The Potential iPhone Musical Revolution

I've been following along some of the developments concerning iPhones and music. Not as in "the iPhone as a device to play of other people's music," but as in "the iPhone as a tool to create one's own music." This very much reinforces my idea that focusing too much on people as consumers of music and not enough on them as creators of and participants in music will prove to be shortsighted. Some of the consumer money and time that music business types and artists are counting on to sustain themselves via fan purchases may instead be directed to more user-generated content.

Here are a couple of quotes which illustrate how iPhone tools are opening up music creation to more people.

There’s something about an iPhone music app. For musicians, it’s like having an instrument in your pocket. For nonmusicians, it’s a way to coax sounds -- often programmed to stay on key no matter what note one actually plays -- out of what may be the only instrumentlike device they ever pick up.

A main goal for many of these apps’ developers is to introduce nonmusical people to music, and musical people to different kinds of music. And when taken less as a serious instrument and more as a sampler for the wide world of music, these devices are wildly successful. "Music Apps Blur the Gap Between You and Clapton," New York Times, 10/1/09.

Ge Wang, the assistant professor of music who leads [the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra] says the iPhone may be the first instrument — electronic or acoustic — that millions of people will carry in their pockets. “I can’t bring my guitar or my piano or my cello wherever I go, but I do have my iPhone at all times,” he said.

Professor Wang said he would like to democratize the process of making music, so that anyone with a cellphone could become a musician. “Part of my philosophy is people are inherently creative,” he said. “It’s not just people who think of themselves as artists.” "From Pocket to Stage, Music in the Key of iPhone," New York Times, 12/5/09.

In this article Wang talks about how he has has used a sense of fun and portability, combined with marketing via YouTube and sharing via iPhone, to engage users.

Now, to give you something of an overview of iPhone music creation applications, I've organized them into five categories:

1. Applications that turn iPhones into instruments.
The one cited most often is the Ocarina, which is the digital version of a simple wind instrument. It is made by Smule, a software company co-founded by Stanford professor Ge Wang.

Said Wang, "We at Smule are really trying to bring this idea of unlocking creativity to as many people as possible."

He thinks the Ocarina encourages amatures who might not otherwise pick up an instrument. "App turns iPhone into musical instrument," Public Radio International, 9/1/09.

Here are two other articles on the application.

"Is That Ocarina Music Coming from Your iPhone?"

"Enthusiasts keep pushing Smule’s Ocarina iPhone app to higher numbers"

Smule (which just received an additional $8 million in VC funding) also offers other musical applications including I Am T-Pain, which allows you to Auto-Tune your own singing. Recently Apple named two of Smule's applications (I Am T-Pain and Leaf Trombone: World Stage) among its 10 Best iPhone Applications of 2009.

Another company that makes a variety of instrument applications is MooCowMusic.

And here's more:

The universe of mobile guitar software can be split roughly into three categories: those that replace traditional guitar accessories like tuners and metronomes; practice apps that simulate a fretboard; and apps that contain chords, scales and tablature. There’s even dedicated hardware for attaching your phone to your guitar, but more on that later. "For Real Guitar Players, New Ways to Rock on a Phone," New York Times, 12/3/09.

"10 cool videos of the iPhone as a music instrument."

"10 Best Musical Instrument Apps for the iPhone for Under $1."

2. Groups of people performing together using iPhones.
More ambitious than playing music on an iPhone by yourself is doing it in a group.

A group called iBand (www.iband.at) is using the iPhone and iPod Touch to write and perform music live. Their website currently has two songs available for download, “Vitality” and “Life Is Greater Than the Internet,” both made with instruments available in the App Store. "Music Made With iPhone Musical Instrument Apps," Art of the iPhone, 2/5/09.

Here's another article about the band. "With Software and an iBand, There’s No Need for Roadies."

Here's a video of the group The Mentalists covering MGMT's “Kids."

And here's a video of song played by using a variety of different iPhone musical instrument applications and then spliced together using Final Cut Pro.

More elaborate than these YouTube performances are orchestras being organized to advance the cause of mobile music applications. Here are sites for some of them.

