The sacred art of entertainment prevention (Page 3 of 3)

I don't think anyone should go out of their way to entertain anyone but themselves with their music, entertaining other people at your own expense is for pantomime artists and other sorts of "entertainers" (think Robbie Williams ). If you are playing a concert or whatever you should just hope that there are a lot of people in attendance who are entertained by similar things to yourself (and if you love to make danceable gameboy songs and live in New York city, you know there will be ). On the other hand I never really saw any of these "fuck the audience" posts (and have seen a few posts with people asking how to make their live acts more entertaining, actually) so I have no clue where this thread came from.

Although I never attended one myself (so why am I posting? ), from speaking to people and reading about people's gig experiences (as audience members) I really think that the chip scene does a great job of entertaining audiences and helping them have a good time.

I think you'll find it hard to see a thread on here or 8bc.org that says "I went to this gig and it was crap and no one played songs I like" as a general consensus, and I assume if people really thought "fuck the audience" there would be a lot more threads like that.

Last edited by ant1 (Jun 26, 2010 3:45 pm)

This is good news then. It sounds like I completely misunderstood stuff I've glanced at over the years. I can't pin-point the posts, but I have seen many that seem very stand-offish concerning the audience and song choice, and others, for instance, making fun of chip artists that danced around, or head-bobbed, and others suggesting it is better to "stand-still" than to move around on stage (that thread is on here somewhere) as if it is uncool to be entertaining. I had seen some chip videos on YouTube with people standing completely still or even sitting at a table, basically ignoring the audience altogether.

Now I see that I just had a bad run of videos, or perhaps it is just the style of these artists and I am missing the context, or perhaps it is simply the confines of having immobile equipment in some cases, and it sounds like the vast majority of people don't feel this way.

I spent this morning going through the Blip Fest videos I could find on YouTube, and I saw some awesome performances by the people listed above. It is my fault for not doing due diligence, so perhaps the next thread should be, "Show me the coolest clips from live chip performances." And e.s.c., yes, I think I mistakenly blurred the line between "not compromising your music" and "not entertaining (notably misunderstanding the responses to my last thread which implied it would be uncool to play crowd-pleasing songs)." Lesson learned, the end.

And while I've apparently wasted people's time with a red herring, I think some good came out of this thread, like dealing with the "play Mario!" problem. But come to think of it, I've never played Freebird in all of my gigs, so you don't have to acquiesce to entertain people.

Last edited by RushCoil (Jun 26, 2010 4:18 pm)

haha, i bet im in at least a few of those videos where someone isnt moving, though if youve seen what im usually doing with gear (multiple game boys, lotsa midi, sometimes two whole tables of gear, all depends on what songs im doing) or the gigs where ive improv collabed with calbee or dise, well, to be honest if i were moving, i couldnt really move much even if i were the dancing type
ill bet you also were seeing negative comments about people who ONLY push play then just dance around instead of doing something a little different live (after all, LSDJ has a live mode and nanoloop is built for live play)

I wanted to respond to this particular bit Rushcoil posted myself but couldn't quite find the proper words.  I'd say you pretty much hit the nail on the head though.  -  I personally am really into more ambient and experimental types of music but the people I play for are (to be somewhat general) usually into more upbeat dance music and the like.  The best solution here is to begin by playing what I think they're interested in, some sort of high tempo and high energy dance track powered by some obnoxious drums.  Then after doing that for a bit I begin to transition into my more abstract and soundscape-y pieces, some more calming and quieter music that I find more artistic pleasure in as opposed to the beginning bits (don't get me wrong, I still enjoy making them, but I prefer this sort of stuff).    Finally I transition back out into another high tempo climactic finish before leaving the stage for the next band.

Doing this also requires that I keep stage banter to a minimum if even existent at all.  This doesn't bother me, why would anyone want to hear me make stupid remarks while the next song is loading?  What I've found really works nice is to keep a bank of short loops stored in my Roland sampler and play them with a little effects thrown on overtop of it to keep things varied enough to ensure music is still going while I switch up the songs/sounds on whatever it is I'm using be it LSDJ, Nanoloop, DS-10, a toy keyboard or attempting somewhat wildly to get my circuitbent goodies to act properly.  This mixed with the whole transition into and out of various styles as I mentioned above seems to work well for me and tends to hold the audience's attention more than if I was to jump around different song formats and spend forever talking about "oh so I wrote this song while..." (no offence if you do that, some people are legitimately funny banter-ers).  But then again, it's all about reading the audience and watching how they react.  If everyone was to begin losing interest I suppose I'd probably switch back to what they're more interested in and save what I would have played for a different audience.

I feel like the whole "fuck the audience" thing has a profoundly negative connotation to it.  As a musician you can say "fuck the audience" and write whatever you like, that just means that you're writing for your own pleasure and not for what an audience is after - I totally support that, that is what I feel keeps your work an art; what it does not (and should not, though sometimes does) mean is a close attention paid to what an audience might be into and then intentionally doing the exact opposite which sometimes I feel is what musicians do just for the hell of "indie" cred or whatever you'd like to call it.

Now you've got me rambling so here's tl;dr - when I'm writing the song I am the artist and it is my duty to live independent of an audience and write what I feel like writing, when I'm live in front of an audience I feel like they went out of their way to come see me (among other artists) and perhaps even had to pay something to see me so I feel they ought to be entertained and enjoy what I do.  If that means I go home wishing I could have played my solid noise/kazoo extravaganza but instead played yet another fast LSDJ dance track, so be it, at least I made everyone happy.  In my mind it's all about judging what the audience responds well to and trying to get as much variation as possible while still keeping them happy.  I've just been fortunate to find that I can play both ambient soundscapes and fast LSDJ stuff to the same audience and keep everyone entertained as long as the transition is smooth.

I love this thread, you all are awesome.

Last edited by Beverage (Jun 26, 2010 5:43 pm)

@rushcoil: ah i see your problem now, you live in jacksonville
that sucks

i'm completely spoiled living in philly, we have 8static AND pulsewave in nyc. power to you man