There’s a lot of freedom when it comes to deciding how you, as a musician, want to approach live performance. Unlike streaming music online, it’s not just about the final composition and mix.
Audiences pay attention to your stage presence, your playing skills, your personality, your chemistry with band members, etc. There’s a lot you can experiment with when it comes to making a unique and memorable performance.
1. Simplify Your Performance
Depending on the kind of music you make, the difficulty of performing live can vary significantly—some get by using only an acoustic guitar while some need expensive, complex set ups that don’t work in all locations.
The magic of live performance, though, is that it doesn’t actually need to sound exactly the way you recorded it. Feel free to do simplified versions of the complex songs you wrote. NPR’s Tiny Desk is a great way to see professional musicians try this themselves.
This way, your performances won’t be limited by the venues you have access to. You’ll be able to travel gretaer distances
And it’s not just about simplifying your performance—you can adapt it to the space and add elements you might otherwise not have added in. You may, for example, choose to bring on a couple of backup singers in place of chopped up vocals.
2. Be Creative With Your Personal Limits
At your current stage, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to hire dozens of backup dancers while you perform, but that’s ok! Putting on a good show isn’t just about how much money you can spend on hiring help.
Consider what other talents you have. Do you have a good eye for fashion? Are you good at design or motion graphics? Can you make people laugh? Find ways to weave these talents into your performances and you’ll make your performances stand out without having to break the bank.
3. Create Live Sounds Yourself
This might not be possible for you depending on your genre and instrument skill levels, but incorporating live music can make a big difference in how audiences respond to your performance.
Backing tracks—even Ableton Live sets—can lead to impressive performances, but you’ll really need to justify the choice to your audiences. Why couldn’t they just play your song out loud at home on their own sound system? What are you doing to make the price of admission worth it?
And although you might be doing something difficult and complex with your digital/analog set up, audiences don’t necessarily understand that. To them, it may not make a difference whether you’re playing everything live on an analog instruments or playing it off a computer.
This is not necessarily a positive or negative, just something to keep in mind as you plan your performances; don’t rely on impressing your audiences just because your set up is fully analog. At the same time, it’s not a good idea to fool your audiences into thinking you’re doing something you’re not. This is all to say that your performance shouldn’t have the potential to confuse your audiences.
One of the reasons people respond well to live guitar playing is because the performance is easily seen and understood. The sound of a guitar too, is natural due to all the dynamics and nuances of playing, and audiences can immediately tell if you’re good at it or not.
Many instruments have this potential, but you need to carefully assess how things will appear to your audience. Keyboard can be impressive, but it’s hard to show the audience what you’re doing, and if it sounds too synthetic or uniform, audiences may lose interest.
4. Implement Variety
If you have a one or two hour set, mix it up a little! Even if you’re playing an acoustic, switch up your style or genre every now and then to make sure it doesn’t sound like you’re playing the same song over and over again.
You can also be strategic with this variety and use it in a storytelling capacity. You can, for example, start your set off with energy to get your audiences hyped up for your performance. In the middle of your set, you can focus on performing slower, more emotionally resonant songs to help audiences connect with your messaging. You can then end with your loudest, most powerful songs to close as strongly as you can.
5. Put On A Show! Don’t Focus On Promotion
People go to music performances for entertainment, not to be advertised to. Yes, part of why you’re performing is to get your name out there and to connect to new fans, but the pitch should be in the quality of your performance, not the self-promotion you do between songs.
Don’t just ask for them to follow you, give them a reason to. Putting on a great show isn’t the only way to do this either—consider how clear the messaging is in your songwriting. If your message resonates with people, they’ll follow!
If, however, you write empty, cliched songs with your only goal being to become famous, audiences will see right through you and forget about you the second you step off stage.
