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Audience participation? OK?
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Subject: Audience participation? OK? From: Chet W. Date: 11 Jul 99 - 01:07 PM After trying for years unsuccesfully to get people to sing along, on choruses at least, when I was performing in public, I had the opportunity to perform and to be an audience member in some European countries. My experience was that if people know the song, you don't have to try to get them to sing along, at least in Central Europe. What's it like where you live? Chet |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: emily rain Date: 11 Jul 99 - 02:35 PM on the island where i live, it's impossible to get people _not_ to sing along! i love it that way... folks seem to understand that they're part of the music as well, and they sing along as if it's their birthright. i could not ask for better audiences. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Llanfair Date: 11 Jul 99 - 02:40 PM Contrary to the stereotype of the British people, get them tanked up with good English ale, and they'll sing along with anything!!!!! Bron |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Barbara Shaw Date: 11 Jul 99 - 03:03 PM I've noticed that in folk circles, people tend to sing along, probably because of the tradition of hootenannies and song circles. In bluegrass circles, people do not tend to sing along unless they can find a hole in the harmony and sing something different from their neighbor. It's part of the style in bluegrass to not step on the next person's part (instrumental or vocal), so each individual instrument and voice can be heard. This, by the way, causes no small degree of contention when folkie meets bluegrasser in the same jam. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Chet W. Date: 11 Jul 99 - 03:29 PM Yes my old-time music friends and I referred to ourselves for years as "recovering" or "reformed" bluegrass musicians, as that is how almost everyone started. Now most of us play some of everything. I love it when the audience sings along. Especially at the children's shows I do. Chet |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: WyoWoman Date: 11 Jul 99 - 03:33 PM When I lived in Santa Fe and was good friends with someone who did piano bar in one of the downtown clubs, I could always tell when there were Brits in the audience, because they joined in singing along so enthusiastically. I loved it -- and so did he. What drives me mad is when people start clapping along with a song and the can NEVER seem to get it right. Why is it that white people simply HAVE to clap on the one and three? WyoWoman |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: AllisonA(Animaterra) Date: 11 Jul 99 - 04:12 PM Even in stodgy New England, it's possible to get the audience to sing- but it sometimes takes a certain brazen, encouraging attitude on the part of the performers. It depends a lot on who they are- with Gordon Bok, they sing right along; with others there seems to be less encouragement from the stage- the performer is saying "Yes yes" but his/her attitude isn't very encouraging. Allison |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: SeanM Date: 11 Jul 99 - 04:30 PM Sometimes, it is the audience... Just worked a show in North/Central California a short while ago as part of a festival that wasn't music oriented... For the most part, the audience loved us (judging from the amount of people who came up and talked to us afterwards), but I honestly think that most of them had not been to any sort of musical show... it was an event for fanatics, and I know that at least a few of them had never been to any form of live music before... Net result was having to prompt them constantly to keep a beat, and noone singing along. Smiling a lot, foot tapping, but no audience support... Type of audience DOES matter. Oh well... M |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Susanne (skw) Date: 11 Jul 99 - 04:56 PM Contrary to popular belief, even the so-called 'unmusical' and 'dour' people of Northern Germany or Scotland will sing along given the right encouragement. To me and a lot of others it is the biggest part of the fun. Only once did I find a woman (from Bavaria) who consistently refused to sing along. When I asked her whether she thought she couldn't sing she said: "I paid to hear the performer, not to do half the work myself!" Everyone I've told that story to thought that attitude extremely weird. - Susanne |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: WyoWoman Date: 11 Jul 99 - 06:45 PM That sounds like something Al my Former Fiance would have said. HE also clapped, if he did, on the one and three... WW |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Legal Eagle Date: 11 Jul 99 - 06:49 PM I remember once being told that one and three was white or blues, and two and four was soul. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Jeri Date: 11 Jul 99 - 07:07 PM I remember seeing an African American performer once who said he'd taken a trip to Africa expecting to hear those syncopated claps. Guess what - he said everyone he heard clapping was doing so on 1 and 3. I haven't heard enough African music to know where the claps fall or whether they might have once fallen in different places. