BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?

Subject: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 07 May 15 - 03:02 PM

Do we like the sound of running water because it sounds like applause?

Or do we like the sound of applause because it sounds like running water?

If you ever need some white noise to block out the noise from next-door : Twenty two minutes of rain/running water. (Or maybe you WERE very good) Saåad/_/Spiritual Dilution

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 07 May 15 - 07:15 PM

I enjoy the sound of applause because hands hitting each other prevents eggs or tomatoes being thrown my way.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 07 May 15 - 08:20 PM

I think it may run across all cultures that when our mamas are delighted with us as babies, they spontaneously clap in delight. Thus we learn early to do that to show approval, and we all like receiving it again as adults.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,Tattie Bogle
Date: 07 May 15 - 08:44 PM

It always mystifies me why we applaud people who win in a raffle: everyone who bought a ticket has a chance of winning, and there's no skill involved in winning. So why?

BTW, my grand-daughter (nearly 11 months) has just learned to clap just about anything mildly clever that she does!

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Joe_F
Date: 07 May 15 - 08:48 PM

Actually, I find the sound of applause wearisome. It is particularly vulgar to record it.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: gnu
Date: 07 May 15 - 08:53 PM

Well said, ~S~ and #. I always enjoyed applause but what really tickled my pink was laughter. I was never a real musician... I was a teller of tales that hid behind instruments I couldn't play well. Of course, if you consider a bodhrán an instrument, when I could play Hrán before the arthritis struck, I played well and I didn't hide it. Sigh... I rue the day I flipped my tipper into the audience when my hand just up and died on me. Haven't played since. Hmmmm... not true... I did play for a guest in my house a year ago last August but it was limited and I sucked. Anybody wanna buy a Remo synthetic 16 and two Kearns 18 with an Owens family crest on them, one tuneable? Nice Hráns. You can play the Remo in the shower.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: wysiwyg
Date: 08 May 15 - 08:18 AM

Tattie Bogle, it's just because people are happy for the winner-- celebrating it with them.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Musket
Date: 08 May 15 - 10:17 AM

The secret of enjoying it is not to analyse whether it was louder as you walked on stage or when you walked off again.

"keep throwing that rotten fruit, I'm bloody starvin'"

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 15 - 12:10 PM

I am always puzzled when passengers applaud successful airplane landings, even the mundane ones.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 15 - 12:19 PM

It's always fun to make sounds together with other people... jamming, singing harmony, etc, as everyone on Mudcat knows. Applause is a way of making sound together with a large number of other people. It has to be timed just right, and you have to be inspired to do it in the same way. Think of it as a brief, spontaneous percussion jam with a very large group.

I remember a concert that was so good that the instant the last note ended the entire crowd in the large auditorium leapt to their feet at once and started applauding thunderously. Not one of those "O.K., everyone else is standing up so I guess I will" type of standing ovations. It was involuntary and instantaneous, and everyone in the crowd obviously felt the same compulsion in the same instant. It was many years ago, and I have no idea what the concert was, but I can't forget the thrilling experience that I shared with the rest of the audience.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 15 - 12:24 PM

The airplane landing applause is a release of the tension you feel during a flight, especially during the landing, which always appears to be the most dangerous moment in the flight. And I guess applauding for a show is similar. There's tension involved in having to sit quietly while other people in the room are making sounds, and you break the tension when it's over by making some sound of your own.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 May 15 - 12:30 PM

if folks are clapping every few minutes
you can be reasonably assured their hands aren't in their trouser pockets
furtively indulging in unacceptable anti social activities in public...😜

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 08 May 15 - 12:35 PM

moral for artists on stage is: keep your songs short.

Ballads that drag on for more than 5 minutes should be avoided.
monitor the audience for flushed faces and rolling eyes
and be prepared to immediately abort a ballad for a round of applause.😉

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 08 May 15 - 01:18 PM

punkfolkrocker: "Ballads that drag on for more than 5 minutes should be avoided."

Also, (and this is important), AVOID by all means, playing two SLOW blues pieces, back to back!...you will lose your audience!!! ...and that is a well known FACT in the industry!...(unless they SPECIFICALLY went to hear that particular performer, who is already known for their material!).

...and hearing a healthy applause, after a piece, sends a reaffirmation to the 'artist' that their material was well received...which, of course, is useful to the performer on what works, better than other stuff.

For me, unless I see tears running, followed by a standing ovation, then I think I fucked up! That tells me I 'got inside'.
...and don't even try to 'reinterpret that' to mean 'something else'!

True story.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 08 May 15 - 08:00 PM

I have mixed feelings. There's nothing as exciting as when an audience breaks into thunderous applause (with shouts of joy) at a great performance. I love it.

On the other hand, there's a guy in my town who always has to be the first to applaud at the end of a piece of classical music. And he has a loud, whopping irritating clap. Does he want everybody to admire him for knowing the piece by heart?

Or does he think we are a bunch of hicks and don't have the good manners to applaud a fine performance? Someday I want to corner him in a dark alley and say, "John, would you PLEASE allow the last note to die away before you start blapping your hands together?"

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 May 15 - 09:05 PM

I can't be doing with those jazz pieces that go on for at least fifteen minutes and have lots of solo bits in them, the end of each solo requiring clapping from the in-crowd in the audience. Bloody affectation if you ask me.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 08 May 15 - 11:36 PM

I guess that would depend on if you loved jazz.

