Most of the members of the audience that turned up to watch our show were music students from the college and friends and family members of the performers. The expectations of these people might be completely different from other people outside of college.
Being musicians, students from our college were impressed by technical ability and might've compared their own abilities to the skills of the performers in the show. I heard most of the performers receive positive feedback from the audience immediately after the show had finished and I received a couple myself. Most of these comments seemed to be from music students, which must mean that they were impressed.
Friends and family members in the audience would probably have been impressed to see how their friends/sons were improving, despite an obvious bias.
For one of the tunes we played, Mr Clean, we received positive feedback by audience members and were asked to perform it again in another show. This must mean that it worked well the first time.
I discussed the technical issues that I had and mistakes I made during my performances with some members of the audience since the show and they mentioned that they noticed them and thought they detracted from the overall feel of the songs. Although this may seem obvious it made me aware that I did a poor attempt at covering them up. The only way I could practise this is to perform more and familiarise myself with equipment. Although many mistakes are difficult to recover from, they can be made to sound slightly better by focusing on staying in time with the song.
Our audience was made up entirely of people who had seen us play before or who knew us personally so they probably knew what to expect when they decided to attend the event. If we were all to perform in a different setting, such as a pub gig, the reaction may be worse and the crowd's taste in music could be completely different. If the venue was local and I had the opportunity I would probably visit it on another night beforehand to see what kind of music appeal to the crowds. However, considering this isn't always an option, it would be better researching into it. Most venues will probably have examples of previous music nights online and this could be a good way to judge what kind of music appeals to the local crowd. A better way to achieve a positive reaction from the public would just be to play in venues multiple times and get to know first hand what kind of music works well.
Promotion:
For a venue this size I think the promotion worked well enough because the seats were almost filled. The two methods of promotion we used were on Facebook and by posters. I would say that the Facebook event page was more effective than the posters at notifying people about the event. The posters may have just reminded people who already knew about it to attend. The event took place in the same building as where the posters were stuck up which meant more people who were thinking of attending would be likely to see them. The event page allowed any details to be posted and allowed people to say whether they were attending or not. Social media websites are also useful in this situation because they allow people who may be attending to invite their friends and discuss immediately whether or not to go.
The promotion for this event was effective because it was a small venue and the people that attended were easy to reach. If it was promotion for events outside of college however, I don't think posters and a Facebook page alone would be enough to attract may people. An effective way to promote yourself is by just performing around your local area and building a strong fan base. Other methods such as social media can be effective at making your presence known but aren't necessarily good at attracting people without the aid of previously recorded music and videos of past performances. Whilst increasing the number of fans, performances could also be filmed to use in future promotions. With the use of editing to bring out the best parts, this would allow people to decide whether or not to attend.
In order to maintain a loyal fan base a mailing list could be effective to inform people of future events whilst also seeming more personal than social media.
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