Article on Health and Safety

In this article I will be discussing 10 very important Health and Safety Issues and how to prevent them. I have placed them in order of what I think to be least important to the most important. I have chosen to discuss these specific Health and Safety issues as I feel that these are things that us as musicians get wrong the most and the majority of the time choose to ignore.

10. Tuning Your Instrument Properly

One thing that many instrumentalists get wrong is tuning their instruments with care. Have you ever noticed that you get through packets of guitar strings every other month? Or that you’re constantly having to re-tune your instrument? That would be down to the quality of your tuning. If you want to waste your time and money on buying new guitar strings and retuning your guitar that’s fine, but the real issue here is the fact that your guitar strings are pinging from your guitar and are often hitting you in the face or the person next to you. This can actually cause blindness if it catches you in the eye and the least it can do is really hurt! Prince Edward could tell you exactly how painful this is- that’s if he can remember! As a youngster Prince Charles had been showing off playing his Cello and managed to break a string causing it to ping into Edward’s eye. If the royals can do it anyone can! If this is happening to you I suggest you take a lesson in tuning your instrument properly! Knowing how to tune instruments properly is especially important for a session musician as you tend to tour around the country and travel to different places to take on musical jobs. Not only would you look unprofessional to your employers if your instrument was constantly going out of tune, it would also waste a lot of your time where you could be making money rather than sitting around tuning your instruments.

9. Look After Your Voice!

Along with your hearing, if you’re a vocalist taking good care of your voice is extremely important! Without your voice where would you be? One thing that stands out is the amount of singers who smoke. It’s like these people are trying to destroy their vocal chords! Not only are you affecting your lungs and your capability of holding notes for longer periods of time, you’re ripping your vocal chords to shreds! Another thing I have noticed is the amount of singers who will go out raving and drinking! Screaming at the top of your lungs is only going to cause vocal strain and for you to wake up in the morning with an extremely sore throat and no voice at all. As for drinking alcohol- this is dangerous for every part of your body so why do you think your voice is an exception? Fizzy drinks are also a ‘no no’ if you want to keep those vocal chords in tip top condition! It’s okay if you want to go out to a rave every now and again or even drink, but be aware of how you are treating your voice when you are doing this! Try not speaking when you’re partying hard you don’t need to use your voice when you’re dancing, and if you’re going to drink do it in moderation and be aware that you’re only mistreating your voice when you’re doing this. Stay away from fizzy drinks, overly acidic foods and drink plenty of water before and during long performances. Also make sure you warm up properly! Treat your voice like it’s your baby! It would be especially dangerous for singers who are performing for long periods of time (i.e. in a musical or doing a road show) to not warm up properly and to not take care of their voice as they are required to use their voice for sometimes hours a day every day- rehearsing and performing. If they did not take the right precautions they could end up losing their voice for good or having to retire from their job as they are unable to sing.

8. Protecting Your Ears!

Often when playing music, we musicians will turn up the amps and BLAST IT OUT without taking a second thought to our hearing. It is the same with drummers, we’ll spend half of our time playing as loudly as we possibly can without thinking about the damage we are doing to those ‘ear drums’! See what I did there? ;) Take the Who’s Pete Townshend for instance. He was the Who’s bass player for over 30 years and has been playing with them for over 50 years! He spent so much of his time stood next to an amp on full blast that he eventually lost his hearing and is now partially deaf as well as suffering from the condition tinnitus (a constant high pitched ringing in the ears). If you want to blast out your music that’s okay but you NEED to protect your ears if you’re going to do this! The best thing you could do for your hearing is to buy yourself a pair of ear protectors, and if you don’t want to pay out for these then you can always turn the levels down! Ear protectors are especially important for drummers as they tend to have to play loudly in order to fit nicely below the rest of the performers- or when recording a drum part in the studio in order for the microphones to pick up the clarity of the sound. Whilst doing this drummers tend to forget about their ears and how these loud sounds are affecting their hearing. When wearing ear protectors drummers are able to play as loudly as they need to whilst doing minimal damage to their ear drums.

7. Food and Drink

It’s only human to feel a bit peckish or even ravenous whilst rehearsing for long periods of time, it’s also very normal for vocalists to want a drink by them to lubricate their throats whilst they’re singing. However, it is far from wise to do any of these things near expensive musical equipment! This is not only dangerous if something goes wrong, it is also costly. What happens when liquid hits an electricity powered piece of equipment? It blows up right? And if it doesn’t blow up? It stops working. What about when bits of food get caught inside your amps or guitars? Mouldy food? Faulty equipment? Insects and rodents? I don’t need to say anymore. Unless you have the money to keep replacing equipment and a super human body that can’t get damaged by explosions, electric shocks and fire DON’T DO IT! This is important for all performers using instruments and electrical equipment! Most musicians require a physical instrument (unless you’re a singer) therefore, all musicians need to be aware of the dangers of eating and drinking in musical environments.

6. Special Effect

Everyone likes to incorporate special effect into their performances. It intrigues the audience and gives you as an artist a good image. Some may even think it to be clever. However, it’s not so clever when balls of fire are flying out of control, the smoke machine is fogging up the room to the point where no one can see where they’re going and you’ve managed to set the whole venue and the people in it on fire! Nothing that extreme has ever been reported but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen to you! Everyone likes a nice visual to go with their performance but overdoing it will only lead to disaster! If you plan to have special effects in your live performances keep it to a safe level and make sure someone has it under control at all times! Performers, singers shooting music videos and people putting on stage shows mostly need to take this into account as these are the people who tend to get over excited about these things- especially without the correct guidance. Every band/performer/artist want to show off and intrigue their audiences by putting on the best performance/shooting the best music video, however, they need to be aware of how much is too much- and of the safety precautions that they will need to take in order to keep themselves and everyone involved safe.

