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The thing about a music gig is that they often get entirely sold on the reputation of the artists. No one goes to a show because they want to see a light display or a big stage. They’re there to see the performer. However, if you can give your loyal audience something to talk about and really impress the crowd, you’ll go down in conversations and music history and subsequently stand out from the crowd. Take a look at some ideas for how you can make your music gig a unique experience for the crowd.
Lights
A big part of getting the atmosphere right is the lights. There are even shows that are famed for their lighting, like Pink Floyd. Whether you go with strobe or twinkle really sets the mood, but that’s just the start of the creative ways you can play with lights. This is why big names have a manager handling all the lights, making it a job in itself.
It’s a thankless job because, like a film editor, no one comments on it being the best part of the show, but you would definitely have a comment if it wasn’t there.
Additional support acts
You can also get people talking with your opening act. Who you choose to open for you will set the tone for the rest of the night, but you can add a little fun to it. They don’t need to be another music act. You can consider a comedy act, a drag act, or something different like hypnosis or mentalism. It should be something that gets your audience in the mood and excited before your show starts so that the fever is up there. The best mentalist show can get the crowd excited for the follow-up gig by offering mystery and magic and making the audience shocked.
The performance
Some artists try to stand out by bringing something new to the table beyond their voices or dance moves. They can either do this themselves or hire some backing dancers to make things more interesting. For example, Pink wowed audiences at the 2010 Grammys for doing a trapeze act while singing (well, no less), but she had been ribbon dancing on tour for years. A few artists, like The Flaming Lips, have been known to crowd surf in rubber bubbles. Tom Odell played on two pianos at once. If you have a little something extra to offer the show, show it off. You’ll get talked about for years, either just in conversations or in blogs detailing the best gigs in music history.
The stage
Some of the biggest names in the music industry like to get creative with their stage as part of the show. If you want your music to do the talking for you, that is a valid option that a lot of acts go with, but tours that really have a concept and want to go all out will often kit out their stages to reflect that. Electric duo Daft Punk famously sat atop a neon pyramid at their 2006 Coachella performance, giving a very futuristic look to a type of music that doesn’t really allow for a lot of jumping around the stage.
