This post will be updated weekly through the entirety of the Self Quarantine Stream Episodes.
The reason I manage my own website, media, writing, videos, and the copy is to provide a transparent view into a D.I.Y artist. While achieving professional looking production quality is indeed my end goal, it’s just as important to show the evolution of a project and the learning process involved.
In the first 4 episodes, I learned real-time how to stream. This first one was a bit of a technical disaster, but it’s important to show true documentation of the creative process with the goal of continuous improvement. This means posting everything, warts and all, to communicate what went wrong and how the problems that arose were addressed. This way everyone else can learn from my mistakes. Even with the signal cutting out and pixellated video it never gets as bad as Bill O’Reilly’s “We’ll Do It Live” meltdown, so I’m going to chalk it up as a learning experience.
By the fourth episode, I was comfortable using a mix of live and prerecorded content. Which is an important aside, all sorts of things can go wrong, be prepared with a prerecorded backup plan for live content. For all episodes, I am using restream.io to push to multiple platforms simultaneously. I’m still figuring out how to add Instagram using restream.io and will write a full-featured article on the tools (software & hardware) used.
Episode 04
What I like most about the fourth episode is how naturally I become once I see that I’m playing to my friends who were also on lockdown. Once I see my family and friends are watching, the performance clearly shows. I started to relax a bit, knew my audience, and two hours went by like nothing.
Episode 03
Nothing special about the third episode, it’s a good representation of how I practice in the evenings if the band members are unavailable. I go through my material off the top of my head. Work on clean precise rhythm hem, and use a looper to do a few solo exercises. I’ve used plenty of loopers in the past, but nothing beats the Boomerang 3 Phrase Sampler. It’s easy to use. Loopers can be trick and although I usually miss a beat, as a piece of hardware it never does.
The electric I play is a Reverend Jetstream 390, I love everything they stand for. A real a-class group of individuals. The reason I like that particular guitar is I am a huge fan of Tony Joe White, solo he played a Strat through a Tweed Deluxe. My God what a tone Tony had. RIP brother.
Episode 02
After the catastrophic crashes, disconnections, and failure of my first attempt at streaming, I overcompensated and pre-recorded the entire show. I put everything together in Final cut and streamed using OBS into restream.io. My brother’s footage was just on an iPhone, my footage was through a goPro Hero 7 with the audio adapter plugged into a Bose S1 battery powered PA.
If you want to BUSK and get great footage with great audio this is a killer option. I will write up a full article on the Bose S1 and goPro, for now this playlist uses it, sounds good to me.
Episode 01 part B
While I’m getting the hang of the cut screens and working in OBS, I am unaware till its too late how pixellated the output is.
the part that sucks, is I turn off the audio, and never put it back up halfway through. You live and learn.
Episode 01 part A
Oh my god, the system crashed 2 times and apparently, the webcam on the laptop is not high enough resolution. Audio sounds good though.
Help out our local musicians. Tune in, or better yet, go live yourself.