Stanford iPhone Orchestra

Michigan Mobile Phone Ensemble

Helsinki MoPhO

3. Looping and mixing applications.
For some, iPhone becomes a mobile editing tool.

Plenty of programs over the years have promised the non-musically-inclined the magical ability to play music, but few deliver. Judging from the songs people are already uploading to MyZoozBeat, this app one really does let people from anywhere in the musical experience spectrum make 'beats,' as they call rhythm and melody loops these days, then sing, rap or talk on top of them — and, with this latest release, share the resulting recordings.

With all of the sharing of other people’s music that goes on, it’s refreshing to see that this app encourages people to share their own creations — and puts such easy tools in their hands that they have a decent chance at making something worth listening to, if only by themselves and their friends and family. (If you make your recordings public, other MyZoozBeat users will be able to hear them too.) "Anyone, Really, Can Make and Share Music with ZoozMobile’s iPhone App," Wired, 4/22/09.

... an iPhone application called ZOOZbeat, which helps anyone -- regardless of musical talent or lack thereof -- create songs by selecting instruments from a list and then waving his or her phone around.

"You don't have to know anything. You go in there and click on it, and it's playing guitar chords," Sheridan said. "It's pretty neat, actually."

A quick flick of the wrist produces a high note. A gentler movement belches out a lower tone. The app loops the sounds and lets users edit their tracks on the fly or afterwards. "The new musical instrument: Your phone," CNN, 10/28/09.

If you want to learn more about ZOOZBeat, go here.

Another product is Bebot.

The major advancement of the iPhone is the multi-touch screen, Rudess said. It opens up the possibility of sliding between notes and playing several at one time. It's more akin to a violin or cello than a keyboard or drum pad, the standard tools for electronic instruments and music software.

This is the very feature that Bebot exploits to produce its unique, sliding sounds.

"It makes the iPhone potentially one of the most versatile musical instruments, and it fits right in your pocket," said Russell Black, the Melbourne inventor of the product. "Musicians flex creative muscles on iPhones," San Francisco Chronicle, 9/8/09.

Here's a overview of more mixing/looping applications: "Best Ways to Produce Music on an iPhone."

4. Interactive music programs.
Some music creators are providing applications which are more artistic experiences than they are music-making tools. Ambient pioneer Brian Eno and musician/software designer Peter Chilvers have created three which you can find here.

5. Music-related games.
There are also music games which, in many cases, function just like their non-game music-application equivalents.

... I found “Beaterator” absolutely absorbing. Layering track upon track, building drumbeats and various instrumental sounds, crafting my own songs and hearing them played back — for someone who’s never done anything like this before, it was a thrilling and eye-opening experience. And though “Beaterator” can get pretty deep pretty quickly, it did a reasonably good job of holding my hand and walking me through the meticulous music-making process....

And that’s the great thing about games like “Beaterator” ... They encourage us to think about music and, more importantly, to imagine ourselves at the center of it. They encourage us to do something we might not otherwise do — to try our hand at music making when perhaps making music seems like something only other people do. And as much as they may seem like trifling and sometimes silly little toys, they put modern music making within reach of us all.

As Timbaland says, “I tried to give people a game but I also tried to give people who love music hope of making their own music.” "Gaming our way to musical genius," Citizen Gamer, 10/12/09.

The Muppets Animal Drummer [is] a rhythm game that lets you drum along with Animal, as well as a free play mode where you (and he) “rock out” to the songs in your iTunes music library." "Disney launches Muppets Animal Drummer for iPhone," Music Ally, 12/16/09.

"10 Free Music Based Games for the iPhone & iPod Touch"

Although iPhone musical applications haven't yet transformed music creation, I think they have the potential to do so. Just as other recent technologies (e.g., Pro Tools, Auto-Tune, YouTube) have encouraged more people to express themselves creatively, I think the fact that companies are developing applications specifically to enable people (often with little or no musical training) to make music easily and quickly will have a major impact. As technology reduces the barriers of entry to music, we have seen that the pool of people recording, uploading, and promoting their music has greatly expanded. And I think the economics of the music industry will continue to reflect these technological developments.

