Audience for Originals

I am on another forum where a guy posted a substantial message about playing his original music for friends and family who didn't give him the responses he wanted. No one asked him to play the song twice. And people weren't going to soundcloud or wherever to listen to his music.

I get a similar response often when i post something original. I might have a few dozen hits on one of my best songs. But I know that my friends and family listened once and moved on to something else. I know a few went back to listen again and still do occasionally.

When I was younger, I felt the same way as that dude. What I didn't think about then, and I told the dude this. Choosing music and finding something that really grabs you is a personal decision. When I shop for music, I have literally a choice of a million songs or more, many of them masterpieces, great songs that are well-written and well-performed--but most of it doesn't interest me. Drake is an incredible songwriter, much better than many of my heroes, but his music says nothing to me. If he gave me a demo, I'd probably listen to it once only unless I had some professional involvement with it (like that would ever happen. ha ha).

You can't expect people, even the people close to you, to always like your music or to like it at all. It's nothing personal, and it isn't a judgement on your songwriting or performance. I mean you could be writing and playing some awful stuff, but if you've got decent material, even that is not a guarantee that anyone is going to hear your song and get into it.

There is still a natural desire to feel appreciated, but you can't please anyone but yourself in the end.

One of the things I learned playing for Mason was you write the songs people want to hear, not the songs you want play. The song may be deeply personal and emotional to you but it won't resonate with an audience. It needs to have appeal to the masses. Usually that means dumb it way down, put a cheesy hook in it and play in a range where everyone can sing along.

The latest trend in country for example, is to just stitch non-related country images together on the verse and hook the chorus. Something like:"Beer can, pickup truck, daisy dukes, old boots, hickory tree, etc., then the hooky chorus like "Watch my house on Saturday night, party starts when you see the porch light".

Seriously, it has to be that stupid to connect to an audience today.

Second thing I've learned that I can pass on - NEVER PLAY FOR AN AUDIENCE THAT DIDN'T COME THERE TO HEAR YOU. EVER.

Third thing: Repeat number 2.

Chuck

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Originally Posted by KennyF

Hell... Even a famous "one hit wonder" band saves their hit song until last, and we're all stuck there listening to the rest of that horseshit they wrote, that never got any airplay, because it sucked... :roflmao

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LOL!

That reminds me of a long-forgotten concert I attended shortly after returning to the U. S. from Europe. Blue Öyster Cult was playing at a beach venue, and I went with some friends. "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" was a hot hit at the time, so I was wanting to hear it and the group. To be honest, I knew nothing else by BÖC, so I guess I wasn't prepared for the total ear torture I sat through for the entire concert. When they finally launched into "Reaper," it was almost as if the band onstage had been replaced by a completely different group. The song was so totally different from everything else they'd played. Wow.

On the other hand, there were the "factory hit-makers" like Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. Carole King was known to have written a few (with and without Gerry Goffin). Burt Bacharach and Hal David are another "magic" duo who seem to be able to churn out hit after hit. There are many others, of course. It used to drives me nuts that I'd spend hours with guitar in one hand and pen in another, staring at a blank sheet of paper not being able to come up with words to fit a tune I'd created. Fer cryin' out loud -- it's what made me become a rhythm guitar player! :brood:

Not everyone who writes and records does so with the thought of fame in mind. I just want an outlet for creativity. Sometimes my songs are okay, sometimes not, but I enjoy writing and recording. I have a small audience, and that's fine with me. I don't want to force my songs on anyone. It's not fair to them.

I'm not a big fan of todays pop and r&b, and hook or not, they leave me cold. I am not the market they're looking for anyway. I'd rather hear Townes Van Zandt or Yes than Lizzo or L'l whatever is "Li'l" whatever this week. It's unfair to compare them--the music has different purposes.

Sure, most songs people write are not good or great. Same thing is true with drawings and art. But expression can be a personal thing, and it's fine for people to write in all kinds of modes, as long as they're prepared for the size of that audience, which could be zero to however many or few. You have to be smart enough to listen to criticism and smart enough to know that not everyone is going to be excited about your expression.

The other thing to consider is that there's a world of difference between a musician and a performer.

It's all in the delivery. I'm pretty sure Mick could sing the phone book and have 30,000 people screaming and cheering.

If Chuck Berry just stood there looking at his guitar while he played we probably would have never heard of him.

