Written By Pepper Jay & John Michael Ferrari Your Host Pepper Jay Published: Saturday, August 1st, 2009
Audience Psychology is EVERYTHING!
As a singer, audiences can be your greatest allies. Audiences can also occasionally be the trial of your existence. It is essential that you establish basic audience psychology performance skills to better connect with your audience. With practiced skills, you and your audience will form a mutually beneficial relationship regardless of the size or type of audience or the day of your performance.
Audiences have many different moods. They can be happy, fickle, capricious, steadfast, relaxed, uptight, energetic, or sleepy. Each type of audience will present you with a unique challenge, but few audiences, if any, are bad. To the best of your ability, try to figure out the reason your audience exists.
Some believe that the day of the week has a large impact on the psychology of an audience. We’ve heard it said that on Tuesdays, audiences are usually thought to be quiet. Since Wednesday is the “hump” day of the week, people tend to be a little more relaxed. Thursdays may bring in a rowdier crowd. Of course, on Friday, audiences are the most relaxed albeit somewhat tired, it being the beginning of the weekend. And Saturday night will provide you with the most solid and lively audience experience. In addition, matinees or afternoon audiences usually consist of the very young and/or the very old.
Audience psychology skills may be successfully applied to any type of audience; young, teens, baby boomers, or the elderly. Once audience psychology skills are effectively used, they “wow” audiences of every genre; rappers, country, jazz, or pop. The focus of audience psychology is not on the audience. The focus of audience psychology is on you, the artist, and your performance attitude toward your audience. Basic audience psychology skills to be utilized in your own unique way include the