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: WyoWoman Date: 11 Jul 99 - 08:01 PM Well, I'm not saying that the one and three are always inappropriate, but it's important to listen to the song and figure out what would be best. F'r instance, I was at a concert the other night -- Kansas, would you believe it, playing with the Wyoming Symphony Orchestra -- and they started in on these enormous rock anthems and the audience got all enthralled and started clapping along, blithely swatting hands on the one and three, regardless of the singer's attempts to show them where the two and four were. Just a pet peeve of mine. Good think I never go to rock concerts anymore. WW |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Jeri Date: 11 Jul 99 - 08:12 PM One and three is an accomplishment, if politicians are involved. How many times have you seen them clapping on one, three-and-a-half, one-point seven...? |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: SueH Date: 12 Jul 99 - 06:17 AM People tend to sing along with the chorus here, even if they don't know it they will generally have a go at remembering/following it. Then you get the ones who sing through the whole song, they generally: a) don't know the words correctly and b) are ALWAYS very loud! Still, I suppose it means they're enjoying themselves.... Sue |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Jeremiah McCaw Date: 12 Jul 99 - 07:26 AM "One and three is an accomplishment, if politicians are involved. How many times have you seen them clapping on one, three-and-a-half, one-point seven...?" Well, whadidya expect? You should know they and only clap according to the demographics! |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Steve Parkes Date: 12 Jul 99 - 07:54 AM Try singing in 5/4 or 7/8 ... or maybe something easy, like 9/8! I've had trouble getting the people I was performing with to clap/snap on the off-beats! Not folkies, I should say; but you expect something a bit less boring when you're singing Fever! Dear old Alex Campbell used to say (on the rare ocasions it was necessary for him), "this is a folksong, and if you folk don't sing, it ain't gonna work!" Hell, yes! Steve P.S. Actually, I hate it when people start clapping along, whether they do it right or not! |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: The Shambles Date: 12 Jul 99 - 01:30 PM Clapping is OK when it's consistent, but it rarely is for a whole song. It usually starts off alright, then either reduces to an embarassed small core and stops in mid-song, or worse still divides into small groups keeping time with each other but not exactly with the tune.
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: The Shambles Date: 12 Jul 99 - 02:37 PM Could it be called Clap Creep? Maybe not. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Peter T. Date: 12 Jul 99 - 03:44 PM I'm sorry, but blaming the audience is not acceptable, unless it is an accountant's Conference. My pet peeve, as audience, is the inability of the performers to give reasonable help to the audience. There are innumerable elements in this (I have posted some elsewhere): (1) Encouraging audience participation for a song that is not participation friendly. Like the verse of a song. (2) Encouraging it, and then letting it die. They say "everybody!", and everybody joins in, and then the performers go back to what they were doing before. Now the audience does not know if they are supposed to join in again or not. (3) The performers give a 2 second lead, at about 1 second before the audience is supposed to come in, thus making them feel insecure. (4) The performers start the audience, and then immediately go into harmony, continuing to confuse the audience. (5) The performers don't consistently encourage the audience -- they mumble the words, clap about twice, and then go about their business. (6) You can tell they are doing this so as to get what a friend of mine calls a F***ing participation hand. Bigger applause because the audience helped showcase the performer's song. (7) I'll stop. Getting audiences to participate is an art. I am audience. Do not blame the audience! If you do we will be even quieter in future!!!! yours, Peter T.
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Tony Burns Date: 12 Jul 99 - 04:16 PM Well said Peter. Even in a large audience I can feel embarrased if asked to join in. If an artist isn't really good at this they should avoid it completely. Occasionally a performer is so engaging that you can't help but participate. That's a talent very few performers possess and even for that few I bet the experience is rare for many of them. I say this and I go out on purpose once a week to sing! Imagine the poor audience member who is reluctant to sing in the shower. If the performer has been hired to get people to participate (for example with children) then it's a different matter. In a concert or club setting encourage folks if they start spontaneously but other than that forget it. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Songster Bob Date: 12 Jul 99 - 04:35 PM I've noticed several things about audience participation: 1) clapping -- even on the 1 & 3 (per country music style) almost always gets messed up if the hall is larger than about 50 feet deep. The stage sound delay in reaching the back of the audience, coupled with their reaction to it (i.e., they hear the beat, then clap to it) and the delay as this sound reached the front/stage means that the beat gets sttrreeechheddd and the clap! becomes a sort of surf sound, with no single instant of sound. 2) singing along is easier in less formal surroundings. I get audiences to join in easily in my house, less easily in a folk club, and i have to actively encourage it in a library concert, for instance. 3) singing along is harder for the audience when the act is a band, since the act has an "arrangement" and the audience can't find its part in same. That is, I can sing a song at a coffeehouse and get the listeners to join in the chorus, but the same song, sung by me with my trio, Sidekicks, gets less singing along because we have a concious vocal arrangement, with three parts, and the audience feels less a part of it as well as having trouble figuring out where to "fit in." One more point might be that we sound so good it's less important to sing with us, whereas when i'm singing, it's more or less self-defense to join in. (It doesn't hurt that George, in the trio, has one of the best voices I've ever had the privilege to work with). 