Chapters:

1) What is an open mic night?

2) Managing, and how to run an open mic night.

3) Marketing and promoting.

4) Equipment

5) How to set up your equipment

6) Other suggestions

7) Advice for performers.

1) What is an open mic night?

My personal definition of an open mic night is as follows:

• An event where members of the public can get 10 or 15 minutes to do what ever they want in front of other members of the public.

This typically takes the form of:

• A pub where a small PA system is set up and members of the public can get 10 or 15 minutes to play a few songs, read a few poems or tell a few jokes in front of other members of the public.

If you are still unsure, try going to a few open mic nights just to watch.

I also consider 'jam nights' or 'jam sessions' to be included within the term 'open mic night'.

• It already has its own website.
• It has an official and accurate placemark in Google Maps.
• It welcomes performers aged under 18.
• It has an obvious place to set up the performers where they will have plenty of room.
• It has a good vibe and the bar staff are friendly.

Running an open mic night isn’t easy, but it is rewarding. Here are some tips for how to make things go more smoothly.

• Managing an open mic night requires a dedicated person. If you want to recruit somebody to run an open mic night at your venue, you can go here.
• Have your equipment set up well in advance.
• If you insist people need to arrive for a certain time in order to sign up, don’t turn up late - as I have seen many people do.
• Greet your performers without hesitation and make them feel welcome. Remember; they are your customers.
• Take a keen interest in your performers - ask them questions like:
  • “Have you been here before?”
  • “Have you travelled far?”
  • “What are you going to be performing for us tonight?”
  • Always try to get their email address.
  • Always ask how people heard about your open mic night.
• Ask your performers if they have any technical requirements. 
• If you don’t already know your performers, ask them to write their name down for you so you don’t forget it.
• If you must set rules, STICK TO THEM. Make sure everyone knows about them before they arrive.
• Whilst somebody is performing, get the next person ready to go on.
• Don’t leave your post at the sound desk for long periods, it looks unprofessional.
• Make a conscious decision about swearing at your open mic night. If you expect people under 18 to come, then don’t allow it. Alternatively, you could put potentially offensive people on last.
• The type of people who perform at open mic nights enjoy the attention. Take photos of every performer as it makes you look attentive. TIP: Take promotional photos during the summer so that the ambient light levels are higher and you will get better photos.
• Understand how your equipment works
• Improve your lighting so you can take good pictures without using a flash. Something I have seen used very effectively is an angle-poise lamp to cross-light the performer (light from the side).
• Don’t buy cheap kit, it will let you down. Buy the best you can afford. Cheap mic stands are a personal pet hate.
• The ‘stage manager’ should have their own microphone on a long lead which they use to introduce the next act and fill in between performers. Get a microphone with an on/off switch so you can set the gain on the mixer and just leave it.
• Have an iPod (or similar) permanently going into one of the channels of the mixing desk. Leave it running and just fade it in between performers. Ensure the music you play is appropriate. I have a dedicated playlist for open mic nights.

3) Marketing and promoting an open mic night:

• Coming to Find An Open Mic is a good place to start marketing and promoting your open mic night better.
• Ask your performers - “How did you hear about our open mic night?” This is a key question as it will tell you where your marketing is most effective.
• After you have gotten friendly with your performers, ask them to give you their email address. Use their email address to invite them to join Find An Open Mic and become a member of your group. This way you can help everyone else out whilst still maintaining contact with your performers.
• Start a group on Find An Open Mic and keep it up to date and post photos regularly to show you are actively developing the open mic night. Don't include details for things that will quickly go out of date, unless you are totally committed to updating it.
• Consider giving a free drink to the performers. Make little coupons that the performers can give to the bar staff.
• Incentivise performers to stay until the end. For example, run a raffle with a £10 cash prize (awarded at the end of the night). If you leave before the end, then you forfeit.
• Use Find An Open Mic to find other open mic nights near to your own. Consider cross-promoting each other’s gigs. For example, you could get some posters printed that have the details of many local open mic nights on them. Then everyone agrees to put up the posters at their own open mic night.
• Make sure your venue has an official placemark in Google Maps
• Get some basic business cards printed. It gives a professional image. They are so cheap these days that there is almost no excuse.

4) Equipment for an open mic night

Note: I have no affiliation with any hardware manufacturers. Any specific hardware I mention below is for guidance only, or, my personal opinion.

