Guidance

To help you in the adventure that is planning, organising and running a tour we’ve written three resources covering some of the key areas.

This is Part 3 our tour guidance: whilst you’re away. You’ve done all the preparation and careful planning, and all the right people and passports are in the right place at the right time; now it’s time to actually go, and make the trip itself as enjoyable as possible for everyone.

Putting on concerts is the highlight of being in a leisure-time music group. It’s the culmination of all your hard work in rehearsals and a chance to show the world what you can do, not to mention a source of income. A well organised and professionally run event can help make the experience for the group and the audience memorable – and ensure they come back.

Many of you are increasingly facing problems with your local authorities on child licensing. In recognition of the fact that interpretation of the law is so different between councils, the National Network for Children in Employment and Entertainment (NNCEE) has now published guidance which should hopefully lead to a little more consistency.

There are three reasons why this is important:

Making Music volunteer Martin Jones – an experienced composer and arranger of music for leisure-time ensembles – gives us his top tips for success.

Stephen Huyshe-Shires of promoting member group Sidmouth Concert Society explains how they reversed a decline in membership by investigating the cause and adjusting ticketing options to address the key problem.

Making Music is frequently asked by members how much others pay the various kinds of professional musicians they engage. The results of this survey provide some useful indications.

This page summarises some of the results from our survey in January 2016, and then gives full findings on each type of musician, including average, lowest and highest fees, and ranges.

We've put together some How-To guides for key tools on the website, including managing your group's members via Manage My Group, adding events and vacancies and changing your personal preferences and saved pages.

No one can really just pick up an instrument and play it perfectly but we know how hard it can be to find time to dedicate to practice. Below we explore a few different ways to practise and ideas on how to make your practice more enjoyable and effective in general.