Today, concerts are often discussed in terms of LED screens, lighting, lasers, visuals and production designed to look spectacular and, increasingly, to look good on social media.
All of that matters. But for me, it has never been the most important part.
The essence of live music is how a concert sounds and how it makes you feel when a band is playing right in front of you. It’s about the energy that develops between the musicians and the audience, and about a moment that exists only then and can never happen in exactly the same way again.
As someone who has been running a live music venue for many years and working closely with musicians, production crews and audiences, I can put it very simply: not even the biggest LED screen in the world can save bad sound. You can invest an enormous amount of money in production, but if the concert doesn’t sound good, something essential is missing.
On the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of unforgettable concerts with very little production.
Of course, the ideal combination is great sound, lighting and visuals. But only when the lighting and visuals serve the music, not the other way around.
A great example was Peter Gabriel’s last concert at the Arena, where the visual production worked with the music and became part of it. We had a similar experience with Snarky Puppy at Kalemegdan. The band insisted that there should be practically nothing on the screens apart from their logo and the Musicology Sessions logo. They didn’t want anything distracting the audience from the reason we were all there in the first place, the music.
Because music is also a physical experience.
A great concert isn’t just about what you hear. It’s the kick drum you feel in your chest, the bass filling the room, the vocal sitting clearly above the band, and being able to distinguish individual instruments even when everyone is playing together.
And then there is perhaps the most important part of live music, what happens between the musicians themselves.
The way they react to one another. That moment when a band starts to breathe as one. An improvisation that suddenly takes the concert somewhere even the musicians may not have expected. The audience recognises it and sends that energy straight back to the stage.
No LED screen can replace that.
Have you ever heard someone leaving a concert saying, “That LED screen had incredible resolution”? You’re far more likely to hear: “Man, that sounded incredible.”
When the sound is good, the audience behaves differently. People are more present. They listen more, talk less and connect much more easily with what is happening on stage. And, just as importantly, you don’t leave the concert with a headache and ringing in your ears.
That’s why sound has been one of our priorities at BitefArtCafe from day one. And good sound isn’t simply a matter of buying an expensive sound system.
The acoustics of the room matter. The position of the system matters. The walls, ceiling, floor and stage matter. The sound engineer matters, as does the way everything is set up. The band needs to feel comfortable and hear themselves properly on stage, while the audience needs to experience the full energy of the concert without everything simply being too loud.
Loud sound and good sound are not the same thing.
The audience may not know about phase, frequency balance or what makes a good mix, but they know exactly how a concert makes them feel. They know when the sound feels good, when they can hear the band clearly and when the music has room to breathe. And they immediately feel when everything becomes muddy, aggressive and tiring.
That’s why the same band, using the same equipment, can play in two different venues and create two completely different experiences.
In smaller clubs, that difference becomes even more obvious. The band is right there in front of you. You can see the musicians communicating with each other, hear the details and experience the exchange of energy between the stage and the audience much more directly.
I think that’s one of the reasons BitefArtCafe has become such a special place for both musicians and people who genuinely love live music over the past 25 years. From the beginning, we built it around one simple idea: music should always be at the centre of everything.
Unfortunately, phones have changed the way we experience concerts. More and more often, we watch the stage through a phone screen and think about how something will look in a video. But a concert isn’t made for you to watch tomorrow. It’s made for you to experience while it’s happening.
So when a promoter invests in a great audio system, good acoustics, great sound engineers and people who truly understand live music, to me they are making one very simple statement:
Music comes first.
Everything else should help bring it closer to the audience.
Miša Relić
Owner of BitefArtCafe and Director of Musicology Barcaffè Sessions