How to Start and Finish Strong on Stage

When you’re performing live, the intros and outros of your songs are critical moments. Finishing strong is incredibly important, so you want the outro to have the necessary weight to it, but how do you come up with an impacting outro? Use the tips we’re about to give you and those weak rounds of applause will be a thing of the past, whether you play your own songs or play covers with a fade-out.

Working Up To The Climax

As every gigging band knows, a powerless finale yields less chanting, cheering, hooting and clapping, regardless of how good the rest of the song was. A vague or unclear outro also doesn’t help, so it’s vital that your outros are clear. They’re the crown on your work. While these unwritten rules are less stringent when it comes to playing live background music at a wedding reception, you can’t get away with a weak outro when you’re playing at a local pub, venue or festival. “That’s where a predictable outro is actually the most effective,” says band coach and trumpeter, Martin Hiddink. “A classic, cliché-ish outro is usually better than any preconceived plan, no matter how ingenious or virtuoso it is.” In general, the outro is a climax that you work towards, so by playing with the dynamics and tension, you can signal to the audience that the song is leading up to a kind of apex. This is also why the chorus is better suited for the outro than a verse, and why the chorus is commonly repeated twice or more at the end of many songs.

Coming Up With Your Own Outros

Nine times out of ten, you’ll have to come up with your own outro. That’s obvious when it comes to original material, but it also applies to most covers since the album version more often than not has a fade-out. The reason behind this is actually a mystery. Go online and you’ll find various theories, ranging from technical reasons to artistic motivation. Are fade-outs an utter faux-pas for bands that play live? Not really, because anything goes when you’re making music. The problem with a fade-out is that it’s not always clear to the audience that the song is over, so you risk a weak round of applause. “What’s more, you can’t achieve the same fade-out that you hear on the album version,” Martin remarks. “In the studio, the engineer gradually lowers the volume until the track goes completely silent. There’s never a real last note. You can’t do that when you’re playing live. No matter how much you lower the volume, there’s always that last note, after which the music ends. In other words, you need to actually think about what your last note is going to be when you do a live fade-out.”

The Right Final Chord

While coming up with custom outros can be tricky, one simple trick is to end with the right chord. If the song is in C major, you typically want it to end with a C major chord. If the song is in G minor, you want to end with a G minor chord, and so on. It’s music we’re talking about, so this is definitely not a set-in-stone law, but it’s certainly a good guideline. If you don’t end the song with the chord that’s the same as the key, it sounds like there’s still something to come. Granted, it can be an artistic choice to end with an off-key chord, but at least be aware of the potential consequences. “The last chord should also fit the song stylistically,” Martin adds. “It’s straight-up weird when you end a three-chord rock number with a complex, fusion-esque chord, and vice versa. A relatively basic outro to a relatively complex tune also doesn’t work very well.”

Working With The Material On Hand

It’s usually best to use the song’s own chords and melody for the outro. If you go for something that sounds different, it can sound like you’ve already launched into the next song. “There’s always a little melody that you can pull from the song for the outro,” says Martin. “It can come from the chorus, but it can also be a specific instrumental bit. Sometimes, you can go for a one-to-one copy, and in other cases, you’ll need to convert the part of the song that you want to use so that it works for the outro. You can, for instance, create a multi-instrumental rhythmic pattern with it that leads up to a climax. Don’t stretch it out too much, though, you’ll risk boring the crowd. Four or eight bars will do.”

A Risky Moment

No matter how well thought-out your outros are, they’re always a risky moment when you’re performing on stage, especially if they hinge on certain rules you’ve set or agreements you’ve made (“After the last chorus, we’ll play this bit four more times and then that other bit one more time, and then…”). “The more things you agree on, the bigger the risk of failure,” Martin knows. “Your memory can let you down, your guitarist can lack focus, and your drummer could’ve misunderstood one of the things you agreed on. There’s a lot that can go wrong. To mitigate the risks, you can use cues.” You can have the drummer announce the outro with a fill, or have the singer signal to prepare for the climax with a quick and subtle nod or a more obvious gesture, like a raised fist. Yes, your audience might be able to see your cues, but that’s fine. It’s a part that comes with playing live. One well-known musician that mastered the art of subtle cues was James Brown, whose cues were almost as subtle as wiggling one of his big toes, and who’d throw a tantrum when musicians missed them — sometimes resulting in fines or even layoffs.

Eyes And Ears

“The timing of your cues is crucial,” Martin explains. “You have to signal the rest of the band when it makes sense so your cue can’t be misinterpreted. If it’s too soon, some musicians might stop playing too soon too. If it’s too late, it can be too sudden which can lead to disaster.” It’s always a good idea to practise cues during rehearsals, where you should also vary the lengths of your outros so nobody is conditioned to stick to four bars. You do want to condition the band for the cue, no matter how long or short the lead-up to the actual outro is. Cues make making music together easier and more streamlined, not only for outros but your bridges, breaks and other key moments in your numbers. That said, each musician always needs to look out for cues and keep their eyes and ears on what’s happening on stage. “You can’t be looking down at your instrument all the time,” Martin says. “Try to play without looking at your instrument as much as you can, even during those trickier parts. It often goes better than you’d expect. If you can, sing or play from the top of your head as much as you can too. Get rid of those cheat sheets and actually notice what’s happening around you.”

What About The Intro?

The intro is much less critical than the outro. When you’re covering a song, you can simply copy the original intro, and when the singer accidentally launches into the vocals after four instead of two bars like they were supposed to, it’s usually an easy fix if the rest of the band adapts accordingly. Just keep playing like nothing happened and no one will notice a thing. A poor outro, on the other hand, is pretty much impossible to salvage. A messed-up intro is also easily forgotten when the rest of the song is bang-on. What’s important here is that everyone joins in at the right time and catches on to the tempo perfectly. The drummer plays an important role here since they’re the one that counts off the song, which is a job that shouldn’t be underestimated, so more on this in a minute. You always want to do a count-off, even if the song starts with a drum fill because it gives everyone a feel for the time signature and tempo.

Good to Know

Predictable Yet Surprising

As mentioned earlier, predictable outros are the most effective when you’re looking to yield some serious cheering and clapping, which is not to say that you can’t jam in some element of surprise by, for example, instead of ending with a chord, ending in unisono where each instrument plays the same note for extra impact. Or you can have the drummer follow up the supposed final blow with a second blow that’s the actual final blow. When it’s signalled appropriately and everyone else is paying attention, this should go down just fine.

The Perfect Count-Off

In addition to laying down the beat, the drummer has another important job: counting off the song to indicate the tempo. Drummers have to be consistent here and count off songs the same way every time because suddenly doing something different can result in chaos and disaster. There are different ways you can count off. With songs in common time, it’s fairly standard to go for four counts, although some drummers will only count twice, only indicating the third and fourth count. That’s not a good idea. It doesn’t give the rest of the band enough time to launch into the song properly. What does work really well is counting off two bars, with the first bar in half-time, so: one…two…one-two-three-four! This is the most common and professional way to do the count-off and it comes with a number of advantages. First off, it makes it easier for the band to transition to the tempo of the next song since there’s a little more time to get a feel for the tempo. Secondly, counting off the first bar in half-time puts everyone on standby. And lastly, the drummer gives themself some room for error correction, in case they initially get the timing wrong.
One final tip: some songs start with an upbeat that lands before the first count. In this case, always count off two bars with the first bar in half-time so the band can start playing sometime during the second bar and count-off is stopped.