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 12/27/09
Best of 2009: 10 iPhone/iPod Touch Music/Sound Apps

UPDATE, 1/10/10

Apple has given Mix Me In a spot in the latest New & Noteworthy section of its App Store. The application enables users to mix existing songs into their own versions. So, if they want to hear, say, a rock song as an acoustic ballad, then Mix It In does the business.

The app, from Fried Green Apps, also allows consumers to mix themselves into tracks, adding vocals, guitar riffs, drums, or whatever takes their fancy. "Adding to mix tech to the tune," brand-m.biz, 1/8/10.

VoiceBand transforms your voice in real time into almost a dozen instruments. You can lay down tracks, layer new performances one at a time, and build up an audio performance that you can then e-mail to yourself or friends. "VoiceBand: Personal music artistry gone wild," TUAW, 1/8/10.

UPDATE, 1/18/10

Sprite has teamed with Zooz Mobile Inc., developers of a mobile music studio application, to launch Zoozbeat Sprite, the first iPhone application to be offered through Sprite’s ongoing Under the Cap promotion....

Zoozbeat Sprite transforms iPhones into mobile music studios, letting users create their own tracks with downloadable beats and samples from music producers and artists such as Dallas Austin.

Zoozbeat Sprite works by shaking, tilting or tapping the iPhone screen to create and combine rhythmic and melodic tracks that can be uploaded to the Web for listening and sharing in mp3 format with friends.

Users can unlock additional beats within the application by twisting the cap off any Sprite or Sprite Zero bottle and texting in the keyword ZOOZ followed by the code under the cap.

Sprite will then provide consumers with a Zoozbeat Sprite code that can use be used to unlock more beats. "Coca-Cola: Mobile integral to 360-degree marketing strategy," Mobile Marketer, 12/24/09.

UPDATE, 3/4/10
Here's a blog that is all about mobile music making: Palm Sounds.
You'll find info on many applications.

UPDATE, 3/19/10
"SXSW: LaDiDa iPhone App Lets Anyone With a Voice Make Music in Seconds"

Elements of Music Participation

In my last blog post, I gave an overview of audience participation in music. Where I am headed with this is developing a framework of techniques that provide everyone at an event the sense that they are part of the event, not just part of an audience watching the event. It's a broad subject which I have been reading about for a number of years, drawing upon academic studies in theater, leisure time consumption, game development, and so on.

The Internet has made us much more aware of the ways people can be engaged in a project. Levels of creative engagement can range from interactivity to crowdsourcing to collaboration. If we think of this as a continuum, at one end, participants can manipulate and play with the creative object, but not fundamentally change it. At the other end, they are responsible for helping to create it.

Some examples of simple interactive elements might be colored squares that light up and play notes when someone steps on them. Or perhaps a slide that plays a song as someone slides down it. Or even having everyone bring a kazoo.

Here's a video of a clever way to incorporate music into a device that everyone can use.



At the other end of the creative participation scale, you may choose to have people adding elements which must fit together in a cohesive fashion to produce a piece of music. The final product doesn't work if they aren't cooperating. To give you a sense of the degrees to which audiences can manipulate music, here is this:

The music for the Melody Easel and Harmonic Driving is all composed, but modifiable by the audience. The Gesture Wall, Rhythm Tree, and Singing Trees are more like improvisation systems, where we set up the sounds and limits, and design the playability of the system, but do not determine the actual music that can be played. For the Speaking Trees, we send out precomposed stimuli; the responses which are recorded are completely up to the audience member. In the Performance, Movement 1 is the most improvisational: my composition is like a piece of swiss cheese with lots of holes - some music and continuity there, but lots of room for new sounds, thoughts, texts, etc. Movement 2 is completely composed, with lots of room for interpretation. Movement 3 is a mix, where I have composed the basic elements, but have left room for all sorts of other ingredients to be added, modified, mixed, leading to wildly different versions of the piece. If I had to quantify, I'd say that 60% of the music is composed or carefully planned, while 40% is open to vast difference (in material or structure) from performance to performance. "The Brain Opera and Active Music."

