What my audience prefers to hear (rant)

[David L]

Very true on the larger scale, but the one big exception is when it's a relatively small venue in an area where the "audience" is mostly other musicians.

Some mainly instrumental performers have a niche appeal like that. Anyone who has been to a Leo Kottke concert will know what I mean. Look around the room, and most everyone sitting there is a guitar player, or the spouse/S.O. of a guitar player who got dragged along. I think Leo sings a few songs, but that's not why people go to see him. I mean, if you've heard his vocals....

Leo, himself, described his voice as "geese ##### on a muggy day". Personally, I like his singing.

[catmandu2]

And he calls himself a "failed trombonist."

Hendrix, it was said, did not like his own voice. Yet he too was compelled to sing.

[catmandu2]

Oh yeah.. Hedges. That's almost a counter-example of how you can bork an instrumental career by singing.

By the time Aerial Boundaries came out, I had already been captivated by all the fingerstyle guitar guys and was trying to copy them -- Davey Graham, Jansch, Renbourn, Fahey, all those guys. And then Kottke as the 12-string powerhouse. Then Michael Hedges came out of left field with jaw-dropping technique and compositions.

I saw him just once in concert. Small venue; some folk club up in Ft. Lauderdale FL (I was living in Miami at the time). I got there early, grabbed a front seat right in front of the small stage, just a few feet away. Spending half my time trying to figure out his GEAR... sound hole humbucker on an acoustic guitar into a small rack of effects. But it was the pure talent that knocked us all out. Everyone in the room was another guitar player, of course. Or their girlfriends (mine too, nothing sexist about that, just the way it was back then).

Hedges lost me once he started singing with those later albums, and lost a lot of the early fans too. The cat had a difficult life. But that remains one of my top ten live concerts I've been privileged to attend.

I can still play Kottke's "The Fisherman" fingerstyle on my acoustic guitar. That's about all I have left of those days. Irish and Scottish trad has sucked me down the deep well on mandolin and flute for linear melody. You have to make choices in life. Unless you're Chris Thile, you can't do it all!

I don't know that everyone in the audiences were guitarists and GFs, but the first few rows sure as heck were -

Funny story. I've been providing music in nursing homes since as a teen - something my mother got me into early on. Long ago, someone made me a 90-min tape of Fahey's "greatest hits," and one of the "death" lps. I learned just about everything on that tape, going on a Fahey binge for a year or two. I went with my mom and dad to volunteer one christmas and I was so smitten I played nothing but fahey. Afterward, I heard how the audience was tiring of the droning affair and wanting John denver, and jingle bells Talk about an ill-conceived program. It wasn't until later that I discovered the Christmas lp.

[DavidKOS]

Think of it this way -

only musicians really care much about the instrumental parts, with a few rare exceptions.

However, we all speak and as such, vocals are just talking in pitch and rhythm, so most audience members can understand the words before they can truly understand the music, is they ever care too.

Much of popular music repeats the same instrument stuff, give or take a cool arrangement once in awhile, but has LOTS of stanzas of words. If this a story, then all the better, as centuries of songs from English ballads to rap have proven.

It's a fact. the folk AND pop music worlds revolve around the singer.

(insert light bulb joke here).

[catmandu2]

Yes, I believe the vast majority of folks look to music as a familiar form - why the retro and "classic" media are so abundantly popular. I don't believe that most people are looking to music to be challenged (why jazz is so abstruse and reviled by so many, for example); this is the realm of art. We live in a society that values entertainment and spectacle, seemingly preeminently. Art has a tough row to hoe in such a milieu. Folk culture too is of limited commercial potential (comparatively).

Etc etc, yada yada

[dang]

Great thread! And it is something I've been slow to learn, I always liked the instrumentals better...

When the David Grisman quintet came to town there were about 30-40 of us crowded around the stage listening intently and the rest of the audience was talking and mostly crowded around the bar area in the back. Occasionally Dave would look at the back of the hall and an upset look would cross his face. About the closest I have been to the stage for a DGQ and he played to the group at the front -really put on a great show!

Last week at an open mic night my friend and I played five songs one of which was an instrumental. Plenty of applause for the vocal songs and after we played what I thought was a ripping version of Grateful Dawg, one guy clapped. He came up to us afterwards and said that no one had played an instrumental in all the time he'd been going there.

