Five fixes to improve your chances for success as a singer/songwriter
If you want success as a singer/songwriter, I already know these five things need to be addressed without even seeing your show. Read More.
music shows
Use visual and musical cues to lead your audience
Your audience wants to respond, they just don’t know what you want them to do – they don’t know what’s going through your head when you’re on the stage – so you have to use verbal, visual, and musical cues to lead them where you want them to go. Read More.
The Indie Artist’s Guide to Gigging: Booking Strategies
Excerpted from our updated Indie Artist’s Guide To Gigging, this section focuses on booking strategies for acts trying to gain momentum and widen their base. Read More.
Preparing to perform live
Success onstage begins with comfort in your own skin and with your own music. Your identity when you perform live onstage has to come across as authentic to the audience. Read More.
Last-minute bandmate – What to do when your key players can’t play the gig
What if, hours before you play the gig of the year, your drummer ends up in the hospital with a stomach flu, or your bass player gets called out of town? Whether the issues are related to health or weather, business or family, life can sometimes interfere to prevent your key band mates from arriving where and when you need them. Read more.
Changing the pressure during your live performances
Being intentional with different visual presentations for the variety of moods your songs invoke is part of what Tom Jackson calls changing the pressure on your audience during your live performances. “I’m not talking about acting or choreography, I’m talking about thinking, “What should this song look like?'” Read more.
Develop a home base before moving to regional music venues
There’s an advantage to concentrating your live performance development in local music venues as you plan for future tours in new and wider territories. Read the post.
Give your fans a live music performance to remember
It takes more than just great songs and great performances to get people excited about your music career, especially when you’re just starting out or you want attention in a competitive city like Los Angeles, New York, or Nashville. A musical artist must produce a live show experience that excites the audience and reinforces its brand. Read more.
Got an unconventional gig? Use unconventional promotion.
Unconventional venues require additional promo on your end and you should see it more as an active partnership with the venue. Rather than expecting the venue to promote you to their followers or patrons and pack the house for you, you generally will need to anticipate some involvement when it comes to spreading the word. Read more.
How to find and play unconventional music venues
When jazz pianist Vijay Iyer scheduled the New York City release show for his 2015 album Break Stuff, he didn’t choose a standard venue. Iyer’s concert was staged in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Iyer isn’t the first artist to eschew traditional clubs and concert halls in favor of more unique performing grounds. Read more.
Rehearsing with a purpose
Most bands, when they rehearse, even for a big show, will rehearse for a couple of days, run through the songs to make sure they’re “tight,” work out the musical parts, and then go out onstage and hope something good will happen. They have no idea what they’re trying to accomplish. Read more.
Improve Your Live Music Show – Get Visually Creative!
If you watched a video of your live music show with the sound muted, would it be hard to tell which song you’re playing? Your live music show should be as creative as your music. One of the keys to a great visual show is to keep the integrity of the song. The music should tell you what the song should look like. There should never be movement just for the sake of movement! The song, in a sense, is the script. Read more.
Three keys to a compelling music performance
Artists who appear to be most confident from the stage are those who are prepared. They’ve developed a vision for their show and planned it out, their show is creative musically and visually, and they’ve developed the musical themes in their songs into “moments” for their audience. They’ve arranged their songs so they can pour their uniqueness into the show. Read more.
Improving your music performance starts with a vision
When I help an artist plan their show, I try to get a vision as I listen to their songs. I want to actually imagine the audience’s response to a song in my head. For one song, I’ll see the audience jumping up and down, for another, I envision them laughing and high-fiving because they’re having so much fun. And on yet another, I may see the audience with tears in their eyes and a hush come over the crowd as they are moved by what you’re singing. Read more.
Make your CD release gig a special night
The night of your CD release show should be the biggest music performance of your career to date. The show will be packed, if not sold out. The reason more people typically come to album release concerts than your Wednesday night four-band bill show is because it’s an event – and should be hyped up as one. Having a packed club with people there actually to see YOU is something that won’t happen very often early on, so you have to make sure you go about this right.
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