One of the challenges in engaging people is that you may have groups who may have varying levels of skill and creativity. Unless you have screened everyone before letting them become involved, you've got to find ways to incorporate a variety of inputs.

So I began to make a list of ideal elements for a group musical experience:

The event is entertaining enough to get people involved.

There is something for everyone to do.

There are ways for everyone to contribute.

It's a project that won't be destroyed as people add on to it. In other words, it doesn't need to be edited. Everyone can toss something into the mix, they can identify their contribution, and each addition adds to the mass and becomes more pleasing.

One issue worth acknowledging is that not everyone wants to participate. This comment reflects how some audience members feel.

... I hate audience participation. Nothing annoys me more than cast members making fun of people for coming in late, than being the girl some character serenades, than reluctantly clapping and/or singing along. I can't stand getting splashed, but getting rained on becomes one of my most memorable theater moments? Where's the line? When does audience participation hinder and when does it enhance a theater piece? "Everybody's doing it," Life's a Pitch, 3/29/09.

The author was saying all that because she went to a performance of Hair and found herself caught up in the experience in spite of herself.

... cast members began directing rows of people up the stairs and onto the stage to dance. "Can we go??" I blurted, terrified that the row in front of us would be the last to be invited....

This production of Hair takes the silver and bronze for best theater experiences of my life: getting soaking wet while the cast adamantly belted for sun this summer, and dancing on stage last night. (Gold goes to seeing Rent in previews. No getting around that.)

So an audience participation event must also allow for non-participation or it needs to be so compelling that everyone wants to participate.

As I was researching audience participation, I ran across a number of experiments designed to address some of same issues that I had included on my own list of elements to promote audience participation.

Jason Freeman reported on an audience participation concert that had some practical limitations, which would apply to other concepts as well:

Glimmer, a composition for chamber orchestra and audience participation created by the author, uses novelty light sticks, video cameras, computer software, multi-colored stand lights, and projected video animation to create a continuous feedback loop in which audience activities, software algorithms, and orchestral performance together create the music. ...

The choice of these input and output interfaces was initially motivated by practical concerns; they needed to meet formidable requirements for scalability, reliability, usability, and cost, and the system needed to work with just a few hours of setup, calibration, and rehearsal due to budget limitation and union restrictions. There was no opportunity to rehearse the piece with a large audience before the premiere.
"Glimmer: Lights, Orchestral Performance,and Audience Participation," Leonardo On-Line, 4/16/08.

In this interview. Freeman talks about Glimmer and also some of the other interactive projects he has been involved with.

The biggest challenge is deciding who controls the event (the artist/designer, the audience, or a combination of both). Christopher Dobrian pondered how to involve the audience while ensuring that the final result will be artistically worthwhile.

In conceiving works that incorporate audience participation, the problem for the composer/programmer is how to create an open form in which the the music or dance can be varied freely within certain parameters, providing a compelling experience of interactivity for the audience, but in a manner that can somehow still be “guaranteed” to work artistically.

If the audience controls the piece, one might wonder, how can you “guarantee” that it will still be artistically compelling? Composers may be afraid to relenquish full control of a piece by allowing improvisation to play a large role in it, and its difficult to conceive of composing a piece that successfully incorporates interactive control by an unknown audience. But first of all, how certain are we that compositional determinism of form and content is the main reason for the success of a music performance? We have certainly all witnessed bad, lifeless performances of well- written music, and we have also witnessed plenty of compelling improvisations. The conditions that frame a performance, and the expressive and creative input of the performers, can be enough to create good music in a variety of forms and with a wide variety of content. And why should we apply traditional criteria of what constitutes a rewarding artistic experience for an audience, in this new case of audience interaction? The old model is based on the audience as passive observers of music-making. This new model proposes audience members as active participants in the music-making, interacting with intelligent control systems.
"Aesthetic Considerations in the Use of 'Virtual' Music Instruments," SEAMUS (spring 2003).