[Charlieshafer]

Just taking off on what Cat and Dang and a few others have said, yeah, the instrumentals are there for the cake decoration. It's not even the icing, it's the swirls around the icing. I will say this about the performance quality of instrumentals, and it's really key, and we work with the younger musicians on this a lot: you need to sell an instrumental solo. And that means visually. Most people don't know how hard a particular solo might be in terms of shifting, or cross-picking, but they do know speed and precision. Especially precision. And they also know those slow, rip-your-heart-out phrases as well. Some little slide up to a blue note, or something simple but notable. That gets 'em. But making a solo look hard, or look like you're working is key. There are some really great bands, with great young players, but they just stand stone-faced, ripping away. It's really dull. Liberace was once trying out a new violin soloist, and after the violinist was done, said, "I know it's not a hard piece, but you need to make it look hard."

If you're not singing, you need to be acting, as well. Now that I think about it, you better be acting even while singing. Performance is everything, musicianship is just a means of delivering the performance.

[catmandu2]

...but they do know speed and precision. Especially precision. ...

Awesome charlie. I hadn't thought in these explicit terms - great observation.

As an example, paul dooley

https://youtu.be/DEymeFxWhx0

That's hard to do - reels are challenging on a very wily animal - and of course paul makes it look effortless.

*I confess, I default to dance tunes as a crutch - especially if my slow airs/pibrochs aren't communicating.

[farmerjones]

I'm all the way home on the idea that civilians want to be able to either sing along or here a tale. Something they can identify with. Musicians are so out of reach. It didn't used to be. Everybody used to play guitar. Now, not so much.
I used Joe Cocker for an example. If he can sing. . .But he is on pitch.

I'll tell you one that trumps vocals and that's harmony singing. Even two part, or three part. One would have thought you parted the Red Sea, if you have harmony vocals. I also find it the most "instrumental" type of singing, there is. In fact it helped me greatly, in finding another place in the music for my instrument. IOW I learned harmony singing first, then adapted it to my playing.

[ProfChris]

Charlieshafer's last sentence nails it!

The audience isn't there to admire you - you're there to entertain them. This doesn't mean you have to give them what they think they want, but if you give them something else you have to make them realise that's what they wanted all along. That's the performance part.

Technical ability counts for nothing if you can't perform, and a less talented musician who can perform will blow you off the stage. That's not the audience being "wrong" somehow, that's the audience not getting what they paid for.

Doing this without vocals is harder, because vocals communicate more directly than pure notes. But it can be done (though it's beyond my abilities). What the great instrumental performers have in common is that they communicate (a) how hard what they're doing is, and (b) how much they love the music they are making.

Video your live performance and ask yourself how well you're communicating these two. Hint: the audience response is a big clue.

[JeffD]

i would usually reply that my rate was $20 a song, and that did the job to get them to clear off!

genius!

[JeffD]

People like songs. If you are there to entertain, you should consider giving your audience what it wants. This is not pandering. A constant stream of instrumentals, no matter how well played, wears thin in a hurry. In most settings, they are the spice, not the main course.

This is one of the main reasons I rarely perform and do not enjoy it much when I do.

I have heard (from one of the sages of this forum I believe) that one's set list should never have three instrumentals in a row, and rarely ever two.

To let the audience decide what I play, given that most of them couldn't tell which instrument is the mandolin even after using all three lifelines, just erks the lima beans out of me.

But it is true, absolutely, and one has to wrestle with the world as it is, not as we would like it.

[Jess L.]

I think a lot of it has to do with what is the contemporary norm. Somehow or another, vocals have taken over in the public mindset. Maybe since the invention of recorded music? Not sure of the cause.

I doubt that you (the plural form of "you", not singling out any one person) would have been asked to sing very many songs if you were living in a different time and place where the general public's number-one musical requirement was for a steady supply of good solid hard-driving dance tunes. The only vocals required would be for the caller.

Times change.

[ProfChris]

I doubt that you (the plural form of "you", not singling out any one person) would have been asked to sing very many songs if you were living in a different time and place where the general public's number-one musical requirement was for a steady supply of good solid hard-driving dance tunes. The only vocals required would be for the caller.

That still happens, in the UK at least, in the form of ceilidhs (term covers pretty much all folk dancing), line dancing (US import), and tea dances.

But in all these the participants are there to dance, not listen, so the musician's job is different.

Instrumental music still attracts audiences in the classical field.

But I think all these can be described as minority activities.

If you look at mainstream "popular" music, i.e. the music which was sold to/experienced by the majority part of the population, for at least 150 years that has been songs. Think vaudeville (music hall here in the UK), pub/bar entertainment, etc. I don't think times have really changed at all, except that dancing now happens to vocal music as well as instrumental, so the demand for pure dance music has reduced.

