Introduction to Music Performance Design: A Positive Psychology (PERMA) Approach
U2 as an Example of PERMA in Music Performance Design
The band U2 legacy includes nearly 5 decades of successful music creation, recording, and performing. With over 20 Grammy Awards (including 2 album of the year awards), millions of albums sold, and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame midway through their career, the band is making choices that keep them relevant and in demand. In particular, U2 is notable as a live touring band with their concert tours topping lists of highest grossing tours for years. It is in their live performances, I suggest, where U2 exemplifies being a band to learn from, and in the live arena where U2 goes beyond audiences liking and buying their music, and even beyond creating emotional responses from audiences. U2 intentionally develops a meaningful relationship with their audience, and not just as a whole, but also as individual fans. Here we will look at some of the ways that U2 designs their live performances to build this band and fan relationship.
If you aren’t familiar with U2, I am linking to three videos by Rick Beato (a performer, producer, teacher, and former academic turned successful musician YouTuber) to give you an overview. Check out Beato's video Dear U2, What Are You Thinking? for his opinion of performance decisions that U2 is currently making, and his description of their past mistakes (you might remember the iTunes free download fiasco, or was it?).
In Beato's What Makes This Song Great Ep.54, Beato shares his appreciation for the music of U2 including highlighting the importance of using space in music and the concept of a band continuing to create rather than just perfect over time. Beato also presents examples of developing individual and group style and sound in his What Makes This Song Great Ep.102.
Countless other bands also develop unique sounds and grooves, demonstrate creative music writing and performing, and connect with a broad audience. What makes U2 particularly effective, and for over such a long period of time? I propose that a significant element to U2's success is their use of intentional performance design to create a meaningful relationship with their audience members. Their concerts specifically, in addition to their music, go far beyond the definition of just a music performance. Performance design involves purposeful attention to creating an optimal audience experience. (And why is this not taught as part of music education? More on this in future articles.) You have been told that music is a form of communication, but communication is by definition “an exchange of information,” which means much more that just impressing with music perfection and spectacle, or simply telling a musical story. The goal is to engage.
You know and have experienced the power of performance design, such as when a performance stays with you for days afterwards. Or, when you are struck by awe and are changed by a musical experience, possibly in connection with another meaningful event. If you have not had a musical experience such as this, you can possibly relate to a musical experience from a movie. A friend of mine became a trumpet player and professor, choosing his entire future, from an experience he had watching a Batman movie. You also know the opposite, when a performance does not reach beyond the stage, or even the music stand, and when the clapping is artificially started and we are all just clapping like trained zoo animals because we are trapped in the hall and it’s what we are supposed to do.
Just as musical skill can be learned and developed by all humans, so can anyone learn to design a musical performance for a heightened audience experience. Music psychology, social psychology, positive psychology, and performance psychology all have the potential to contribute to performance design. One approach that I use to both analyze performance design and design performances involves the application of the positive psychology based PERMA model. This is the model that we will use for understanding performance design in this activity.
Introduced by Martin Seligman in 2011 in his book Flourish: The New Positive Psychology and the Search for Well-being, Seligman introduces the five pillars of PERMA including 1) Positive emotions, 2) Engagement, 3) Relationships, 4) Meaning, and 5) Achievement. In positive psychology, having elements of all five pillars of PERMA is associated with having a thriving life full of meaning and purpose. Though PERMA variables are not specifically musical, Croom documents the connection of PERMA to the musical experience.
By designing musical performance experiences around each of the five pillars of PERMA, we help to create a similar sense of a thriving experience for both the performer(s) and audience members.
We will work with the PERMA concept in performance design in many future Musician Coach articles, and also its application in other music related areas such as managing performance anxiety. For now our activity goals center around
1) Understanding each element of P E R M A
2) Identifying PERMA as design in a musical experience of U2 from their Innocence and Experience Live Concert in Paris 2015
3) Personalizing PERMA concepts in/to our own musical experiences.
P - Positive emotion refers to pleasure, warmth, joy, and comfort, but doesn't necessarily include happiness. Positive emotion can exist in times of hardship and can include positivity and optimism in times of sadness. The connection between music and positive emotion is obvious, but working to intentionally create positive emotions for an audience takes thought and planning.