Mark Feldmeier and Joseph A. Paradiso brought up the idea that the instruments/tools given to the "audience" should be intuitive and provide some connection between the user's actions and the result. For example, it's not too hard to figure out how to use a drum. You hit it and then it makes a corresponding sound.

The main objective of the system, being primarily for entertainment, is to create an engaging and enjoyable musical experience. To accomplish this, the system must be easy and intuitive to use, providing appropriate feedback to participants so that their actions will naturally follow the expected behavior assumed by the mappings. The system should also be causal, giving users knowledge of what outcomes specific actions will create. This responsiveness will allow the users to dictate the experience’s direction, giving them a tool for sonic exploration and encouraging them to continue using the system.
"An Interactive Music Environment for Large Groups with Giveaway Wireless Motion Sensors," Computer Music Journal. Vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 50-67. Spring 2007.

Here's an excerpt from another experiment. While it didn't involve music, the parameters were similar:

– Requires no explanation of the rules – people must be able to pick it up and start playing;
– Is even more fun than just hitting a beach ball around an auditorium (we already know this is fun);
– Is fundamentally about motion-capture and takes full advantage of the capabilities of this technology;
– Can be played by 4,000 people simultaneously using a small number of input devices;
– Can be played by people standing, sitting or holding a beer in one hand (there was a cash bar in the Electronic Theater); and
– Involves people hitting balls AND looking at a projection screen.
"Squidball: An Experiment in Large-Scale Motion Capture and Game Design," Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005.

In their paper about dance clubs, Ryan Ulyate and David Bianciardi addressed the same issues in more detail..

OUR "10 COMMANDMENTS OF INTERACTIVITY"

#1: Interfaces and content should encourage and reward movement
... Allow unencumbered interaction. A dance club is geared towards unrestricted movement, social interaction and spontaneity. Don't use restrictive, cumbersome or isolating interfaces involving wires, gloves, goggles, etc. Content designed for the interfaces should encourage the participants to dance.

#2: Participant's actions get an immediate and identifiable response
No participant should ever ask "am I controlling this, or not?" Interfaces and content should respond to the participant with the same level of feedback as an automobile responds to a driver.

#3: No instructions
Learning to "work" the interactive zones must be intuitive and simple. There should be adequate enough feedback to for the participant to intuit if she is doing it "wrong" or "right".

#4 People don’t need to be experts to participate
Participants are encouraged to drop their inhibitions and have fun. Nothing should be designed that intimidates people into feeling they are not good enough to participate. The system can, of course, offer deeper interaction for those that want to go further.

#5 No thinking allowed
The goal is to keep the participants in their "body" and not in their “head”. Like a jazz musician, or a dancer, euphoria occurs when the participant gets lost in the moment, focusing on their intuitive nature. Game-like behavior causes participants to focus on their analytical side and is not appropriate in this artistic context.

#6 Actions get aesthetically coherent responses
Participants should navigate through and affect several "good" choices. Ensure that all participants' actions cause meaningful responses in the context of the overall performance.

#7 Keep it simple, immediate and fun
How long could participants do it without getting bored? Usually simpler is better. Think “Pong”

#8 Responsiveness is more important than resolution
In computer graphics this translates to "more speed is better than more polygons". A simple visual object that reacts quickly to participant input is better than a complex visual object that reacts too slowly.

#9 Think modular
Everything is a component.

#10 Just do it... on time!
The project will never be "finished", so hit your deadline with whatever you have ready. Then watch what it does and watch what the people do with it!
"The Interactive Dance Club: Avoiding Chaos in a Multi-Participant Environment," Computer Music Journal, Vol. 26, No. 3, New Performance Interfaces (Autumn, 2002), pp. 40-49

Finally, expanding the elements list to an even bigger view, Dan Maynes-Aminzade, Randy Pausc, and Steve Seitz provided their list.