4) some genres of music are more participatory than others. Imagine a solo chanty singer! Then imagine a blues chorale! Neither one fits my mental image of "normal." That's a few thoughts on the subject. bob clayton |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: emily rain Date: 12 Jul 99 - 08:28 PM shambles, i believe "clap creep" is one of the many concerns of the public health department... |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: LEJ Date: 12 Jul 99 - 08:42 PM WyoWoman- watch what you say about white people, some of my best friends are white! And many are capable of giving good clap. All right, all the women! We all live in a yellow submarine Now just the men! A Yellow submarine And the children A yellow submarine Everyone wearing a prosthesis! We all live in a yellow submarine And the Insurance Salesmen! A yellow submarine Now the Jack Mormons! A yellow Submarine |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Jeri Date: 12 Jul 99 - 09:19 PM Shambles, if politicians are doing it, it's creeps clapping. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Date: 12 Jul 99 - 10:01 PM As an audience member for whom it is very difficult to KEEP from singing along with performers I can say that there are some performers and performances that seem to actively discourage sing-along even when they are SAYING "c'mon and sing!". on the other hand - i've been working ten years or so on trying to encourage sing-along at a faire I go to; shocked the heck out of the performers the first year I went, because they advertised the show as a sing-along but no one did, they didn't expect anyone to,and pretty much had never had anyone attempt to sing along and then i plunked myself down and sang along with every single song! They now have a bunch of "regulars" who manage to encourage enough people that the shows ARE actually sing-alongs. MMario |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: WyoWoman Date: 12 Jul 99 - 11:09 PM Well, the best singalong I"ve ever participated in was when the Violent Femmes played Santa Fe. I, personally, knew every one of the songs they did and I sang along with great enthusiasm, clapping, of course on the two and four. It's easy to sing along when you're jammed together like sardines and the decibel level is about that of jet engines idling and nobody gives a s**t what the person next to 'em is doing. (I did get pushed into the mosh pit, which was a bit of an adventure. I did not mosh. I escaped.) ww |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: A Celtic Harper Date: 13 Jul 99 - 05:48 PM Some participation encouraging patter that one of my bands used goes roughly as follows: After your charming intro to the song, what it's about, whence it came, etc, your usual method of Selling it before performing it, continue as follows: 1. Well, now on this next song, we need you all to sing on the chorus because ______________(fill in the blank with a real good reason depending on the tune such as for a wassail: "everyone in the town went door to door singing this chorus, and accepting a cup of wassail, and then the folks in the house joined 'em, until the whole village was in the streets, drunk as skunks, and we need you to be our whole drunken wassailing village! There aren't enough of us on stage - we need your help! And it takes a whole village to raise a wassail!!!" or, in an underheated hall - "You need to sing along because getting all that good oxygen into your system will really warm you up" You get the picture - something germaine, and irresistable, and with a bit of humor where appropriate. 2. Now, we'll teach you the words first, then the tune. ( go over the chorus line by line, and ask them to repeat after you) 3. Then sing the chorus line by line and have them follow; then sing entire chorus slowly. 4. Then stop and say, "well now, we have a rule, that we must see at least 50% of the mouths moving, and we'll just keep teaching you until we do. But do you know, a lot of people are afraid to sing because some terrible person, a teacher or someone else in authority told you you couldn't sing. Can we see a show of hands of those of you who were told this? Oh my, that's so sad. But, you know, that just isn't true. Most people can too sing - But even if you can't - it's your NEIGHBOR's Problem! NOT YOURS!!! 5. That last line always gets a laugh!! Make sure to ask them if they're ready, does anyone need to hear it again, then go for it!!!! You'll have them singing along heartily and (figuratively) eating out of your hand. UT. Mari-Kat
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Bert Date: 14 Jul 99 - 09:32 AM To get the audience to sing along you have to start with songs which have a good singalong chorus, something very simple that they learned in school. Also you have to have a responsive audience. You can 'feel' if they are going to sing and if they are not, then there is not much you can do about it. I remember a Pete Seager show on TV once. He was in England I think. He had an audience of real stuffed shirts and they just weren't going to sing. He made a right fool of himself by keeping on at them, trying to get them to sing along. He should have dropped the issue after the first try. Bert. |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: Roger the zimmer Date: 14 Jul 99 - 09:52 AM You mean audiences don't normally throw chairs at the rest of you? That's the ones who haven't run for the door! And that's my friends and loved ones, I never sing in public (tavernas late at night after several Metaxas don't count)! |
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Subject: RE: Audience participation? OK? From: j0_77 Date: 14 Jul 99 - 01:27 PM Well darn ! I thought folk music was a joint venture - before the age of commercial folk. Then and oddly now the typical audience (especialy female - think it has something to do with feminine intuition) will attempt to make the music 'move' by clapping on the 'up' beat. That generally falls on the '2nd' and '4th' beat. Really silly example 'Boil em finaly Odd time sigs. If accompanied with arpeggio then the vast majority of audiences will just listen BUT tune the darn Guitar before you try this one (Tip get a Bob Dylan record and find a track in G then tune your G chord to that) Hope that helps |
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