Do all musical acts have to sing?

Subject: RE: Do all musical acts have to sing?
From: Strollin' Johnny
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 08:49 AM

CharleyF, you would need to be very good instrumentalists indeed in order to entertain and satisfy an audience for two sets, maybe an hour and a half in total, without the variation that the occasional song brings. Greg's mentioned Kathryn Tickell - she's one of the very few I know of who can carry off a full evening of instrumental music, and as a player she's completely off the scale.

Without doubt, tune-players do enjoy relentless tune-playing but, unless you're extremely good, or your audience is very unusual, you'll find their (your audience's) interest waning around the third set of twiddly-diddly-iddlies. :0)

You don't need to be a Caruso to do a couple of songs and, who knows, you may even start to enjoy them! LOL

Subject: RE: Do all musical acts have to sing?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 08:18 AM

I have heard it said that the ultimate musical instrument is the human voice, and all other instruments are just pale attempts to imitate it.

I do like to sing, but playing an instrument for accompaniment ot singing and playing instrumental music are two different things with 2 different sets of musical skills.

Robin

Subject: RE: Do all musical acts have to sing?
From: greg stephens
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 07:42 AM

Well, obviously you must do what pleases you, if the music is to work. But the audience always has the freedom to criticise, and there will definitely always be people thinking a song would have been nice in among the tunes. I particularly remember feeling this (and saying it) when seeing the Kathryn Tickell band some years ago, several times.After a whole two sets of instrumental song I always felt it would have been good to hear the odd song. You can never please all the people all the time, can you? It was her band, and her decision. Fine. But I'm allowed my feelings too, arent I? It would be a boring world if we all felt the same.

Subject: Do all musical acts have to sing?
From: CharleyR
Date: 01 Sep 04 - 07:35 AM

I get the impression that audiences seem to want/expect all musicians who play concerts to include singing in their repertoire, even if the musicians in question are primarily instrumentalists rather than singers.

I went to see Flook at Towersey festival last week, for anyone who hasn't heard them, they are a four-piece band made up of flutes, whistles, accordion, guitar and bodhran and their playing is phenomenal, they are one of the big acts on the British folk scene at the moment. But they don't sing. Their set was (IMHO) amazing, but as I left the concert tent, I overheard somebody saying "but why don't they sing something?". So even the best musicians are not free from this expectation that they should sing, no matter how fantastic their playing is.

I have recently started playing in a duo (melodeon and guitar), we try to make our sets as varied as possible in terms of playing tunes from different countries and with varied time/key signatures and feels, but we don't do any songs, mainly because we have never felt moved enough to do so. We could conceivably work on a few songs and produce something that was of an acceptable quality to perform if we needed to do so, but it somehow doesn't seem right to do that. I think that to be a good singer you have to get emotionally involved with what you're doing and find some meaning of your own in a song in order to convey anything meaningful to an audience and I just haven't found any songs that make me feel that way, I love playing tunes but I don't get anywhere near as moved by songs as I do by tunes.

So here's the question: should I or anyone else in this situation just stick to what we're good at and love doing, or should we attempt singing because that's what audiences and event organisers seem to want? Is it better to just be a good musician, or a good musician and an ok-ish singer? It seems that it would be easier to get gigs if we could say that we sing, but if the singing is just ok but not particularly amazing, would it put audiences off us and be a hinderance to getting further gigs? Does everyone really have to sing?

Charley