Performing Popular Music

The Art of Creating Memorable and Successful Performances

David Cashman, Waldo Garrido

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429012662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Darstellende Kunst

This book explores the fundamentals of popular music performance for students in contemporary music institutions. Drawing on the insights of performance practice research, it discusses the unwritten rules of performances in popular music, what it takes to create a memorable performance, and live popular music as a creative industry. The authors offer a practical overview of topics ranging from rehearsals to stagecraft, andwhat to do when things go wrong. Chapters on promotion, recordings, and the music industry place performance in the context of building a career. Performing Popular Music introduces aspiring musicians to the elements of crafting compelling performances and succeeding in the world of today's popular music.

Section 1

Creating Memorable Performances

In the first section of the book, we examine the performance itself. We will consider what makes a memorable performance and speculate how to go about making it. We’ll examine the process of preparing for that performance through personal practice and ensemble rehearsal. Then we’ll go on to examine who your audience are and how to play to them. Finally, we will consider the processes, pitfalls, and practice of working in a band. We might get a little philosophical, but don’t worry. We’ll counter it with practical advice.

1 What Makes a Performance Memorable?

When we musicians first begin to perform in public, it’s common for us to focus on ourselves and our music. This is understandable. Being a musician is hard work, and a lived experience. We get caught inside our own heads. You might have focussed on your instrumental technique. Perhaps you’ve concentrated on developing your skills as a songwriter. Or maybe you studied how to record music on your computer or in a studio. These things are undeniably important, but they’re not the whole package.

There’s a fundamental difference between your experience of a performance, and the audience’s. Your experience of a particular show might be great, or it might be awful. Maybe the guitarist got drunk. Maybe the sound was hideous. Maybe there was a train wreck. However, from an audience’s viewpoint (and they are, after all, paying to attend), a performance is either memorable or it is not. It will make them want to tell their friends about this great gig they attended, and how they should all go to this venue, or go to all your gigs, or it will not. As a working, performing musician, you need everyone in the audience to go home thinking that your gig was the most awesome gig ever; you need them to join your Facebook group that night, and buy all your merchandise. And there’s an art to that. It’s the art of purposefully and cleverly crafting a memorable experience.

But what is this experience? How do you make it memorable for the audience? How do you create a group of fans who want to come to every gig you do? It’s not entirely about technique. It’s not entirely about recording. It’s not entirely about the songs you write. Though they’re all a part of it. It’s mostly about how good a performer you are. It’s about the way you move and perform, about the engagement you have with the audience, both on and off the stage; it’s about making every audience member think you’re singing to them, and about generating stage excitement. That’s what will make an audience remember your performances.

There’s one thing all of our informants said that we should mention at the outset: Go and see some gigs. See performers you know, and performers you don’t. If you’re not playing one night, see what concerts are on. While you’re there, and on the way home, think about whether you’ll remember the performance in a month or a year. Will it enter your mental catalogue of gigs you want to emulate? Learn from every performance you attend. And attend a lot of them.

The Best Rock Concert

The best concert I ever attended was Queen in 1986. Just those four individuals, so strong as players and as songwriters, just coming together with this incredible unity. There’s a special chemistry that happens sometimes that makes it much more than just a simple performance. And that was one of those shows. What I was saying about filling a room, I mean … my god … those guys … just their presence, the presence of Freddie Mercury alone, it was just unbelievable. This guy just struts to the front of the stage and opens his voice and sings and it’s just … you just go on from that straightway. He was an incredible performer. But all the other three guys were unbelievable musicians and they could all sing incredibly as well. But just the power and simplicity of what they could do as a four-piece band, given that the compositions and the writing was not complex … They took the pieces of music and yet they were able to just perform them with such ease. That stands out.

Cameron, Venue owner and jazz bassist

The Gig as Experience

One of the questions we asked our interviewees was about their best, their most memorable concert experience, and we’ll mention those responses right through the book, like we have done with Cameron here. We also asked the opposite question: “Tell me about a bad performance you’ve seen”. The response was almost always the same: “Oh, there’s been so many!” Any musician who’s gone to a lot of gigs will have seen bad performances by musicians who do not understand how to engage. Bands or singers that show up, plug in, perform in the corner of a pub meeting no one’s eyes, and then wonder why no one pays attention or buys their merchandise. There could be many reasons for this, but often it’s because they are playing at the audience instead of engaging with them. The one thing that everyone talked about was the importance of the audience. If you watch the superstar performers live, they engage the audience. Watch Taylor Swift stand on a stage and wordlessly look out at the audience. Watch Bruce Springsteen. Even though he is playing to a large stadium, fans often say how he seems to be playing to them alone. Watch Harry Connick Jr bounce around and talk to the audience. Watch the movement and enthusiasm of the Big Bad Voodoo Daddies. Musicians fascinate audiences. Even though their idols are sweating on stage and working their hardest, they are having fun.