5.1 System Design

•Focus on the activity, not the technology. While people are initially amazed at the technology allowing the interaction to occur, within 30 seconds they lose interest if the activity is not inherently entertaining.
•You do not need to sense every audience member. What matters is what the audience thinks is going on, not what is really going on. ...
•Make the control mechanism obvious. Although the underlying technology need not be exposed, it is important that audience members understand how their actions affect the game activity. ... Audience members will not continue to participate in an activity if there is no immediately clear indication that they are affecting the gameplay.

5.2 Game Design

•Vary the pacing of the activity. ... The punctuated deadlines give the audience a chance to succeed or fail; the rest periods give them a chance to cheer, applaud themselves, and prepare for the next moment of tension.
•Ramp up the difficulty of the activity. We found that our games did not require an explicit tutorial if they were presented properly. ... By gracefully scaling up the complexity of the activity presented to the audience, we avoided a tedious training phase.

5.3 Social Factors

•Play to the emotional sensibilities of the crowd. Social involvement is more important than technological involvement. When using laser pointers, our best shows were those that generated shouting by audience members without laser pointers, not the shows where everyone had their own laser pointer. With the beach ball, the lottery effect (“I might be next!”) and the cheering or booing of one another fully engages all of the members of the audience, even though technically only one or two out of 500 people were directly participating.
•Facilitate cooperation between audience members. Laser pointer games are more engaging when they foster a sense of camaraderie between audience members. In a game like Whack-a-Mole, each audience member is involved in the activity for himself ... Connect-the-dots required each audience member to position his laser over a different dot, and since it required the audience to cooperate in order to succeed it was a more social game.

In 1967, visionary media guru Marshall McLuhan lamented the inactive nature of group entertainment, simultaneously acknowledging the power of audience participation: “Though the mass audience can be used as a creative participating force,” he wrote, “it is, instead, merely given packages of passive entertainment.”
"Techniques for Interactive Audience Participation," paper presented at ICMI 2002.

The above list of excerpts is a bit academic for most fans and musicians. But a lot of experimentation starts in the academic and technical communities and then eventually makes its way out into the general population. My interest comes from what I am already seeing in terms of audience and fan interaction, so I'm trying to organize it all into something that might ultimately be useful for everyone. As I have said before, basing the future of the music business on the idea that fans will be passive consumers seems shortsighted.

Of course, implementing all of this may be more than many artists/bands care to do. You've got to come up with the right music for audience participation and the right tools if you want them to use more than their voices or their bodies. And perhaps you will need develop a repertoire of material so that people won't be tired of the same thing show after show.

Here are a few more resources that discuss levels of interactivity.

On Composing Interactive Music

The History of the Interface in Interactive Art

The Aesthetics and Practice of Designing Interactive Computer Events

Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

Audience Participation in Music

Because I believe the distinction between artists and fans is dissolving, I've been covering the topic quite a bit -- in blog-sized bits.

I thought that today I would write about audience participation, which is one manifestation of this phenomenon. If you read no further, at least check out the Bobby McFerrin video at the bottom of the page. It has been making the rounds, so perhaps you have already seen it. But if not, it's worth a look.

Audience participation is certainly not a new concept, but it's useful to look at how it has evolved with technology. In his essay, Tom Ewing discusses popular British music in the late 1880s.

... pre-amplification: singers lacked the basic advantage of volume we audiences habitually cede to them now. So their music had to be a participatory one. You fought for and held the attention of a crowd on your verses, and the reward for their relative silence was to sing along on the chorus. And if you weren't up to snuff your verses would drown in a sump of backchat, shouting, fights and shrieks and rival tunes. Sing-alongs and audience participation were the heart of music hall ...

What happened to that energy? Music hall began its slow decline in the 1920s, battered by cinema and radio, shoring up flagging audiences with stripper acts that unraveled the threadbare respectability promoters had cultivated. Mass singing survived on football terraces and in pubs, though, and there was still enough pull in the idea of giving a crowd voice for the biggest band in the world to worry at it continually in the mid-60s. ... "Poptimist #1," Pitchfork, 2/20/07.

He goes on to say that the Beatles were influenced by that tradition.