Though the entire U2 concert was designed to promote positive emotion, I chose their performance of "One" in particular for a song with a positive message and an example of moments of sadness experienced positively. Other areas of PERMA demonstrated in “One” include engagement through entrainment (everyone moving together in unison to the music), engagement through everyone singing together, relationships by everyone knowing the words to the song and experiencing shared knowledge together, meaning through the message of the song and audience members having personal connections to and memories from the song, and achievement which is achieved not by just the band performing, but the entirety of everyone in attendance actively participating in the creating of the musical experience. PERMA in action.
When have you experienced intense positive emotion from a musical performance, and what does this experience look like in you or another audience member? How do you recognize it? How did the performer achieve it? If from a movie experience, what grabbed your attention?
How might you create positive emotion experience in your performances for others? There are millions of answers. This is just to get you to begin brainstorming. Hint - the other areas or PERMA contribute to positive emotions also.
E - Engagement is the concept of becoming completely absorbed in an activity as exemplified by Csikszentmihalyi’s (2008) concept of flow. The state of flow has been described as being so engrossed in an experience that there is a sense of time stopping, or losing track of time, or a loss of self-consciousness. Flow has separately been connected to emotion and meaning in music performance.
The previous video “One” exemplifies engagement through the audience participation of knowing the lyrics and singing with the band. Audience members appear to be in a state of flow, mesmerized even. Part of this experience was even directed by Bono as he used his hands to show softer in order to help create this state of mind (did you see that part?).
In “Every Breaking Wave” one can sense the increasing intensity of engagement throughout and to the end of the song. When I listen to live music in small venues such as bars and restaurants, I watch for when everyone gets silent and turn their attention to the musician and then ask myself, “What is it that got their attention?” When do you think the moment occurs when becomes collectively and completely engaged in the U2 “Every Breaking Wave” performance? I notice patience and control from the musicians that allows the engagement to develop. What do you notice?
When was the last time you were completely engaged by someone else's performance? How did you show your engagement? Were you leaned in? Or entraining by moving with the musicians and music? Were others in the crowd entraining also?
R - Relationships involves authentically connecting to others. Social connectedness and strong relationships are contributors to human survival, and are essential to a flourishing life. Relationships through music are found to be instrumental to positive functioning. Notice how the musicians use proximity to build a relationship with their audience.
Bono opens the concert by walking to the smaller stage in the middle of the audience and then begins clapping for the audience as a response to their clapping for him. He then sings the first phrase in an accapella, call and response style duet with the audience as if to say that we are here to do this together. By moving to the main stage where the band makes its impactful musical entry, the audience what they desire, the first strong downbeat. Throughout the concert all members of the band move along the stage runway between the main and the center stages creating a uniting experience by being “in” the audience space. Bono has been quoted saying, “The audience has always been a fifth member of the band." This intentional creation of audience/artist relationship can also be considered as a way of engaging your audience in a feeling of achievement through collectively creating the musical experience.
"When we were playing club gigs up and down the M1, it was always 'What's the fastest route to proximity with our audience?'" explains Bono. “Now we use a lot of technology to serve that end. But it's the same thought: 'Is there a place in this show where people have a bad seat? Well, we're going to camp right there.'"
Have you ever had an experience as an audience member when you felt as though you were part of the performance, and that there wasn't an invisible wall separating the performers and audience members? What helped create that experience?
What are contributors to inhibiting the development of a relationship with your audience? What small actions can you take to promote a relationship with your audience?
M - Meaning involves finding purpose and a meaningful existence in life through serving something greater than one self. Positively impacting and affecting others contributes to a meaningful life.
There is meaning to be found throughout the U2 concert. The use of the "barricage" which is an almost 100 foot long, two sided, LCD video screen that moves up and down and allows the band to move within, is used to transmit live video, political messages, and animations. You may not be able to come up with an 89-ton structure for your next performance, but don't underestimate the impact of a visual.
Bono also throughout the concerts show and verbalizes many displays of gratitude for the audience and life experiences. He also call attention to social issues, displaying and encouraging positive energy toward improving difficult situations.
I chose the song "Iris" to demonstrate meaning in performance, because home and family are messages that we can all relate to and draw on in performance design. How does the animation and proximity of the musicians contribute to the element of meaning?
