Stage Presence
Why Stage Presence Matters
For beginners and professionals, stage presence is crucial to creating an engaging and lasting performance for your audience. Good stage presence gives the crowd the impression that you are in control and having fun. How you make the audience feel is just as important as how you sound. It's the one thing that determines if someone will have a good word about your performance after the show or tell their friends not to follow your band the next time you're performing. Though many factors contribute to being a powerful performer, here are 7 tips that you can put into effect right now to enhance your stage presence.
1. Learn from great performers
When you were just starting to play an instrument, I'll bet you learned a song or two from your favorite bands, copying what they played. Learning covers taught you style and musicality. Naturally, you wanted to learn how to do what the greats did. The same is true for your stage presence. You should be watching and learning how your idols do it, copying what fits you and making it your own. Go to live concerts and YouTube to watch current and past performers like Queen, Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Alice Cooper, Metallica, Foo Fighters, and more.
You should be soaking in as much information as you can and learning from it. Whoever fits your style and station in the band, see how they hold themselves on stage. Don't just copy what you see, adjust it to match your own style or persona.
Ask yourself some questions:
What is the frontman/guitar/bass/keyboard/drummer doing that I really like?
How is the band interacting with each other?
How are they transitioning songs?
How are they engaging with the audience?
Share what you learned with your band members, or have everyone do this exercise and compare notes. Get together and watch YouTube concerts, pausing at good examples you want to reference with your band. Everyone in the band should understand the value of stage presence.
2. Identify your own persona and play the part
A stage persona is a personality and character that an artist adopts in performance. The word persona is the Latin word for "mask". You can make your persona small or extreme from your 'normal' off-stage personality. Personas can be anything from how you dress, speak, sing, look, or behave. They can be distinct fictional characters or heightened versions of an artist's own personality, but a persona generally remains constant from performance to performance. You can start small by choosing a stand-out outfit, then coordinate outfits with your band members so that you'll have a unique look that makes you stand out from other bands.
When an audience comes to a show, they're not just looking to hear your songs; they're looking for a full sensory experience. How extreme your persona is, only you can answer for yourself, but generally bigger is better. After all, it's hard to imagine folks like Gene Simmons, Alice Cooper, or Lady Gaga getting much traction without their stage personas.
As I mentioned before, make sure you plan your persona and then test and practice it before putting it on the big stage.
3. Practice, practice, practice - your music and your persona
Practicing is the number one way to build your confidence in your music and your stage presence. Any chance that you can find to practice your stage presence, do it. Your most convenient practice space should be your band rehearsals. This might seem strange since there's no audience in front of you, but that is the advantage. Working on your personal persona and band stage presence 'among friends' lets you get the kinks out and helps you get used to your new stage performance styles. If you get used to full-on stage presence in your rehearsals, you won't have to think about ‘turning it on’ during performances when there's an audience.
Get lots of experience playing different shows. Don't wait around for that big opportunity to present itself. Look for gigs at smaller local venues that let you practice your stage presence. It's a great way to build confidence, plus it’s a lot of fun.
4. Exaggerate your movements - show you love being here too
The audience wants to see you move and interact, and they want you to entertain them, which means entertaining all of their senses. For the crowd to notice your moves, you have to make them big and dramatic. Don't be afraid to exaggerate everything, such as vocals and facial expressions, jumping around, dancing, moving from stage left to right, interacting with your bandmates, and singing with them in their mics. Just do it big so that your audience notices that you're into the performance.
This will be uncomfortable at first, but the dumber you feel… The better it looks!
5. Include the crowd
Make the crowd feel like they're part of the show. Most people don't come to music shows just to listen; they want to move, dance, and sing along. Create an energetic environment that allows the crowd to let loose and have fun. The best way to do this is – have fun yourself!
Start the show off on the right foot by applauding your audience as you first walk onto the stage. Though it may sound strange to clap towards the audience, they'll start clapping back, and the room will be immediately buzzing with energy.
Allow yourself to become one with the crowd and get involved with what the crowd is doing. If the crowd is dancing, jump off stage and dance with them! If you're playing a show with a mosh pit, go for a stage dive. Mosh pits generate huge amounts of energy at concerts and showing your audience you want to be part of the fun will get them even more excited about your show.
You can banter with your crowd but first, know what your bantering skills are. If you are good at improv, you can make funny observations or conversation with the audience. If you are not comfortable with improv, then call out people in the audience, dedicate a song to someone in the audience, tell a story about the band, share a factoid about the upcoming song, or tell a short story about a past gig. Make sure your banter relates to the show in some way and always is in a positive tone.
If you're new to this, have some pre-planned talking points that you can reference on your setlist. They can be broad; that way, you don't get stuck with your mind going blank when you walk up to the mic.
You can also try the timeless rock show technique: hold the mic out and ask the crowd to sing along. That gets them actively participating in the show.
If it's practical, walk around and meet the audience at break time or after the show.
Ask them how they feel about the show, what their favorite songs are, take a selfie with them, sign autographs, make them feel you're happy they came to see you. It doesn't take much to turn a first-time show-goer into a fan or turn an ordinary fan into a super fan who becomes a brand disciple. If one person in a group has an especially great time, everyone will see and feel that, and they'll all feel they had a better time too.
6. Remove silence from your shows
Silence is one of the main things which reveals if the group are amateurs or not. The more silence in between songs, the more it becomes clear the group is new to this.
Awkward silence sucks the energy out of a room. Talk to the audience if there is a gap between songs. If you're not going to say anything in between songs, then just quickly move onto the next song. If you don't feel comfortable winging-it, plan out beforehand what you want to say and when. During your rehearsal, write down what you want to say and when. If you have a setlist on stage, include a note about your in-between-songs dialogue on there.
7. Record your performances
You've learned several things that should improve your stage presence, but now is the time to do a self-evaluation. A sports team records their game and plays them after to learn what didn't go right; you should do this too. Watch to find out what your strengths are so you can play into them. Find out what your weaknesses are so you can either improve them or avoid those scenarios.
If you're new to this idea or have formed a new band, film yourself rehearsing, and look for strengths and weaknesses. Does your style look natural, or are your movements forced? Are your sound and body language clear? Ideally, you should be able to smooth out the weak parts of your performances before even getting on stage.
Now you're ready for the stage, and the same technique is valuable here too. With a live audience, you'll have adrenaline running through you and maybe nervous energy. You should record your live show to see how those factors affect you and the band. A few days after the show, sit down and watch it. What do you see?
Did everything appear as you planned it during rehearsal?
Is every member of the band interacting?
Do you look confident and energetic?
Don't be afraid of what you might see. It may be uncomfortable. But you'll undoubtedly be better for it! I'm sure you'll nitpick every little thing you didn't like about your performance — most artists are their own worst critics. But you can take those nitpickings and improve your stage presence for future gigs.
Conclusion
Stage presence will always be one of the most important – and most challenging – parts of being a musician. Just know that you are supercharging your music career by following some of these tips and working on it! Plus, if you are having fun, the audience will have fun too. That's what everyone is there for - to have a good time. Your stage presence can make or break the night. So, just go out there and have some fun.