5. Act professionally!

Everyone likes to mess around and show off with their instruments. Especially if it’s going to impress someone special. ;) However, is it really wise to swing back and forth on your chair whilst rocking out on an electric guitar or jump from amp to amp whilst belting out your favourite song? I think NOT! You would have thought something like that is pretty obvious right? Apparently not! Sid Wilson from Slipknot has been known to injure himself in almost every live performance he has had. He’s gone from breaking legs to setting himself on fire! In one performance he leapt off of a piece of equipment and landed so hard on his heels that he shattered them both and ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of his tour! I’ll say this once and once only. If you don’t want to injure yourself and your equipment DON’T DO IT!

Guitarists and singers in bands need to take note of this as they are the ones who tend to pull off stunts thinking that they’ll make the audience like them a whole lot more. Session musicians don’t tend to do this as they are paid to do what they are asked to do and are not always there to impress their audience with what they can do. However, all individual performers need to remember that their safety and the safety of their audience comes first before their attempts to impress. Rather than showing off doing something they aren’t completely confident they can do- they should focus on exciting their audience with their musical talent.

4. Avoid a Feedback Loop

Have you ever noticed this continuous sound coming from your amp that starts off very low and gets higher and higher until it’s deafening to listen to? That is called feedback and it is caused when either the equaliser is too high, or the treble is turned up too high on the PA. This is extremely dangerous as the high pitch can actually deafen people and cause them to suffer from tinnitus. If it is not stopped before it gets to an unsafe level the feedback can actually go on forever! The best ways to avoid this would be to make sure that all levels are turned down before you plug leads into amps or the PA head, the equaliser is turned down, you have someone close to the PA at all times ready to turn down the master volume if feedback occurs and that all microphones face away from the speakers. This is something that all studio engineers, technicians and musicians using amps and P.A heads should know as they need to be able to stop the feedback as soon as it occurs. It could be very dangerous for them and the people surrounding them if they did not know how to handle a problem like this. This would be one of the very first things that a professional studio engineer or technician would learn and thus would be a very basic problem for them to resolve. If someone is looking to use an amp or P.A and is not aware of how to stop feedback when it occurs, it would be wise for them to take a short course in music technology.

3. Move Equipment Safely

No one likes to drop heavy things on themselves. It’s extremely painful, often causes broken bones and can leave you scared to lift heavy things again! If anyone has ever pulled a muscle in their back from heavy lifting they’ll also know how agonising this is. This is why you need to take extra precaution when carrying equipment and instruments! As a Freelance Musician there are going to be plenty of opportunities for you to put this into practice however, you need to know how to do this right before these opportunities come as you don’t want to end up in A&E the night of your performance. First thing’s first; you need to ensure that you are lifting your amps properly especially if you’re not the strongest of people. To do this you would need to squat down keeping your back straight and slowly stand up again lifting the amp with you. This way you don’t strain the muscles and nerves in your back and you can get more of a grip on the amp. It’s no good just yanking at the handle and swinging it up, as the likelihood is that you won’t be expecting the weight of it and you’ll end up dropping it on yours or someone else’s foot. Don’t over-do it either! If something is too heavy or you’re carrying too much there’s no shame in asking someone else to take some of the load off of you. This is going to be something that a session musician or bands will come across on a weekly- sometimes daily basis as they will be touring around often bringing their own instruments and equipment with them. Therefore, it would also be wise for them to learn the basics on how to lift heavy objects before attempting to do it daily.

2. Maintain the Safety of Your Equipment

Ensuring that your equipment is safe to use is just as important as making sure you don’t overload power supplies! Often musicians will either use a piece of equipment with a faulty fuse or use something that looks completely safe but hasn’t been PAT tested and is in fact one use away from blowing up. It is extremely important that broken wires and faulty fuses are fixed or replaced before being used and that old equipment is tested to ensure that it is still safe to use. Make sure that you have all of your equipment PAT tested AT LEAST once a year! It is extremely reckless and stupid to use something that you know looks dangerous! This is a point that all musicians seriously need to take into account, especially those who teach other people how to play instruments as this could lead to them having to pay out a lot of money in insurance when a piece of equipment blows up and hurts their student. If something doesn’t look right- avoid using your instrument and get it checked out as soon as you can.

1. Overloading Electrical Circuits

Using numerous amps, equipment and electricity powered instruments at one time requires several power sources. Sometimes there aren’t enough of these in the space being used or they are all too spaced out, so people tend to resort to overloading adapters and extension cables. The worst thing you could possibly do is overload extension cables with high voltage equipment! Think about it. You have for example three amps, a keyboard and a PA head all plugged into one extension cable with the capability of releasing 2400 watts. One amp requires an average of 700 watts and a PA head alone requires on average about 1000 watts. Already you’ve taken up over half of the electricity coming out of this extension cable. Do the math. Over working a power source is extremely dangerous and can cause fires, electric shocks and the overloading on an extension cable has been known to cause fatalities. The solution to this is double up on amps, put up with spreading out a little for your rehearsals or simply go without amplifying the sound. Your safety as a musician is the most important thing! Bands are the worst when it comes to this as they tend to use a lot of electrical equipment and each band member wants to be heard. A lot of the time they haven’t taken any sort of music course and so they are not aware of the dangers of overloading power supplies.