Hey all
first of all, great site. A quick introduction of myself, Im a 25 yr old living in Sydney Australia. I recently lost my job as a mastering engineer due to no business coming through. Having just started busking but playing in bands and such for ~10 yrs now, I had trouble finding even a mundane job to pay my rent. Then, after buying a battery powered amp, I noticed I could make pretty decent money playing a mix of newly learnt covers and originals on the street. So I have been pursuing it
Since then, (a week or so ago) I have been reading whatever pointers I could find online and I am amazed and quite honestly empowered and liberated by the fact that on Saturday night during a six hour busking session in the CBD, I had regular crowds of people cheering and clapping for more. I had some people staying around for 3 hrs +. Including some very cute girls from Michigan in the US :p so my dream to busk my way around Europe (which I had before being fired and which at that point really did seem like just a dream) actually seems a lot more realistic now.
I could really go on and on about how much I love busking and how I feel like I have found where I belong and what I should be doing but instead I'll try to get to the point, my question is as follows -
so a week before the Saturday I mentioned above ,
on a Sunday night at the exact same pitch, I busker for a few hours and although the crowds I managed to gather were much smaller and less frequent, I actually made more $ on average compared to when I had way more people hanging around. Now I will answer the question yo may be wondering, no I was not "passing the hat" on either occasion. But I believe I should have been when the larger crowds were gathering around but to be honest, I have never seen a musician busker pass a hat around but I was observing and I noticed that some people would stop by (often a group) and watch a few songs, applaud at the end of each one and then simply wander off. I suspect there us several reasons for this -
A) the intimidation factor (people are embarrassed or intimidated to walk up infront of everYone to drop some change)
B) monkey see, monkey do (the people who hang around for hours generally seem to drop some change when they first rock up and so these newer, more short term audience members see them applaud at the end of each song and do nothing and so they are not prompted and therefore do not feel obliged to dig up some shrappas :p
now I will admit straight up that I am very naive at this busking thing, but I want to get as pro as I can, as fast as I can, that's why Im here asking for advice. So tell me, am I right in suspecting that moving along the crowd (as I've read and seen other street performers like jugglers and magicians do) would solve problem (b) and passing a hat would solve problem (a)? Or maybe just one or the other would be best?
Im guessing that passing a hat would be best. No need to move on a crowd, I can just mention that those of u who have been hanging around and/or have already showed ur appreciation are not being asked for anything further?
Now bottom line is that I have no idea how to do the hat thing? Should I tell them Im going to come around after this next song? Should I just spring it on them? What is the best tact to take? I should mention that I have a quite good looking lady friend who is happy to help me by walking a hat around, she doesn't even want to be paid for it, (I would want to pay her something though!) also I was thinking about singing a cover of a well known song but changing the words to some thing humorous that is asking for cash like changing queens flash gordon to "cash"
gordon :p
Any helpful advice would be most appreciated
advTHANKSance
PS. Sorry if bits of this don't make sense, I got halfway through and then my iPhone ran out of batteries o_O