ANALYZING TECHNIQUES

Now it is time to put the words to the test. To enhance my own performance, I wanted not only to read into how to interact with the audience, I wanted to see people do it. Finding these were not difficult, but how do we analyze these examples? I chose to take two of the main chapters (from my point of view) about interaction with the audience of David Wallace’s book on Engaging the Concert audience. One is about what to do, Chapter 2: Six principles of audience engagement. The other is common mistakes made with interactions with the audience, Chapter 6: Avoiding ten common pitfalls. (Wallace 2018)

I will summarize the practical points of these two chapters and following I analyze three performances and my own performance according to these waypoints, to discover how musicians in the field can use these techniques.

SIX PRINCIPLES OF AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

When creating a concert for an audience, big or small, expert or amateur, these six points are interesting to take into account if you want to make contact with your audience and find ways to create moments for higher musical perception.

1. Find entry points
   An entry point is a musical focus point which we make the audience attentive to. It may be dynamics, thematic material, suspense, orchestration, repetition, the options are endless. To create interaction with the audience it is useful to find entry points to talk about the sounding music in the concert. Wallace advises not to use too many. Find one entry point fitting for the piece of music you play enlarges the clarity of the performance. 

2. Go beyond information, engage through experience
   The next step is to explore entry points with the audience. Interaction is a kick-start for the audience. ‘If all we do is talk about the entry point, (...) it is like holding up an ice cream cone and describing what eating it is like’ (Wallace, 2018). Listeners might feel intimidated, baffled or bored if you stick by just talking about technicalities.
   Going in deeper into the concept of chosen entry point, involve your audience. Activate your audience. You can do this of course by giving information, that is not a bad idea, but ‘...unless information is grounded in an actual experience, it seldom helps a listener’s ears.’ according to Wallace. He suggests to do things with the entry point provided. Teach the audience to sing along with thematic material you just played/talked about. Let the audience dance a courante when playing Bach suites.

3. Tap your audience’s competence
   The audience is used to being passive in most concert settings, especially in classical music concerts. Most audience members also see themselves as skill-less. Though this is not true. All people can hum, clap, speak loud, speak softly or loudly, conduct. When engaging the audience in actively playing along or making up new music, they feel powerful and become performers themselves. Try to activate your audience by making them create something new with a concept you introduce. For instance, take an odd bar signature you play in and let audience make up new rhythms. When audience actively engages in music making or is activated to actively realise the different choices musicians make, they can be higher engaged when the music is played by the musicians on the stage.

4. Engage multiple intelligences
   Perceptions of different people work differently. Professor Howard Gardner made a study on different forms of learning mechanisms in people’s minds and called them ‘intelligence’. Everybody has ability to learn from all different intelligences, but people have a strong preference for three of the possible ways. The one person learns best visual, logical and intrapersonal, the other bodily, interpersonal and verbal (etc.). If you want to connect with as many people as there are in the audience, these different ways of intelligence are good to take into account. Here I list them, coupling with some practical things used in performance. 

• Visual / Spatial intelligence; any form of imagery, lights, pictures, film and other visual aids you can imagine.

• Verbal / Linguistic intelligence; the use of words to learn, including metaphors or lyrics.

• Logical / Mathematical intelligence; learning by logic, numbers and reasoning. For instance form analysis, complex rhythms, solving puzzles 

• Bodily / Kinesthetic intelligence; physical coordination skills like dancing a certain choreography or conducting an orchestra. (See video 1.1)

• Musical / rhythmic intelligence; learning by hearing music/rhythms. Speaks for itself that this is everywhere in a concert. 

• Interpersonal intelligence; learning by understanding, emphatise and communicate with others. This is for instance having a conversation or showing expressions as performer.

• Intrapersonal intelligence; ability for introspection, self-knowledge and self-awareness. This establishes personal connections to the music. Moments for reflection give space for the introspective people.

5. Reflect
   An abundance of ideas is very nice to have in your pocket, but there is no room for all your ideas in one performance. When you exercise an idea, make sure it sticks in one way or another. You can do that by reflection. Passively this happens mostly, but you can create a space to talk about it live. “what struck you in this piece?” “why?”. In this way the individual perspective is ebriched by the collective. 

6. Project your personality
   With this, Wallace asks you to be yourself and to not avoid it. When we interact with the outside world, especially when on stage, it works best if we show ourselves, not a person you think the audience wants to see.

AVOIDING TEN COMMON PITFALLS

In chapter 6 of his book, Wallace shows common mistakes people make when giving an interactive concert. 

1. Avoid too many words; Very good to consider when you talk a considerable amount of time during performance. We need to dose our words and not go too long into detail without musical ‘evidence’. Use your words wise.

2. Don’t spoil the beans; Leave something over to discover. Do it by inquiry, not by overexplanation.

3. Rehearse your script; More than you think you should.

4. Rehearse your music; More than you think you should.

5. Stick to your own expertise; Don’t try to tell about things too far outside of your knowledge, stay with music (or respectively things you researched about and know) otherwise you lose credibility. Metaphors are welcome, but don’t let it become a vehicle for what it is not. 

6. Avoid irrelevant activities; Try to make everything stick to the story you tell with the music and around the music. Don’t digress too much to other topics if you don’t return logically to the original story.

7. Watch out for lack of variety.

8. Think of your audience; Will you be talking to four years olds? Or play after a punk band just played?

9. Think of piece lengths; When talking and playing, a piece of longer than 8 minutes is perceived as ‘long’, especially by untrained ears. Playing only short bits all the time also does not work. Balance.

10. Disengaged performers; When on stage, be on the stage! Be included. 

ANALYZING DIFFERENT EXAMPLES OF INTERACTIVE CONCERTS

For the purpose of this research, I decided to analyze different interactive concerts in order to get an idea about how other people design their interaction with the audience. I will analyze my own concert in the same way and by this I want to learn and see how my concert fits, or does not fit existing formats. I walk by every performance looking at the six important notices from Wallace’s chapter. Also, I look at whether they did things not contributing to the activation of the audience.