Performance Report

The primary question I asked myself at the beginning of this quarter is how much I know about live rock performances. I have always thought of live rock performances like a combination of instrumental and rhythmic music, and from the concert that I witnessed, it proved to be more than that. For starters, rock is a genre of popular music whose origin can be traced to 1940’s rock and roll. Like other forms of pop music, rock lyrics address a wide range of theme – from love, relationships and normal life activities. It is with such background in rock music that I attended the rock concert organized by the arts department in the auditorium. The concert itself was comprised of various renowned artist pieces, and a combination of dancers. To be honest, I was quite impressed by the performance, and it warmed up my soul like the summer sun.
The musical instruments were rightly used and there was excellent voice and harmony variation. A good case in point is when the performers would allow the duo pianists to take over in the instances where the performance required the use of piano together with a trumpet. The variation in voice and harmony proved to a good thing because the dancers would also take to stage at this time thus driving the energy of the performance a notch higher.
As always, everyone attending a rock performance, from the performers to the audience, has huge expectations from the live show. The audience expects nothing short of a thrilling performance, while the performers expect a show which will generate a buzz and good money of course. On this basis, the live performance met all of those expectations. The performers were able to connect with the audience emotionally, and also generate a buzz from their excellent, energy-filled show. It is also fair to assume that they made a lot of money from the show; no wonder they dedicated themselves (in resource and time) to come up with such a great show. Above all, the audience was kept engaged.
Again, there was a strong music connection with the live performance than could ever be achieved with recordings. Nevertheless, I prefer recorded rock music. The reason why I prefer recorded music is because of I can repeat it as many times as I would want, and this is not subject to vagaries of chance. It is also difficult to duplicate the precision of recorded music in a concert and sometimes the live music performance may not live up to its expectations. However, with a music system in the house, one can play the recorded music at the desired volume. Moreover, recorded rock music has intimate connection with the listener, while live music depends on the venue; sometimes, this can be distracting especially when the audience tends to be in control of the performance. Finally, recorded rock music allows you to listen to the music even when the artists are no longer with us, thus their music lives. Nevertheless, it is indeed true that live rock performance and recording are two different things, and each has its pros and cons. Suffice is to say that I enjoyed the live performance.