Another silly thing, is when you see the front man raising his hands clapping, trying to get the audience to clap with him, as in applause, and not for keeping time with the music. The performance ..IF.. it was good enough, SHOULD get the audience to do that, without the prompting.
Either ya' got it, or you don't...simple as that!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 May 15 - 12:33 AM

In summer of 1963, following the 1962 Century 21 World's Fair in Seattle, I took part in the "Seattle Center Hootenannies," held in front of the Horiuchi Mural at the brand new Seattle Center (legacy of the fair, along with a brand new opera house, several smaller theaters, and the Pacific Science Center, among many other amenities). The hootenannies drew as many as 15,000 people (police crowd estimate).

Some 15,000 people applauding sounds a lot like surf….   Pretty heady stuff!

A regular singing job of mine that spanned several years was singing three nights a week at a coffeehouse called "The Place Next Door." It was owned by the man who owned the Guild 45th theater (art films and foreign films) next door, hence, the name. He paid regularly and reasonably well.

After singing to a packed house most of the evening, when I did my last set, there were only four or five couples left. I sang a set of mostly love songs (no sea chanties or chain-gang songs). I had one song to go, but I decided to end on a very quiet note, so I played a classic guitar piece, Romance de Amor, arranged by Vincente Gomez. People listened quietly, then after I brushed by thumb across the concluding E minor chord, there as a long silence. The couples got up, and as they filed out, they quietly thank me for the evening of music.

Applause is great, but quiet expressions of appreciation can be just as heady, and in some ways, moreso.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Musket
Date: 09 May 15 - 06:34 AM

If you fly Alitalia, you too will applause after he bumps it onto the bloody runway.....

It isn't just the Pope who kisses the Tarmac when he gets off the plane, it's every Alitalia customer, trust me. It was the only daily scheduled to Bologna back when I was there most weeks on business....

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 09 May 15 - 10:41 AM

Beautiful story, Don.

Musket, a bumpy landing is safer than a smooth landing. The bumps dissipate energy. A perfectly smooth landing is called a 'greaser' and is frowned upon. When you feel the bumps, you can breathe more easily.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 09 May 15 - 10:55 AM

It could be one njoys applause because , as many things do, it reminds one of the gentle sound of a pat on a young lady's bottom.

or there again it could betoken that the audience are going to let you live, and there won't be any unpleasantness getting the money.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 09 May 15 - 01:19 PM

A pilot, who was once a carrier pilot during WWII told me, "Any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing!"

Musket: "It isn't just the Pope who kisses the Tarmac when he gets off the plane, it's every Alitalia customer, trust me. It was the only daily scheduled to Bologna ...."

Bologna?...Maybe you only thought they were kissing the runway...maybe they were trying to eat it...or at least get a bite...

As far as those who SAY they don't like applause....probably because they don't get enough of it.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 10 May 15 - 09:13 AM

Applause is okay, even exciting sometimes, but I hate it when people whistle. It hurts my ears.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Musket
Date: 10 May 15 - 10:15 AM

Why would you wish to eat the runway of an Italian city Goofus? Idle question but the answer may surprise me yet..

Leenia. I take it you have been reading Alitalia marketing bumf! (putting extra strain on the shock absorbers and tyre wall does indeed dissipate energy. But a controlled dissipation via brakes and tyre friction on tarmac is the desired method...)

The applause is certainly ironic with that ruddy airline.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 10 May 15 - 07:50 PM

Ego? We seem to be taught to like it as a form of praise.

Of course I don't always enjoy it. On the rare occasions I'm "performing" it's nice to feel rewarded. On the other hand, most of my musical enjoyment comes from playing in sessions and it can feel totally wrong when a group largely playing for its own enjoyment gets applause. It can be sort of nice to know others are enjoying the music but maybe for me, seeing something like a finger or foot tapping to the beat can seem better,

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 11 May 15 - 09:22 AM

I've been at a few concerts where the performers have asked for no applause until the very end: it's usually been if there is some sort of continuum in the presentation - even though mixture of narrative and songs, it would be too broken up by each section being applauded. But having been unfortunately slightly late at one of these things, I initially thought what a miserable bunch the audience was, until the penny dropped what was going on!

And, of course, in "classical" music, you are not supposed to applaud after each movement of a symphony or concerto, no matter how good it is, only at the end, but there's always someone who doesn't know that!
Past experience of playing in Germany was that they must be the l-o-n-g-e-s-t applauders: about 10-15 minutes at the end of a concert, no kidding!

When I was young, there was traditionally no applause was in church performances, but that seems to have gone by the board now. "Because we like to hear it!"

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 11 May 15 - 10:51 AM

Hi, Don. Your Horiuchi mural reminds me of how rocks look under a petrographic microscope. Here's how they look:

rock images

(They are beautiful.)

Back to applause: I like to go to ragtime concerts, and there is a handful of people who applaud in the middle of the pieces if they suspect some improvisation went on. I wish they wouldn't because I want to hear all the music. I'm pretty sure the musicians can stand to wait for applause at the end of the piece.

Whether it's at the ballet or a jazz event or anything, I am against applause in the middle of a performance.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: Musket
Date: 11 May 15 - 10:58 AM

The alternative is leaving the stage to the sound of your own footsteps... Learning to play, sing create and perform is a wonderful experience and sharing it with others puts the topping on the cake you are baking.

Applause is seeing nobody leaving their cake uneaten.

Philosophy 101, and about to get my head down after a liquid lunch.

Subject: RE: BS: why do we enjoy the sound of applause?
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 11 May 15 - 11:09 AM

I'm not sure there, musket. You may have been there many times and I only a couple but the one where you sort of know the audience is with you and there is that pause before the applause can be quite a feeling.

Still, and for me, I'd say the feeling you can get when a session is really working well and somehow you sort of get swept along just playing for the tunes and everyone seems to come up to a new level is the best one. I've not had that either in a while but it's sort of "magic" when it happens.