Guitars crackle outside the El Camino College Art Gallery as an audience begins to form a crowd.

Seven student bands tune their last notes to prepare for an evening of outside performances Wednesday, Nov. 12.

ECC’s Society of Music Club, in partnership with the Art Gallery, hosted the “Battle of the Bands” event as competition, but also as a creative way to make music together.

Michael Miller, director of the Art Gallery and museum programming, helped make the collaboration possible.

“For me, music is very important, it inspires me, it can make me cry, it can make me feel overwhelming,” Miller said. “When you’re singing with other people, whether you are a good singer or not, just that volume and you’re apart of it, you just feel it right here [pointing to his heart].”

In collaboration with the gallery, the bands that played would have the opportunity to earn a prize, with the top three winning gold medals.

Attendees were offered snacks and beverages.

Society of Music Club members and volunteers Frankie Escobar, Josias Canul-Marchand Jorge Adames, Jacob Handzlik, Hannah Cho, Martha Moya and Lenna Murray came together to create this event.

This competition was brought to life with the intent of spreading awareness for the Society of Music club, and to get students on campus to recognize how so many people in the community can be brought together with just a little rhythm.

Music major Canul-Marchand, the club’s president, said the goal is to encourage students to connect with others and lean onto the strengths of community.

“You are stronger in numbers,” Canul-Marchand, 23, said.

With arts funding being cut, Canul-Marchand said he constantly looks for creative solutions to solve problems and obstacles that may be in the way of success.

“My creative solution is finding collaborations with other clubs and making events and spreading the word about what is available,” he said.

Band members at the event set up equipment with the help of Art Gallery associates.

“The Art Gallery is very gracious enough to host us, to host this event and a lot of their people have helped us set up a lot of things over here,” engineering major Escobar, 21, said.

The event operated on a $500 budget, made possible by students bringing their own instruments and equipment.

“Just $500, we’ve got this all together, people were willing to bring like their own equipment, their own amps, everything,” Escobar said. “So it really shows that people actually care about this and they want to do this and that it’s really important to like our community that we have this.”

Escobar added that events like this matter not only for students but the broader community.

“Because it shows that we need the arts, it shows that we need music like we can have fun, we could take this seriously,” he said. “It gets a lot of groups out there, it gets their name out there.”

The Society of Music Club meets every Tuesday at 1:15-2:15 p.m. in Room 134 of the Music Building.

The club’s next collaboration is with the Art Exhibition Club on Thanksgiving for an event titled “Gnome Day,” where members will dress as gnomes and share information around campus about the college’s “gnome folklore.”