[Trombone-l] The Joshua Bell experiment

[Daryl Burch]

Heard an interview with Jason Mraz that basically confirmed this. Songs 
like "The Remedy" and "Curb Side Prophet" written as a result of 
busking. His philosophy was that he had less than 10 seconds to catch a 
passerby's ear. If he didn't get them then, he'd never get them. So he 
wrote poppy tunes with as many complete hooks in his lyrics as he could 
fit.. The idea being that even if they only heard 10 seconds, the 
Musak-effect* would kick in and later in the day the passerby would be 
humming his song. Eventually the familiarity would kick in. And people 
that passed by semi-regularly would start to stop.

It's pushing the idea a little hard, but I think the point stands. The 
performers that engage the crowd, sell more beer, get hired back more 
often.

I'd like to say that doesn't really apply to classical music. But if 
that were true Andre Rieu wouldn't be all over PBS and middle-America 
swooning at every note.

My meager $0.02 anyway.

*The Muzak-effect: The instance when getting into your car, you 
suddenly catch yourself humming "Muskrat Love" and not knowing where 
the heck you heard it, full-well knowing you don't own ANY Captain & 
Tennille CDs, as you pull out of the grocery store parking lot.

Cheers!
-D-
www.radionoise.com <- Rock star by night
www.burchinteractive.com <- Tech-nerd by day #;-)

On Apr 13, 2007, at 9:51 AM, Corey Kirkpatrick wrote:

I don't post often, but saw some more on this topic that was discussed 
on the
list last week, and thought I'd pass it along.

One of the bloggers I read, Seth Godin, wrote today about the 
Washington Post
experiment with Joshua Bell.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/04/id_ignore_him_t.html

Via one of his trackbacks, I stumbled into this blog from a street 
musician
who says, more or less, that JB just wasn't "working the crowd" (my 
words)
well enough.

http://sawlady.com/blog/?p=27

Interesting stuff.

Corey Kirkpatrick






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