This particular concert was rescheduled due to the November 13 Paris attacks. U2 made a point to include healing messages throughout the concert, and made multiple performance design choices related to the terrorist attacks, creating additional meaningful moments for audience members.
When you attend a performance that is particularly meaningful to you, what are some ways that you react physically and/or physiologically? What contributed to that experience?
Can you envision a performance that could bring great meaning to some audience members while leaving others uninterested? How might this happen and also how might it be avoided?
A - Achievement or success involves setting and working towards achieving goals, contributing to feelings of satisfaction, pride, and fulfillment. Actualized goals that require effort and dedication are more impactful.
In “Elevation,” U2 often brings up a fan to participate in the performance. Audience members are fans, and can relate in a way of seeing themselves on the stage as the fan. Then a phone is used to interact with audience members in live performance, another way that the audience relates. In this particular performance, however, multiple fans were brought on stage (undoubtedly hand picked prior to the show). Each of these fans has a specific persona that they are displaying, making it even more personal in that just about anyone could identify with at least one of the fans on stage. This connection, described by Bandura in social psychology is related to the concept of a vicarious experience, or believing that you can do something when you identify with someone else doing it.
Many hours of practice are devoted in order to demonstrate the achievement of musical skill in performance. In what other ways can a music performance create achievement as part of the performance?
Can an audience experience their own achievement(s) as part of attending a musical experience? How could you as a performer create that achievement experience for your audience?
It is not difficult to include audience achievement in your performances, but I do think that it is one of the trickier concepts to grasp at first because we are trained in school music that the performer is supposed to be the one to achieve. Audiences do experience achievement vicariously which is why we are attracted to showy displays of technique. However, for a deeper connection the audience should in some way relate to the one(s) achieving.
By now you have probably recognized that the five elements of PERMA are correlated, especially in music, meaning an experience in one element of PERMA is often related to one or more of the other PERMA elements. For example, music experiences in engagement, relationship, meaning, and achievement can each potentially create a positive emotion. The ability of music to touch us in so many different ways at the same time, I believe, is part of why music is such a powerful part of the human experience.
In this exercise we are not seeking "right" answers, but rather answers that are meaningful to you. The study of performance design is unique to the individual, just as the musical experience is dependent upon what the performer is trying to create, the listeners unique experience in response, and at the highest level a continuous experience created in performance by that interaction.
Perhaps through this exercise you have had thoughts about another musical example that you thought would meet these elements of PERMA better. Excellent! You are already making personal connections with PERMA in performance design!
Perhaps you are saying to yourself that this is impossible without a large scale and expensive stage, sound, and video setup. To you may I suggest the following:
Do not underestimate the possibilities from taking one step closer to your audience and simply giving them a smile.
Following articles will more deeply explore performance design concepts for each element of the PERMA model. For now, be comfortable with exploring and brainstorming new possibilities.
Activities:
Reflect and document an example of a PERMA pillar that you have observed in any musical performance that was especially meaningful to you (write in a journal and/or comment in our community).
Design a few performance elements for each pillar of PERMA that you can add either conceptually to a previous performance that you have given, or for planning a future performance. The level or type of performance does not matter! It does, in some way, need to be a performance for others. Journal your ideas and/or contribute your best ideas and questions to the community for additional growth from sharing and interacting with others.
Here is a PERMA brainstorm model if helpful:
Or create your own. I really like this non-music example. What would your creative freeform music-related PERMA model look like?
I did a short tour with a Chicago Tribute Band from Orlando that exhibited many of these elements within the performance. Audience engagement was enhanced when the lead singer would step off the stage and go to individuals to personalize the performance. Audience achievement was boosted when several patrons came on stage to join the band using rudimental percussion instruments on well-known songs. Several times during the concert, the keyboard player, who was the front man, would begin to tell stories at which time other band members would circle around him, sitting on the floor, like listening to grandfather tell a story. There was a lot of non-music time in these performances, and speaking with the band leader, his philosophy was to avoid “musical vomit” where you simply throw everything you’re capable of doing at the audience, and rather selectively engage the audience through music and interaction. I don’t believe this band was consciously following the PERMA model, but several elements were evident which led to a successful and memorable performance.