Lighting a stage for a concert deserves planning and effort. Whether you are planning on playing a 1,000-seat theater or a 60-person club, the people who see your performance will remember the effort put into a light show, especially if that show adds new elements to the music being performed.
Create an Identity
Stage lighting is just as much a part of the group's image as the music. In many cases, the band relies on the music to help convey the emotion of the music and add any dramatic emphasis where necessary. If you are part of the group, spend time in advance working on what kind of lighting the band thinks best shows the power and meaning of the music. If there is a great deal of emotional buildup in the music, then spend time mapping out how these transitions and lighting cues will work. If you are not in the band, contact the group at least a month in advance to get an idea of what they expect and what they would like to see. If it is cover music, get a set list. For original music, ask for a recording you can work from.
A well-choreographed light show can make a difference in a performance, and it is important to understand how the lighting can help create an identity for the band. Knowing how the music can be accented by lights will help you put together a more coherent light and musical show.
Understand the Equipment
Lighting equipment can vary depending on what kind of show you intend to do. For some groups, the idea of having various lights go on and off is sufficient, and these sorts of musical performances would do best with a simple set of lighting cans. Other groups may want their lights to perform along with the music, and this would require intelligent lighting. Lighting can take some time to understand, but it is essential to understand all the equipment if you want to get the maximum effect from it.
It is important to assign various kinds of lights various tasks so that you know what to expect when you reach cues in songs. Some lights need to be spotlights for solo parts of songs, and other lights need to work together to create a mood on the stage. Knowing the capabilities of all of your lighting equipment is essential to making it perform properly.
Lights can be controlled from foot switches on the stage, or a dedicated lighting technician can control the lights from a control board offstage. If the group has decided to invest money in buying their own light show, then it may also make sense to hire someone to run it as well. In most cases, musicians are too busy playing music to also have to think about controlling lights, but economics may demand that the band learn to control the lights from the stage. Be certain to work all of this out well in advance of the next concert.
Work the Angles
It is important for lighting to set a mood, and in order to set a mood you need to understand how the positioning of certain lights can affect the scene on stage. Each lighting show needs to have back lighting to help illuminate the stage so the audience can see the performers. The use of back lighting can help emphasize the performance on stage much more, and effective back lighting can also set very strong moods.
Front-stage lighting should only be used to emphasize one particular part of the stage, or to put a spotlight on a particular performer. Always relying on front lights to create a mood can lessen the effect of the mood because there is no depth. Back lighting, working in conjunction with front lights, creates depth to the stage and emphasizes the mood.
Special-effect lighting is also very important to a successful concert. Effect lighting adds drama to various parts of the song, and effect lighting can also help put more color and interest into a scene. Special-effect lighting such as lasers and moving lights can also add an extra performance dimension to the music.