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Originally Posted by Offshore Angler

The other thing to consider is that there's a world of difference between a musician and a performer.

It's all in the delivery. I'm pretty sure Mick could sing the phone book and have 30,000 people screaming and cheering.

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I agree with you 100%.

It is really amazing that there are so many types of music and that these various types have various purposes.

Referring to the convo in another thread, playing the bars is a different thing from playing at a performing arts center which is better suited to some types of music and performance than others.

Musicians come in radically different packages, and so do their aims, and that's a great thing.

My 2 cents:

Writing songs is something that you do or don't. If you don't, you're bound to covering everybody else's stuff and that's perfectly ok. Many people are all about performing, vide tribute bands.

Now, if you do write songs, be ready to face disregard, indifference and even mockery, because you will be necessarily compared to the whole lotta hits that's been around since medieval music. That's normal and right attitude is giving no f***s, 'cause if you write songs, they're YOUR songs, you do that because you have something to express to yourself and to whoever listens to you, regardless of acknowledgement or fame. And that's enough to keep writing. It's who you are.

My band is heterogeneous. Our singer writes songs (good songs really), whereas the drummer and the bassist, though VERY SKILLED players, are limitd to covering hits. They simply don't understand authoral stuff and the few times me and the singer got them to stay inside a studio room to try to record anything, they were pissed and said it was a waste of time. I write songs too but never even made the effort to try to convince them to try my songs because I know they will say that it's a waste of time and we'd better add more pop cover songs to our repertoire, and such mediocrity just makes me sick.

Nothing wrong with doing covers to play for people who want covers, and recording and rehearsing your own stuff and playing it in festivals and places that actually want originals. There are many... I mean hell, people like Punk Rock and Stoner Rock. How bad can your songs be?! Johnny Ramone got applause with powerchords, no soloing and spraying tear gas onto the audience. I know that I can do too.

In my point of view, anyone who composes their own material is WAY above any cover musicians, and that includes classical players and highly skilled performers. Creating > executing. You're much more of an artist if you can express something of your own than just repeating or improvising within modes over something that someone else composed and recorded.

This subject reminds me of a short movie by Martin Scorsese in "New York Stories", the one with Nick Nolte as a famous painter and Rosanna Arquette as his assistant. She shows him some of her own paintings, waiting eagerly for a compliment, but he looks at them and says "yeah, it's nice". She says "Nice? Can't you even tell me if I'm any good? At least tell me if I should quit already!"

He says "Who knows? Who cares? If you think about quitting, you were never a ral artist to begin with"

Keep writing. Keep them songs coming!

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Originally Posted by KennyF

I hope that nobody took what I said personally... If so, I apologize... That wasn't my intent... I was just speaking in general terms, from my own experience...

And while we're being honest, I gotta tell ya... Your girlfriend or your wife, your girlfriend or your wife's friends, most, if not all of your friends and family, people you've met in passing, and just about every other person in your life that doesn't play guitar, all of them, without exception, (even if they say they do), can't stand Blues music...

I'm just sayin'... :laughing:

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Actually, I was about to edit my reply because after I read it I thought I sounded responsive, and that wasn't the idea, really. I personally apologize to you and Chuck if my reply seemed that way. I even asked Willie if I should edit it, then I saw your reply.

The strong words I used were meant for my own bandmates, due to our own inside fighting over this subject, I wasn't being rude to you or to Chuck :yah::yah:

I got as far as 'cannoli' and I was done :laughing:

now I want one so badly :XRE

Sergio, no problem, no offense taken. You're entitled to have an opinion. Everybody here is. Just because we may not agree on everything doesn't make you a bad person.



Chuck

I find there are two types of songs. One you write and one you find. Some you "manufacture" and some seem more like gifts that you are privileged to "receive".

I don't really sit down with a guitar and try to write a song. I start with a chord. Say, E. I plug in, drive the amp to a pleasant crunch and start strumming that chord. Then I begin to fool around the riffs that start flowing from that chord. It's how I begin. I guess this is the most common and basic modus operandi for guitarists.

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Originally Posted by KennyF

That came from a nice little "mom and pop" place in Elizabeth NJ... Unreal... :salud:

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there'a a place in Waltham, MA, at 987 Main Street, called Domenic's, that I frequently have to restrain myself from getting in the car and driving there just to get a cannoli and espresso. So dang good.

https://imgur.com/72x13Fm.gif