Your Audience Isn’t Listening- Part 2

Still stung from the last glorious outpouring of truth about your audience's listening habits? I'll let you in on a little secret: they still don't care.

Now, this may come as a shock, but I'm not just trying to bait the haters by being cruel or beating a dead horse. There is a method to my madness. I'm determined to shower you with just enough truth in this matter to make you realize how unimportant our daily work really is to our fans. 

To expand on the previous article, our audience doesn't know how long it takes for us to craft the perfect sonata. They don't care if we found that clever brain-filling rhyme in a dictionary. They ONLY care about the end result. However, I would suggest that the end result doesn't even matter too much to them. Let me explain.

Precision Is Key, Except When It's Not

For many years, I played piano for my local church. And I sang a lot there as well. And I learned something along the way that has since been confirmed as the audiences have changed. I learned that even when we mess up royally, they just don't notice. Sure, if you go TOO far out of line, they will probably raise an eyebrow. But if your voice has drifted just slightly off key, you don't need to scramble to find the nearest Auto-Tune to slap on your track. 

To an untrained ear, they can't hear when a voice turns slightly flat, or when that minor 11th chord accidentally sounds like a Major 13th. And how are they supposed to CARE about something they can't even hear? Well, they don't. 

This is even more the case when we are dealing with our own music. In their eyes, you're the artist, and everything you do is exactly what you intended to do. So if you don't make it obvious or point out your mistakes, will they ever know? I just don't think that most will notice. I have worked in the radio field for many years. During that time, it was taught to me that if you make a mistake on air, or if you have technical difficulties in the studio, keep your mouth shut. You don't dwell on the problems. Otherwise, a sore thumb becomes a big floppy bowling pin. When you don't acknowledge that something went wrong, they will think you did everything on purpose.

In the eyes of your audience, you are the expert. Not them. How will they know if you missed a note or not? How will they know if your rhythm was a few ticks too early or late? As with all of my points so far, the answer is 'they don't know'. 

So fake it. Stop feeling like you need to fix every note out of fear that your audience will dispise you. They won't, I promise. And hey, in the odd chance they DO notice your mistakes, you'll just show them how human and "like them" you really are. 

Part 3 coming soon. Until then…