[Charlieshafer]

Actually, the song tradition goes back much further. Look at "The House Carpenter's Daughter", a tune covered by many, as an old-time moralistic rocker, about a young bride who succumbs to the temptations of running off with a wealthy ship captain. Of course, the ship sinks, and, as it turns out, the captain was actually the devil in disguise. Great tune. Originally, in he 1500's, called "The Daemon Lover." Nickel Creek, and before then, Harry Belafonte, Burl Ives, et al, covered "The Fox" about a fox reading a farm. That originates also to the 1500's. Sometime well before then, story telling and music merged to form the song tradition.

I also always get bummed out when musicians underestimate the intelligence of their audience. They may not know what a specific instrument is, but they know when something is good. True with food, wine, cars, etc. Quality shows it's inherent qualities. The audience knows what's good; I've seen it thousands of times.

[Tate Ferguson]

Thanks for the great replies, MC folks. Yes, I think the universe is telling me to sing. Just that it's hard to believe it... I'd have had a better musical career had I embraced this concept 40 years ago.

[JeffD]

Quality shows it's inherent qualities. The audience knows what's good; I've seen it thousands of times.

Hmmmm. Yes and no, I think.

I think its true with some caveats.

- I think many an audience over values fast athletic playing, even when aesthetically it detracts or is gratuitous.

- I think many an audience over values vocals that express an opinion with which they are sympathetic.

- I think many an audience over values the look of the performers, (handsome, pretty, scantily clad, muscular, amount of hair).

- I think many an audience over values music with which they are familiar.

Lots of things like that, which are not relevant to the quality of the music. Now if you meant the quality "of the performance" I think you are more correct, because showmanship etc., is the art of knowing how to make the audience happy and receptive, and of course it is tautological if you measure quality by how much the audience likes the performance.

[lflngpicker]

Casual audiences-- such as you find where I perform in convalescent hospitals and coffee houses-- want to hear what is familiar. As a songwriter who used to perform in concert formats in my teens - 50's, I miss playing originals. However, most people want me to play my familiar stuff-- Glen Campbell, Blues, Neil Diamond, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Don McClean stuff. This works because I emphasize vocals and my guitar and mandolin are accompaniment. I do work hard on intro's and endings on my instruments.

[lflngpicker]

Hmmmm. Yes and no, I think.

I think its true with some caveats.

- I think many an audience over values fast athletic playing, even when aesthetically it detracts or is gratuitous.

- I think many an audience over values vocals that express an opinion with which they are sympathetic.

- I think many an audience over values the look of the performers, (handsome, pretty, scantily clad, muscular, amount of hair).

- I think many an audience over values music with which they are familiar.

Lots of things like that, which are not relevant to the quality of the music. Now if you meant the quality "of the performance" I think you are more correct, because showmanship etc., is the art of knowing how to make the audience happy and receptive, and of course it is tautological if you measure quality by how much the audience likes the performance.

Hi Jeff, You really made some great points in your bullet list. I would say that #3 is playing itself out as the demand for my originals has died out-- my age is showing! People don't want to watch an old guy. LOL

[ProfChris]

- I think many an audience over values fast athletic playing, even when aesthetically it detracts or is gratuitous.

- I think many an audience over values vocals that express an opinion with which they are sympathetic.

- I think many an audience over values the look of the performers, (handsome, pretty, scantily clad, muscular, amount of hair).

- I think many an audience over values music with which they are familiar.

Audience expectations certainly matter, but you can often succeed by confounding them.

For example, I'm an old (60+) bloke who has only recently discovered some ability at musical performance. Mind you, ukulele (mainly) and vocals, so not directly comparable to mandolin playing. I'm not a technical virtuoso, play songs most of them have never heard which don't particularly reinforce their existing views, don't look that handsome, etc. But I have nearly 40 years in the Professor trade, which is a performance art in itself (anyone else kept a class awake for a 2 hour lecture?).

That said, there are some venues/times when I know I just can't make it work. At one pub where I sometimes play I know I'll go down well at 8pm. But at 10.30, all they want is to sing along raucously with some song they know, so I won't even attempt that.

But I do think that anywhere the audience has come along to hear music (rather than come along to drink and maybe listen if they like it), performance skills can get their attention. Back in May I was in a 750 seater theatre listening to Danish folk music played on ukulele and double bass (no vocals, no pyrotechnics). They held the audience completely spellbound because they communicated how wonderful they thought the music was, so we all listened and agreed (and I hadn't expected to like them at all). Top class act!

