How to organize a student's concert, 2nd part

...Still on this article all instruments must be tuned before starting the concert! As you know I like to tune at 432 Hz although if there is a piano, it's easier to tune all guitars and basses as the piano, since this instrument is very hard to tune (as you would need a technician,...)

Another tip is not to loose the concert dynamic between songs. I mean to move quickly on the stage and try that when some students finish to play, the next are ready and have all they need to start playing very soon. Otherwise, if the audience has to wait too much, the magic of the concert disappear, people start talking, get distracted, etc... So all students must have their guitar tuned, their scores ready and all what they need on stage before starting. The amps must be the same all the time, so you just need to connect the guitars.

Be also careful when a student starts one song alone. Sometimes they tend to play too fast on stage and when the rest of the band start playing the song has begun too fast!

It's also very important to plan the end of the songs in order to finish all at the same time. It's not aesthetic when some body play some notes further on the end. How to do that?

When my students play a rock song together I explain them some "signals" they could do to finish all at the same time. Well, many rock songs have a "melted end": the sound diminishes till you hear less and less and that's the end.

But if the rock song has a final chord, I explain them that is very useful as an "internal signal" to rise the guitar's neck 3 or 4 seconds before finish and put it down just when playing the final chord. It's also good to play a little slowly just at the end; not only in rock songs, in classical music this resource is called "rittardando" and it's used, most of the cases, at the end of a piece. That way the audience can notice that the music is going to end and it doesn't finish suddenly with the final chord.

(to be continued)