Santa Cruz Electronic Open Mic (currently accepting sign up for Oct event: Thursday 23rd October 2025)
What: A sign-up based Open Mic night for anyone involved in making electronic music, whatever the style, genre or format - anything from ambient and drone through synth pop, techno to industrial, noise and beyond!
The intent is to showcase live performances of music that is PRIMARILY ELECTRONIC IN NATURE - e.g. acts using hardware or software synthesizers, electronic instruments, laptops, groove boxes, drum machines, sequencers and so forth.
Please take a look at this Youtube Playlist which showcases previous acts before you sign up. This will give you a better idea of whether what your act does will be a good fit for the night. The definition is pretty broad but ask us if you’re still not sure your act is a fit.
It’s not a forum for DJ’ing, or playing pre-recorded music, or for regular acoustic/electric acts (try the ‘open decks’ night at Motiv, or one of the more traditional open mic nights around town). For example, if your act can primarily be described by a genre like 'rock', 'alt-rock','acoustic', 'singer songwriter' or similar then you should probably sign up for a different event (having 'electronic elements' is not enough). This doesn't preclude you using more traditional instruments like guitars or cellos - but the expectation is that these are used as part of an overall electronic composition, and not as the primary sound source, e.g. a bass guitar processed through a bunch of pitch shifters, delays, reverbs to create ambient textures and strange sounds is probably a great fit - but playing regular bass riffs over a pre-recorded backing track is probably not.
We have six 20 minute slots for performances. Come and hear your music played through a high-end Meyer sound system. YOU NEED TO APPLY FOR A SLOT AND BE ACCEPTED IN ORDER TO PERFORM. NO WALK INS.
Please apply for a slot by completing the short sign up form here
Note: We will contact you to confirm that you have a slot. We accept the first 6 submissions each month. If you have performed here before within the past 2 months we will give preference to submissions that have not performed and you will get offered a slot at the following event.
More details:
Follow @emom.sc on Instagram for updates.
Where: the Indexical music space at The Tannery. 1050 River St #119, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
When: From 7pm until 10:30pm Every fourth Thursday of the month (NOTE: next edition is on 23rd October 2025)
Questions? Email the emom.sc crew: (emom@subvurt.net)
Thank you!
The emom.sc crew (Steve, Dan, Kyle, Paula & Matt)