[allenhopkins]

Related observation: have some noticed, that the "instrumentals" groups often play, are instrumental versions of songs? I caught a late night broadcast of the California Guitar Trio at Jorma K's Fur Peace Ranch, and their standing-ovation encore was a version of the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations. They did some Beatles and Eagles tunes as well if I remember correctly.

So: you get the familiarity of the well-known vocal, and the instrumental dexterity of playing it without singing –– the instruments covering both the vocal lines, and the original accompaniment. Jazz players have been doing this forever, turning pop songs into instrumentals, and improvising over the chords once they've played the vocal line to establish what the tune is.

I play Norwegian Wood as an Autoharp instrumental (learned from Jan Alexander at Harry Tuft's Denver Folklore Center 50+ years ago -- jeez, can it really be that long?). People recognize the melody, and enjoy hearing it played; maybe they're singing along in their heads, I dunno.

Also: bluegrass bands seem to be able to get away with a good percentage of fiddle-and-banjo instrumentals, mixed in with the vocals. Doesn't seem to keep them from being booked, I guess.

[stevedenver]

Audience expectations certainly matter, but you can often succeed by confounding them.

For example, I'm an old (60+) bloke who has only recently discovered some ability at musical performance. Mind you, ukulele (mainly) and vocals, so not directly comparable to mandolin playing. I'm not a technical virtuoso, play songs most of them have never heard which don't particularly reinforce their existing views, don't look that handsome, etc. But I have nearly 40 years in the Professor trade, which is a performance art in itself (anyone else kept a class awake for a 2 hour lecture?).

That said, there are some venues/times when I know I just can't make it work. At one pub where I sometimes play I know I'll go down well at 8pm. But at 10.30, all they want is to sing along raucously with some song they know, so I won't even attempt that.

But I do think that anywhere the audience has come along to hear music (rather than come along to drink and maybe listen if they like it), performance skills can get their attention. Back in May I was in a 750 seater theatre listening to Danish folk music played on ukulele and double bass (no vocals, no pyrotechnics). They held the audience completely spellbound because they communicated how wonderful they thought the music was, so we all listened and agreed (and I hadn't expected to like them at all). Top class act!

This!
What my band play differs on time, locale, audience.


Up tempo for bars and street/festivals, innocuous for parties and art galleries, coffee house, well...it depends.

Instrumentals.........are tough.

I am an avid guitar junkie. Pierre bensusen concert almost made me comatose after four or five dadgad renditions.
Otoh, johnny A can command a packed house-imho because his repertoire, dynamics, styles and tempos were well sequenced. And his use of effects offer huge color contrat in his tunes.

Personally, i listen to.a lot of instrumentals, but, to audiences, imho, heart felt compelling high ethos vocals will draw in any audience.

My little group does seven bridges road, accapella, then with a short instrumental accompaniment section. Stops follks dead every time, folks in mid walk, mid conversation, bar, mall, anyplace.

Perhaps because vocals are my challenge, i particularly appreciate them more as i grow musically.

I dig virtuosity, danny gatton, jimi, gilmore, jimmy page, Andy statman, sam, dave, ricky, sierra, etc., but, as someone once said, a solo which you can sing is the most powerful. I tend to agree.

[JeffD]

only musicians really care much about the instrumental parts, with a few rare exceptions.

I got to thinking about this statement, which is consistent with own direct experience. What I mean is that my experience in the world of jamming, where the audience is non-existent or ignored, there are a lot more instrumentals and precious few vocals. I just returned from a jam at a lake side cabin and in the four hours I was there, not one single song was played.

But....

This is genre dependent. And while I don't attend them very frequently, I know of many types of jam sessions where singing is the norm. No audience to care what you do, and the musicians are mostly if not entirely singing anyway.

So I am back to not knowing.

I think both "sides" can be surprised there even is an opposite camp. The times I have said I don't care as much for vocals and songs it was taken as if I had said that I didn't like music. "What else is there?"

And OTOH those that say its all instrumentals, just sometimes there is a vocal accompaniment.

[Willie Poole]

For me bluegrass songs tell a story and I just don`t think an instrumental can tell a story, also they are harder to learn compared to a song with words, if you are playing by ear, that is...

Willie

[Bertram Henze]

I wonder why this works, then:



Is it the genre, where audiences are used to concentrated listening over long stretches of time?
Is it the instrument, that covers melody and accompaniment in one go? and that has a sound made to fall in love with?
Is it the looks of the player? Is it her left hand crawling across the fretboard like a giant spider in a fascinating way?
Is it the fact that she does not sing?