Creating Emotional Moments Not Songs

A lot of people are under the assumption that the song is what sells an artist or musician. A good song is what makes a musician famous, right? So why aren’t there more famous musicians out there?

To be a great musician you do have to have good material, but even if you are not the greatest song writer in the world, you can have audiences eating out of your hands.

The key to a performance is to create emotional moments.

What do I mean by creating a emotional moment. Think of a time you were at concert and you were just filled with a sense of euphoria, sadness, anger, etc. Did a song or a performance ever make you get goosebumps, cry, or think of someone or something from your past? Those are moments. They touch something deep inside that is a part of you.

Songs are writen with the songwriters ideas and intentions behind them, but once performed to the public, the songs can take on a whole new meaning. What we want to do in our performances is to reconnect our audience with some emotion or emotional memory from their past or present that makes them feel the song we are performing.

For example, I will talk about something I now do in my sets.

I wrote a song on my first album called Guardian Angel. It’s a very emotional song that was written for my aunt that died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 51. I always give this background to the song in the form of a story while strumming some chords because it makes the song mean so much more. Guardian Angel could be about anything, but I let them know it was about my aunt that passed away from cancer. This gives the song so much more meaning.

I have sold more CDs over the meaning of this song than all other songs on that album combined.

Why?

I was able to create a moment in people’s hearts. Perhaps they start thinking about someone they lost to cancer. Maybe that think of a special someone that recently died in their life. I don’t know their reason. All I know is that that song brings out an emotional moment in their soul that makes them need that song.

So how do you create moments?

We will talk about this in greater detail in another article, but for now, the keys to creating emotional dynamics in your set lists are:

– Changing Pressure On The Audience
– Musicial Interludes
– Story Telling
– Fun
– Audience Participation