• Mixing desks
  • In my opinion, the minimum number of channels a mixing desk should have (for an open mic night) is 4. This should comprise of 2 microphone (XLR) inputs and 2 instrument (jack) inputs. An example mixer is the BEHRINGER XENYX 802.
  • Going up the scale, I would also recommend a mixing desk that has a built-in reverb effect - such as the PHONIC AM 440 D MIXER. NB. Reverb is not the same thing as echo, but many people use the term interchangeably - you will know better than that :)
  • Having a quick look around for what is available online, the BEHRINGER XENYX X1204 looks like a pretty good value piece of kit (based on initial impression).
  • Right now (July 2011), if money were no object, I would buy one of the MACKIE ONYX mixers, even though they don't have built-in reverb. The reason I would like one of these desks is that they have an integrated firewire output (see section below on recording an open mic night).
• Microphones
  • The industry standard microphone for live vocal performance is the SHURE SM58. Note I underline "standard", since many people swear by them, but that doesn't mean you can't buy better. They aren't cheap (about £110).
  • AKG also make some pretty good mics - e.g. the D5
  • Ensure you only buy microphones with an XLR connector (the vast majority do have XLR connectors)
  • I would personally not spend less that £50 on a microphone for an open mic night.
  • Always use a 'dynamic' mic for live vocals - the word 'dynamic' describes the way the microphone actually detects sound.  They can normally withstand high levels of noise (e.g people screaming into them). They are also commonly used to mic-up electric guitar amps. Dynamic mics are the most common (the SM58 and the D5 are both dynamic mics).
  • Avoid using dynamic mics to mic-up acoustic guitars. If you can, go for a 'condenser' mic such as an AKG C1000 - condenser mics have a better high-frequency response, and are (in my experience) better at picking up sound from further away. Note that condenser mics almost always require a power source (internal battery, or 'phantom power' coming from your mixing desk).
• Loudspeakers
  • Loudspeakers can be divided into two categories - 'active' and 'passive'. For the purposes of an open mic night, I prefer active loudspeakers. Active loudspeakers have built-in amplifiers which means you connect your mixing desk straight into the back of the loudspeaker. This is great because it simplifies the system, and you don't have to carry around more pieces of kit. However active loudspeakers are heavy and more expensive than passive loudspeakers. Passive loudspeakers require a separate amplifier (what most people are used to) which is good because it means you can leave your amp next to your mixing desk so that you have full control of your system gain (volume) at an arms reach.
  • I have used the MACKIE SRM350 loudspeakers, and I think they are excellent. Again, they are expensive, but I think they are totally worth it.
• Cables
  • Have plenty of audio cables in your kit, including back-ups. 
  • Microphone (XLR) cables should be at least 5 metres long.
  • The cables you are running out to your loudspeakers should be as long as you can afford, that way you have no restrictions about where to position the loudspeakers.
• Other
  • I almost always use a piece of kit called a TC HELICON VOICE TONE CORRECT when I am doing live singing. It is basically a dedicated microphone pre-amp that has built in EQ. In short, your microphone will instantly sound 30% better using this bit of kit. But they're not cheap. They also have a built-in auto-tune, and I would like the record to state that I NEVER use this function :) But seriously, I don't.
    
  • It is possible to get 'all-in-one' kits for doing open mic nights. The only one that I have used is the PEAVEY ESCORT 3000 - it is a mixer, amplifier and two loudspeakers built into one box. I have got pretty respectable results using this bit of kit. It only comes with 1 microphone, so you will need to buy extras to get the full use out of this bit of kit. JBL also make an all-in-one kit called the EON 201 P, which I have never used, but it looks OK.
• How I go about recording an open mic night
  • I use a ZOOM H-4N handheld stereo recorder for recording open mic nights. It is pretty good, but pretty expensive - however I highly recommend it because I cannot find any other (cheaper) portable recorder which has two XLR/instrument inputs, built in stereo microphones, AND a mini-jack stereo input. That might not sound like a big deal, but these connections will give you HUGE flexibility in how you want to do your recording, and makes it compatible with pretty much every type of output a mixing desk has on it. The key ability of any device you are going to record onto is that you can monitor the levels going into the device and ensure the sound is not distorting, or 'clipping'. There are one or two thing I definitely do not like about the ZOOM H-4N, but they are kind of hard to explain without being very technical, and basic users are unlikely to encounter them.
  • If money were no object, I would use a MACKIE ONYX mixing desk, hooked up to my laptop via the built-in firewire connection on the MACKIE. Using that setup, you would be able to record every channel on the mixing desk on independent tracks on your laptop, which means you would have total control of the final mix on the recording. Sick.

5) How to set up your equipment.

