Whenever performers exhort the crowd to clap along with the music, the crowd can only keep the beat for maybe 30 seconds at best. The audience quickly loses the beat and the clapping rhythm falls apart. Assuming all the people at the concert are fans of the band, they should know the music and the beat. So why can’t they clap along in time with the music?
Because there are a good number of people too far away from the stage, and sound takes time to travel from one end to the other, and people lose the rhythm.
Much effort is made to make sure that the same sound hits everybody at the same time at most large concert venues. If the sound system is set up correctly there should be no noticeable difference from from the front row seats to the back of the room. I’m not talking about venues or sound systems, I’m talking about human behavior.
BTW, I’m a sound engineer by trade
I don’t really know other than people, as a whole, don’t have a great sense of time and as the clapping goes on, there’s some sort of error propagation that occurs that drifts people off.
I don’t know why that happens, but I did want to share this fun video of Harry Connick Jr throwing in an extra beat to flip a crowd’s clapping on the 1 and 3 to the 2 and 4. The magic happens around 40 seconds. Note the drummer in the background at 0:44 raising his hands in victory.
That crowd actually does a reasonable job of keeping the beat, they were just on the wrong one, and when Harry turned them around, they just kept going, not even noticing they were on the 2 & 4 now.
There’s a fair chance that a significant portion of the fans are drunk, high, and/or have no rhythm.
Some of them are singing along to a different set of words they think they know. The band might have changed things up or is having an off night.
Assuming you live through the concert and following mornings - it will have been the greatest/worst concert you went to 20 years ago. “Still have the T-Shirt, it was awesome/sucked.”
I don’t know, but if it starts and you hear someone in the crowd yell, “Oh my god PLEASE don’t do that!” it’s me. That shit is always a disaster.
As an aside, thanks for the Harry Connick video. That’s just brilliant! Amazing what real musicians are capable of.
But is there anything in place for the sound of clapping from section 503 to hit section 111 at the same time? I’m guessing not.
If the sound system is set up properly, people in both Sections 503 and 111 should be hearing the beat of the music at the same time. Therefore the people in both those and all other sections should be clapping time with music. Doesn’t matter if the folks in section 503 can’t hear what the folks in 111 are doing.
But it matters that they do.
Hearing other claps at a different time then the music is telling you to clap puts one off I think.
Yep. If if you can get everyone to clap in unison what everyone is going to hear is a bunch of non-synced clapping. It’s a futile effort to get thousands of sounds sources (clapping person) in sync and at the same time those sources hearing the surrounding sources in sync.
You can only hear clapping by folks in your immediate vicinity. Sound propagation is subject to inverse square law. If you are up front it is impossible to hear what the folks in the back of the arena are doing, and vice-versa. The upthread Harry Connick Jr. video shows that it IS possible for a crowd to keep accurate time even when the performer throws a curve!
I think pulykamell hit the nail on the head. I also think some of it has to do with the audience level of musical sophistication as well as how drunk/stoned they may be.
Now I’ll hijack my own thread. Why can’t some folks dance in time to the music? 
Clapping gets boring, and we want to hear the music.
That and after a bit your hands get sore.
I’ve genuinely never run into this problem. Granted, the concerts I’ve been to were Christian concerts, and everyone already had experience from clapping along at church. But I assumed from other videos I’ve seen that clapping tends to stay mostly synced–though you do get this rippling sound that occurs because people don’t get the sound at exactly the same time. But it’s close enough.
I do run into people clapping on the downbeats rather than the upbeats. Ironically, my grandpa, who would get irritated by music, was the one who taught me to do it right. The old church way to do it was to stomp on the downbeat and clap on the upbeat. I eventually was able to feel that downbeat without doing it, but still clap on the upbeat.
I do wonder if it’s something my grandmother, who loved to sing at church, taught him. And he passed it on to me because I was often fidgety in church. It gave me something keep my hands and feet occupied.
What’s even more rare than an audience that can clap in time is an audience who can actually sing! I did a concert for a well known folk musician. Several times he got the audience started on a song, they’d sing, even doing the harmony parts! He’d just do accompaniment on the guitar while the audience carried the song. I suppose you could say it was a lazy way for him to do a concert. But to hear several thousand people singing in (for the most part) perfect harmony was absolutely spine-tingling!
Again I think it has to do with the level of sophistication of the audience. Folky fans tend to be very dedicated.
Sometimes that “rippling sound” is pretty cool! As long as it doesn’t get out of hand 
I don’t seem to run into people clapping on the onbeat all that often. I know it’s a bit of a meme that “white people” clap on the onbeat, but the vast majority of pop music (not to mention jazz, as well) for the last several decades has an accent on the 2 & 4 with hits on the snare. That would seem to be the natural place to clap: on the thing on the drumset that kind of sounds like a clap. And, yeah, a foot stomp on the beats where the kick drum often plays (the 1 & 3), bcause a foot stomp kind of sounds like a kick. I just wonder how nowadays you’d be able to grow up and have a natural inclination to clap on 1 & 3. (Just musing out loud – this was actually a conversation I was having with my wife the other day when she was asking if she was clapping along on the 2 & 4.)
I mean, sometimes I’ll hear people clap on the 1-2-3-4, but it’s rare to the point that I can’t remember, other than the Harry Connick video, a group clap together on the 1 and 3. I’m sure it happens, but it’s weird to me that it does.
Because they were at a Dave Brubeck concert? (Stay with Paul’s rhythm - I dare you!)
Well, there was Justin Bieber (!) called out his own audience for clapping on the downbeat. Maybe Bieber fans aren’t the most musically sophisticated.