"Yellow Submarine" isn't a music hall song, but it revives the hall ideal of audience participation. The Beatles' vision of the singalong was a communal release of positive, inclusive bonhomie; an extension and gentling of music hall's rowdy vigour. They kept coming back to the idea of involving and encouraging the audience. "The singer's gonna sing a song, and he wants you all to sing along"; "All Together Now"; and at last the most explicit (and weakest) attempt of all-- "All You Need Is Love".

... It goes back to that long-ago contract between performer and audience: the sense that a singer is there at a crowd's indulgence, and that his listeners have their own, highly vocal, role to play. Participatory populism, if you like, but with a sense of risk. There was always the real possibility that the singer would be sidelined by the audience noise, turned into an irrelevance-- or in the "War Song"'s case, would become the focal point for demotic currents they might not safely ride.

Around the time of the Beatles, music innovator John Cage wanted to change the rigid performer/audience relationship that had become the norm, especially in classical music.

One of the first artists to articulate a radically new aesthetic was John Cage. In his seminal early books, Silence (1961) and A Year for Monday (1968), Cage wrote eloquently (if at times obliquely) about a larger shift in the relationship between performer and listener. Music, he argued, could no longer be seen as something separate and detached from its listeners and from its context. Rather, creating music was a process that was initiated by the composer or performer, but completed by the audience. The listeners' experience of the work was essential to the music itself. "A Composer's Century," Andante, July 2002.

More recently, we have newer forms of music which incorporate audience participation.

I care about jazz way more than I care about European classical, and I lately care more about hip-hop than jazz. For me, it’s a simple matter of audience participation. In classical music, the audience doesn’t even get to applaud at the end of a movement. In jazz, there’s more interaction, but the audience is still mostly a passive recipient of information from the band. Hip-hop is all about group participation. I’m not talking about big stadium shows or TV here; I mean hip-hop as practiced on streetcorners and in clubs, where the mic gets passed around the circle and anyone who has the nerve takes a turn rhyming. I think the hip-hop cypher is as close as Americans get to the group improvisation of the stone age campfire. "Twitter, jazz and moving music forward into the stone age," Ethan Hein's Blog, 2/13/09.

I've just quoted three thoughtful essays on the state of music over the past 150 years. But what's intriguing to me are the number of articles that give tips to working musicians and DJs on how to get their audiences involved. Rather than essays, these sites offer practical advice. This is the part of the music business that most music futurists don't pay much attention to, but it's what a musical experience is all about for many people. The average person with a couple of kids probably isn't going to many (if any) rock clubs or big arena shows, but maybe he/she is catching a DJ at a wedding or hearing a local band at a free outdoor community concert. It's real life music.

Here are a few websites that I found:

Bill T's Top 20 Group Participation Songs

"Best Audience Participation Songs," JamsBio Magazine, 6/16/08.

"Audience Participation: Songs that make you wanna DANCE," illini_girl’s adventures, 6/27/08.

"Interactive Approaches for Karaoke," DJ University, 4/8/08.

Audience Participation Secrets

If you click on those lists, you'll see a number of songs that most of us know. That's one advantage of having mass media. People grow up hearing the same songs.

However that could change as music audiences split off into smaller niches. If we run out of universally-known songs, then artists/bands will have to depend on having a core group of fans who know the songs. Or who can learn new material on the spot. Some audience participation could evolve beyond playing popular cover songs.

To give you some idea of where band-led audience participation is headed, here's a VERY LONG AND IMPRESSIVE LIST of concerts where audience participation has been used. The list has been compiled on TV Tropes, a wiki where people contribute tips/ideas for a variety of creative media.

There are also other kinds of musical audience participation events. Two that involve movie theater audiences are the Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Sound of Music sing-a-long.

"Sing-A-Long Sound of Music" first emerged at the 1988 London Gay and Lesbian Film festival after an event organizer heard that staff at a retirement home in the Scottish town of Inverness had distributed song sheets during a video showing of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". The film festival's screening of "Sound of Music" and the sing-along proved to be unexpectedly successful, and it attracted the attention of theater producer David Johnson, who later joined forces with Ben Freedman of the Prince Charles Cinema to promote the project.