• Feedback (that 'ringing' / 'howling' noise you get though a PA system)
  • Feedback is basically the microphone 'hearing' the loudspeakers instead of the performers.
  • It can be caused by placing the loudspeakers too close to the microphone (particularly the case when using stage monitors), or the performers not playing/singing loud enough.
  • For most open mic nights, the only option is to tell the performer to sing/play as loud as possible. This should 'drown out' the noise of the loudspeakers which is being picked up by the microphone.
  • If you are lucky enough to have a graphic equaliser at your disposal, you can do what's called 'ringing out'. Explaining this process is beyond the scope of this discussion, but in basic terms, you force the system to feedback. You then locate which frequency band the feedback is occurring in, then use your graphic equaliser to cut that band.
  • Do some research on terms like 'ringing out' and 'gain before feedback'.
• Proper equalisation.
  • Getting the vocals to sound good is THE most important part of setting up your sound system.
  • Speech is centred around 1-2kHz. Therefore I use the following 'rules of thumb':
    • Make sure the 'High Pass Filter' is being used on vocals if your mixer channels have them.
    • If your mixer channel strips include some equalisation, boost the frequencies between 1kHz and 2kHz, and cut the frequencies around 100Hz and below. If your mixer EQ is labelled: 'low', 'mid', and 'high', cut the 'low' and boost the 'mid' and 'high'.
• Reverb
  • Reverb is pretty much essential to make the system sound natural. Many mixing desks have reverb built in. Be conservative with reverb. Using too much makes performers sound stupid when they are saying a few words between each song.
• Levels
  • The vocals should be the loudest part of the overall mix.

6) Other tips, and things I have seen being successful at other open mic nights:

• When taking publicity photos for your open mic nights, don’t use flash photography as it looks horrible. TIP: Take promotional photos during the summer so that the ambient light levels are higher and you will get better photos.
• Wear a costume to grab people’s attention and get people asking questions about why you are wearing it. Your reply being: "Were having an open mic night tonight, wanna come?"
• Organise ‘exchange trips’ with other local open mic nights.
• Do an all-day-long event in the summer.
• Start a visitors scrap book
• Offer free food to performers. Order pizzas half way through the night.
• When you arrive to set up the open mic, put up temporary posters saying “open mic night this way -->”, pointing towards the performance area. This is especially good if you are in a large venue. Put a chalkboard up outside on the street with a poster on it. Using the posters will help newbies find their way and reassure them they are in the right place.
• Enforce a limit to two songs per performer at any one time, then go round in circuits. This makes people stick around for longer.
• Dim the lights and put out candles. Dark, candle-lit rooms usually command a quiet audience.
• Offer additional communal instruments - e.g. a cajon, djembe etc...
• Maintain a blog with a quick list of people who performed at the last open mic night.
• Set up a few coloured lamps around the performance area.
• If you are struggling to keep up audience numbers at your open mic night, consider moving venue.

7) Advice for open mic night performers:

How to perform better at an open mic night.

• Always do your best songs unless everyone in the room has already heard you perform them.
• Never make long speeches between songs unless everyone in the audience is already your friend. Most of the time you will just bore your audience. You're a musician, not a story teller. You're just wasting time you could be performing.
• Always tune up properly before you get on stage.
• Don’t play with your phone whilst on stage.
• NEVER start your set with an apology (e.g. “Sorry, I haven’t practiced in ages”).
• I often see performers who haven't got a clue how a mic stand operates. Buy or borrow a mic stand and learn how they work (they’re all the same).
• Don’t drone on about myspace pages during your set. Get some business cards and give them to people who are interested. Also, myspace has become a huge load of crap (in my opinion), these days any self-respecting musician should have a bandcamp page instead.
• Avoid using an acoustic guitar that doesn't have its own internal microphone (pickup/DI). Although mic'd up guitars have POTENTIAL to sound much better than a DI, it takes skill on both the performer's, and technician's side to achieve it. If either the performer or the technician is not confident, use a guitar with a DI. Mic'd up guitars are very prone to feedback in a typical open mic scenario so you will save yourself some sweat if you use a DI (thanks to John Wilson for prompting me to clarify this piece of advice).
• Don’t try to communicate with the audience whilst they are clapping.
• Be respectful to your audience.
• Although I am not easily offended, avoid swearing as I think it is really impolite and presumptuous.
• Learn how to use a microphone - project your voice, sing as loudly as if there was no microphone. Maintain a constant distance between your mouth and the microphone. Do not sing directly into the microphone, sing across the top of it, as it will reduce the effect of 'plosives' - i.e. 'Buh' and 'Puh' sounds.
• Sing and play as loud as possible (see section above regarding minimising feedback). Perform as if there was no PA system being used.
• It really bugs me when performers leave soon after their own performance - if we are going to listen to you, then you should bloody well listen to us.
• Make an effort to meet new people, you’d be surprised how many useful contacts you could make. I recommend going to open mic nights by yourself and going further afield (go outside your comfort zone - it will only make you stronger).
• Enjoy your own performance. If you look like you are enjoying it, the audience are more likely to also enjoy it. (Thanks to Gordon Thompson for that piece of advice).

Please add your own suggestions, or ask questions below in the comment box.