Stage presence

["samba -" <sambacomet@hotmail.com>]

   I'm happy to just listen but audiences do tend to want to be visually 
entertained.I hate to say it as much as I love guitar music watching 
someone 
play ,sitting or standing isn't very interesting to me.The things that 
make 
someone intersting to watch don''t have that much to do with the 
instrument. 
You can make a face like you're in pain as you bend the string if you're 
playing blues-works for BB. I guess the corresponding  schtick for ambient 
would be a sort of ambiguous blank look. I heard John Fahey play several 
times and he didn't ever speak or look at the audience.One show though at 
the end he just sat there looking at the audience,after people started 
getting uncomfortable he said, "That's it you can go home now." and 
continued to sit there.
  Bigger motions carry better ,visually from stage. ( in the talking heads 
movie back stage is the sign "everything on stage must bebigger than 
life")This is why long limbs are preferred for dancers and models.it's 
also 
why pre-film actors used much exageration,which carried over into early 
silent films and why rock guitarists have to strike such extreme poses to 
make little triplett pulloffs seem hard.
  I'm all for providing other sorts of visual stimuli , uplighting  Form 
the 
ground up is very effective,projections,dancers,strobes, anything except 
smoke machines -yuck. There are some cool lights that change color called 
Sauce ,they can be set to go through cool or warm or full spectrums.Having 
the colors change very slowly can heighten the sense that the music is 
evolving-even if it's not.Low lighting helps the audiences imaginations be 
more active. Another way to be creative.I like it when people dress 
creatively for stage too.
   It's true  Gear racks aren't very intersting not from the house anyway 
at 
least set an invisible woman model on top of it or an esspresso machine  
or 
someting. maybe a nice fishbowl.