow this rule:
What goes in must go out.
What this means is that you can’t connect an output to an output. The output of a microphone must go into the input of a mixer, and so on.
Therefore, make sure that your signal flow follows the IN-and-OUT rule.
Setting up in 10 Easy steps
1. Set up your speakers the way you want them. Connect them to a power source.
2. Find a good, accessible place to put your mixer.
3. Plug the mixer into a power outlet.
4. Connect cables from the Main OUT of the mixing board to the INPUT of both speakers. Put Main Out Left into the left speaker from the perspective of the audience and the same for the right speaker.
5. Set up your vocal microphone on a stand. Place it behind the face of the main speakers.
6. Use a microphone cable to connect your vocal microphone to the mixing board. Plug it into channel one. Make sure the master volume is up.
7. Make sure the gain for the vocal microphone is all the way down. Set the volume of the channel to about 12 o’clock if it’s a knob, or just under 0 dB if it’s a normal fader(slider.)
8. Turn the gain up until it’s nice and loud, but not close to feedback. You can have someone else talk into the microphone, or you can hold it while you find the correct gain. Repeat for all the microphones you have.
9. If needed, use the simple EQ on your channel to make the vocal sound better. Cut the bass, accent the highs and cut the mids is a good starting point.
10. If you have a guitar handy, repeat the steps above but make sure you plug it into the LINE IN instead of the microphone input.
That’s it. If you have more microphones or extra instruments then it’s just a repetition of these steps.
Now you should have a fully functional, small open mic rig to offer any musicians that comes to your event. And how do you attract those musicians? Come back next week when I discuss the various ways of marketing your open mic in your community.
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