Later it developed into the "Sing-A-Long Sound of Music", the audience-participation phenomenon. Fans belt out "Do-Re-Mi" while dressed as Julie Andrews, or role play as a few of their favorite things.

Another form of musical audience participation involves having the audience create the music, which is more engaging than just singing along. This is being done most often with experimental music and with interactive computer-based music. (I will be mentioning some examples in my next blog post.) But there are also concerts based on very traditional music, often using drums or other forms of percussion. Here are two examples:

Manuel, the founder and director of Sewa Beats, a company based in the Vaud town of Morges, is organizing a concert at the Batiment des Forces Motrices to feature drummers from West Africa, 15 musicians from the Orchestre Symphonique Lyonnais and a unique form of audience participation.

“What makes the concert completely unique is that we are going to give everyone in the audience drums,” he told Swisster in a telephone interview from London.

People attending the November 6 event will be invited to beat out rhythms, under Manuel’s direction, to accompany the professional musicians in what he told Swisster is a “completely unique” programme. "Audience participation drums to a different beat," Swisster, 10/21/09.

The symphony consists of 19 separate musical lines requiring repeated drumming rhythms of 12 beats, augmented by occasional sung chants. With hundreds of invited drummers pounding away, you'd think El-Dabh would be worried about keeping things together. He's not.

"I just need the total sound. In Cleveland, I got that vibration whether they were on the beat together or not. Besides, there's a section where the chaos is intentional." "1,000 drums, one transcendent vibe," The Rocky Mountain News, 8/21/08.

There are also a number of theater productions that involve audiences to one degree or another. Some of the productions are very avant-garde or experimental, and others play to popular culture. Here's one overview.

"Popularity of Interactive Theater Is Changing the Face of Off Broadway," The New York Times, 4/22/97.

I have three reasons for wanting to explore fan involvement in depth:

1. As new technology allows them to do more media creation themselves, and as they come to expect more interactivity, fans are becoming more than just passive music consumers.

2. A lot of the new music business models are still based on the idea that music creators will sell to, and be supported by, fans rather than the idea that everyone may become a music creator/producer/promoter at some level.

3. Many musicians continue to assume that if they are good, their fans will sit and listen. These musicians are not preparing for a more interactive relationship.

Here's one musician's experience adjusting to this new dynamic, in this case having people in the audience tweeting while the band was playing.

When I saw the first negative comment I had the obvious sinking emotional reaction. This was a pretty basic comment that was really the first piece of harsh criticism we had received – and in writing – and in front of an audience of the three hundred people – and in front of all the tens of thousands of people watching on line. Oh yeah, receiving written criticism about your performance while in the middle of that very same performance is a first and weird too. So, when I saw the line “This band Sux!” it kind of took the wind out of my sails a bit.

About thirty seconds later though I was excited and amused when I had a flash of insight. We had suddenly been thrust to the level where people with no personal connection to us were moved to appreciate, judge, talk about, defend, protect, haze, fall in love with, and diss . . . It felt suddenly like an enormous step in the right direction. I started to beam. And people were rallying to say great things about us too. No matter what it just started to make me happy. "MC Hammer and Shorty Awards," tinpanbluesband.com, 2/12/09.

I'll wrap up this blog entry with two videos.

The flash mob has become one manifestation of audience participation. Not only does it involve a group of people performing at the event, if a tape of the event ends up on YouTube, then potentially millions of people become involved by forwarding the link to people they know.

For the beginning of Oprah's 24th season, her producers created an event that was the biggest single-city flash mob in history. On Facebook and Twitter they solicited Oprah fans who loved to dance. Eight hundred fans in Chicago volunteered. The day before the show, twenty professional dancers taught them the routine. And then the day of the show, those 800 taught 20,000 other people who showed up. In this clip, you can view not only the dance, but also some of that background preparation.



Finally, watch this Bobby McFerrin video. The point he is making isn't about audience participation per se, but it's a wonderful example of how effectively you can get people to join in.



Suzanne Lainson
@slainson on Twitter

UPDATE, 1/9/10
Top 100 Piano Bar Songs