RE: Unsettling Ambiences

[PMimlitsch@aol.com]

Recently I posted an excerpt from a Jazz Theory book about audience
concentration, or lack of, when confronted with a piece of music they might
be unfamiliar with. Someone asked for suggestions on how to keep an 
audience
interested. This is a real good question that I thought should go out to 
the
list and hopefully generate some good tips/discussion. Here's a couple 
things
I came up:

1) Be interested yourself. Nothing turns an audience off quicker than a
performer just going through the motions, no matter how technically 
brilliant
the performance. Even if you're struggling trying to make something happen
(Here I'm refferring to my imrovisational approach, but it applies to all
approaches-I think, to loopage which basically starts off with the building
of a loop/loops and then morphing them over time-in effect going on a
journey-and in the process weaving in some original "tunes"-basically 
excuses
to "jam" in a more conventional way- along the way) The audience will hang 
in
there with you (long enough at least until you can, hopefully get out of
trouble) if they can tell that you're "into" what you're doing. 
2) How to get yourself interested? One way I use is to throw myself a curve
such as start building your "springboard loop" in a different key, or with 
a
noise, or let's say with a different loop length. As per this last one you
might, after explaining to the audience how your Looper devices work, let
someone from the audience come up and initiate loop record/length while you
noodle away, thus capturing a non - planned initial loop that you, now all 
of
a sudden have to do something with. Also, when one audience member becomes
involved, in effect they all are, on a number of levels. On one level they
are drawn in by becoming part of the performance and on another level they
could be drawn in by way of a competative "let's see if we can stump the
musician" kind of thing. Either way you've got their attention and 
hopefully
your own. :-).

Other suggestions?-Paul (Mindscape Explorer)