A music demo – formal or informal – is not complete without a bit of actual music.
But how do you keep your audience engaged while you’re playing?
If you’ve given a music demo in the past, you may have noticed that there’s sometimes an awkwardness after you finish playing – maybe you lose the audience’s attention or you’re unsure how to transition to your next thought?
Here are some tips for interpreting musical performances to spectators to keep them engaged and learning.
What’s the Point of Playing Music During a Demo?
The obvious answer is: how can you have a music demo without music?!
But the real question I’m asking is: what purpose does the music serve?
If you just play to play, then all you’ve done is put on a little concert. It’s nice. People enjoy hearing the music. But this alone isn’t particularly educational.
Instead, the music must serve a larger purpose.
Advancing your Theme
In another article, we talked about the importance of developing a mission statement to help create a theme and focus your ideas.
Find out how to craft a mission statement that guides your formal demos and provides a template for answering visitor questions.
When you perform a piece – whether it’s a duty call, field signals, or tune – the music should serve to further your mission statement and fit into the overall theme.
For example, if your theme is: “it was easy for soldiers to learn field signals because they were short and simple” then you want to play 1+ field signals that demonstrate this.
If you’re explaining that field signals are simple, don’t pick a signal that is or sounds complicated. Pick the easiest ones you know so the audience can also hear this.
As another example, if your theme is: “fifers and drummers were professional and well-trained musicians”, then select a duty call or tune that demonstrates your skill and proficiency.
Pick a tune with a harmony part if you have more than one fifer or a tune with embellishments and ornamentation, so the skill level is apparent.
As a drummer, try to select a beating that is complex – like double drags, a lot of rolls, etc. – so you can impress the audience.
WARNING: don’t pick a tune that is too hard for you in order to show complexity. If you’re point is that musicians were skilled, you need to seem skilled. Go for the hardest / most impressive tune you can play WELL.
Engaging the Audience
Equally as important – perhaps more important – is keeping your audience engaged throughout the performance to ensure that they take away the message you are trying to demonstrate.
I’ve found that the best way to do this is to give your audience a task while you perform.
Essentially, before you start playing, tell your audience:
“While you listen to XXX, pay attention for ABC.”
- XXX stands for the name of the duty call / tune you’re about to play
- ABC stands for what you want them to listen for. This is basically just you stating the theme.
For example, my theme “it was easy for soldiers to learn field signals because they were short and simple”, I would say something like this:
- This is the Retreat, or order to perform an ordered retreat on the battlefield. As you listen, see if you can hear how simple and repetitive this beating is.
For the other example, “fifers and drummers were professional and well-trained musicians”, I might say something like this:
- This is a ceremonial tune, The Duke of York’s Short Troop. Pay attention to how much more ornate the fife tune is and how much more complicated the drum beating is than the duty calls we played earlier.
What’s the Purpose of These Tasks?
Giving your audience a task does two things:
- It makes you state very clearly the theme and how the music fits into the theme. This really helps your audience see the purpose of the music you selected.
- It keeps the audience from feeling alienated and engages them in actively thinking about the music itself.
Point 2 is especially important for musicians to keep in mind.
Most people who aren’t musicians feel like they don’t and can’t understand music. It’s very foreign to them and often intimidating to do anything with music besides passively listen.
Giving your audience an easy, specific task helps to break down that barrier.
They now know exactly what to do as they listen, even if they know very little about music.
Here are some example tasks:
- Listen for simple, repetitive rhythm / melody
- On some beatings that are so incredibly simple and extraordinarily repetitive, like To Arms or The Retreat, I challenge the audience to try to tap along by the end of the beating. This is a fun way to get a “hands on” element to your demo.
- Listen for difference between this beating and the one before
- Listen for ornamentation / speed / harmony / etc.
- Does this tune sound English / French / etc.?
- This one can be rather difficult for people who aren’t quite as musically literate. But some tunes do really work for this – the British To Arms, for example “feels” very English. French duty calls feel a bit “foreign” to the American ear.
- Does this duty call / ceremonial tune sound like what it means?
- The French La Generale (alarm) sounds fairly urgent. Many people agree that it sounds like what it means.
- If you’re talking about how pompous some of the ceremonial things are, a tune like Duke of York’s March “sounds” pompous and fits its purpose.
Adding Music to your Music Demo
My suggestion when you add music to your music demo is to take a sandwich approach.
- Intro the beating and then give audience an appropriate task.
- Keep your theme in mind here
- Play the tune or duty call
- Check in with the audience
After you finish playing, always check in and make sure that the audience did what you asked. Not doing this is like making a student do homework and then not collecting it.
Most of the time, your audience will agree that they heard what you assigned.
Sometimes people won’t get it and you might have to point out more specifically what you meant.
- For example, if you want to show an ornamental piece and people don’t quite get it, you could demonstrate what a trill sounds like, so they can see this.
- Or, if you want to emphasize how simple or repetitive the beating is, you could play just the short, basic phrase that repeats, so they hear that one measure pattern.
Conclusion
- When choosing which beatings or tune to include in your music demo, consider what music demonstrates your Mission Statement or the theme of your demo.
- Before playing the tune, assign an appropriate task to the audience. Pick a task that aligns with the theme or Mission Statement.
- After you finish playing, check in with the audience to see if they were able to complete the task.
These three steps make a music demo 10x better and greatly increases the visitors’ engagement during your performance.
If you want to develop your ability to talk to the public and become a better interpreter, keep an eye out for additional blog posts in the category “How to Talk to the Public?”.
If you need help choosing the best beating to match your Mission Statement, contact me for help or comment and ask for other opinions.
Do you have other tasks the audience can perform while listening? Comment below and add your ideas.