Before we go any further, we should consider what fun is. Fun is the unexpected, informal, and purposeless enjoyment of pleasure. It is a psychological state and a philosophical concept. As humans we can’t be serious all the time. We can’t work all the time. Large-brained mammals such as humans need to experience diversion, pleasure, and fun or we go crazy. Many animals play and it is supposed that human play predates human culture.¹ The Epic of Gilgamesh, written at the dawn of human civilisation around 2100 bc, advised: “Fill your belly. Day and night make merry. Let days be full of joy. Dance and make music day and night … These things alone are the concern of men”. Play and fun are so important that a philosophical school—Hedonism—grew up around the pursuit of fun and relaxation as the primary task of humans. There are concepts of hedonism and fun that are advocated by many of the modern-day world’s religions. Fun makes our temporal perception (chronoception) appear to go faster.² It is infectious and engaging. People in groups (such as at a live music event) seem to generate more fun. Lack of fun and recreation have been linked to obesity,³ depression,⁴ mental health issues,⁵ alcohol and drug addiction, and suicide.⁶ It is precisely because fun is so important, so fundamental to the human experience, that creating live music experiences is so important.

You’ve probably heard the term ‘experience’ many times. You might have had your teachers tell you that you “need to make your performance an experience”. But what does the concept of experience mean? What is an experience, and how does it relate to music? There’s been a reasonable amount of work done on the concept of experience in the last few years, notably that of Harvard business scholars Joseph Pine and James Gilmore.⁷ To paraphrase what they say:

1. 1. An experience is an event that happens at a certain time.
2. 2. An experience happens within the confines of a certain place.
3. 3. An experience is designed specifically to engage consumers of the experience.
4. 4. In fact it is so engaging that audiences will pay money for the privilege of spending time within the experience.

A vast array of experiences occur. Having a coffee in St Mark’s Square in Venice is an experience. Visiting a theme park such as Disneyland is an experience. Going on a cruise is an experience. A musical performance is an experience. Consider a musical performance through the four points above.

1. 1. A musical performance happens at a certain pre-advertised time.
2. 2. A musical performance happens within the confines of a certain place. It might be the space of a festival, with its clearly delineated differentiation between festival space and the outside. It might be at a venue with the space inside the experience only available to those who pay the entrance price.
3. 3. A musical performance is designed to engage the audience, to get them listening and applauding.
4. 4. It is because of the designed engagement that audiences pay money to spend time within the physical and temporal confines of the musical performance.

There are many types of experiences. We mentioned a few above: cruise ships and St Mark’s Square and so forth. All these different experiences have a few aspects in common:

• Experiences are sensory.
• Experiences occur in a defined space at a defined time.
• Experiences are planned.
• Experiences are commercial.
• Experiences are engaging.

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

An Experience is Sensory

As humans, we experience the world through our senses. They are the conduit between our brains and our environment. We see things to know where and what they are. We hear things to communicate and to be aware of danger. We smell things to know if they’re good to eat. We cannot exist without our senses. If you take one away, our other senses need to work more actively.

Music primarily engages the aural sense. You listen to music, on a CD, streamed, or in performance. However, if your performance is to truly be an experience, it needs to engage as many of the senses as possible, not just the aural. The visuals can be stimulated by light shows, by projected images, or by the physical appearance and stage costumes of the performers. Smell can be stimulated by the smell of food or the smell of other sweaty dancers. Consideration of, and planning for, the other senses move a performance from just another gig into the realm of a memorable performance.

But wait, there’s more! When we think of our senses, we traditionally think of the five ‘traditional’ (or ‘Aristotelian’) senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing. However, humans can also sense beyond these basic but important senses. Consider the following senses:

• Chronoception (our sense of time passing).
• Mechanoreception (our sense of vibration).
• Thermoception (our sense of hot and cold).
• Nociception (our sense of pain).
• Equilibrioception (our sense of balance).
• Proprioception (our sense of the position and movement of our bodies).

If a gig is fantastic, it seems to be over all too quickly. That’s our chronoceptive sense. When you feel the rumble of the subs in your chest and your gut, that’s stimulating our mechanoreceptive sense. Movement on the dancefloor affects our equilibrioception and our proprioception. Planning beyond the five main senses into others increases the memorability of the experience.

These senses can be engaged positively or negatively. For example, gigs are often loud and exciting because humans are excited by loud noise (activating our aural and perhaps our mechanoreceptive senses). However, if a gig is too loud, it can also activate the nociceptive (pain) sense and create a less enjoyable experience. It will be memorable, but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

When you are planning a performance, plan for these senses. I suggest you consider them individually until you have your experiential product thoroughly planned. Revise and reconsider after every gig until you have a working product.

An Experience Occurs at a Certain Time and in a Certain Defined Space

An experience is an ephemeral event. It occurs at one place and one time only. The Bee Gees performed their final One Night Only tour across many nights and dozens of cities. Despite the name, each performance was slightly different. In the entire history of the world, of the untold number of musical performances that have ever happened, each performance occurs only once in a given place. It’s worthwhile putting some effort into it. It’s not just a gig. It’s the only time that gig will ever happen.

Invariably, the general public exchange money for time spent within the space and the time of an experience. That might ...