In these times of being stuck inside with no option to go out and build your music career it is important to get creative. Many musicians and artists have turned to live streaming performances to continue to grow and engage their audience. I think this is a great use of the time when many are stuck at home. After a while being able to engage someone else, even virtually, becomes desirable. However, to compete with all the streaming options you will need to produce a video that is engaging and interesting to keep the viewership up. This involves both the audio and visual side of performing your music. For this blog post I’m going to focus on the visual aspect of making clean and appealing videos. You can directly use the mic on your phone if you want, but in a future post I’ll talk about how I route my audio through my professional recording microphones to get the best quality audio I can come up with on the stream.
The Visual Environment
Where you do your live streaming can make a huge impression on your audience. Is it an unfinished basement? Is it your living room? The band practice space? All could work, but you need to pay attention to what it looks like from the camera. The background can really be anything, but it’s important to make sure it doesn’t distract while you are performing. The focus should be on you (it’s ok to be vain now). While there are certainly circumstances where you can come up with exceptions, here are some general guidelines:
Stay away from TVs, computers or other screens being in the background (especially if they are powered on and showing something unrelated).
Avoid walls with a bunch of loud decorations on them (think movie / band posters).
Ditch areas with a lot of junk and clutter. Or at least keep it out of the camera field of view.
Neutral backgrounds with stable patterns will be appealing. Some options would be brick or stone walls, a full bookshelf, or even a blank wall with some simple decorations.
Placement within the room is also important. If possible, you want to be away from the wall at least a few feet, otherwise you can’t get light behind you (more on that later) and end up with some shadows very close to your head. Also think about where you will be playing and how you will be postured. You want it to look as natural as possible. Will you be standing, sitting on a bar stool or chair?
It may feel like an effort in futility but taking a little bit of time to get the room right and visually appealing can make a huge difference in the final product.
Photo by Gerrie van der Walt on Unsplash
Illuminating Everything
Whatever you do, don’t perform in a dimly lit room. It’s going to look weird no matter what you do. No amount of amazing audio will be able to overcome that one. If you want to keep your audience watching for an hour or more, they don’t want to stare at your silhouette. For this reason, be careful of using rooms that don’t have enough light, a single overhead bulb in an unfinished basement is not going to cut it for live streaming a musical performance. Also, just using the overhead lights can cast weird shadows on your face and leave your eyes shadowed and sunken in.
To get things lit well, think about having 3 points of light all pointed at you. One from each side and one behind. These should be in front and arranged in such a way that you aren’t squinting into them. You could get several lamps and put them in the room with you (those might even add to the environment). If you are lighting on the cheap just get some clamp lights from your local hardware store and put a wax paper filter over them. Natural light is also the great equalizer as it can flood a room an easily illuminate you if you are performing you live stream concert during the day. Just make sure it’s not hitting the side of your face and creating odd shadows on the other half. For this you will want to turn more into the window where the light is coming in.
Once you turn on your lighting, check how it looks with a test video to make sure you don’t get shadows behind you and that your entire face is illuminated clearly. Experiment and move thing around to get a look that you are happy with. The light behind you creates a bit of a silhouette that allows you to pop off the background and make you appear slightly more three dimensional.
BONUS: If you want to spend a little of your extra time creating something visually appealing, get a lamp wiring kit and some iron plumbing pipe. That’s how I made some Edison bulb pipe lights on stands that go in my studio for live streaming. They add to the vibe and provide another source of light from multiple angles.
Thinking About Acoustics
I said I would save the audio side for a future post, but it is important to consider the acoustics of the room you will use. If possible, you want to choose a room with a quiet acoustic response. By that, I mean you won’t get a lot of reflections or slap delay from your singing or instrument bouncing off the walls around you (i.e. don’t use your bathroom). One way to tell is to walk into a room and clap your hands in different spots in the room. Do you hear an “echo” or any ringing? Rooms that have upholstered furniture or heavy drapes will keep these reverberations to a minimum and can be helpful. Alternatively, you can make acoustic panels to absorb those echoes like I have in my studio with some 1x4 frames, rockwool insulation and burlap (they only cost about $20 each). These are great to have in a practice room as well. But if you don’t have the option for any of that, there is still hope. Go get some heavy blankets and hang them up behind the camera where you will be recording from (away from the wall if possible). Then when you perform those will at least help capture some of the initial first reflections from your voice and instrument.
Note: if you get a nice quiet room to perform in it may feel a bit weird. When you play or sing louder the room will just suck things up and not bounce back at you in a way you are used to. That’s ok. It just means that what your microphone captures (even on your phone) will be cleaner and more pleasing to listen to.
Does the Camera Matter?
Phone cameras continue to rapidly improve, so whether you use a GoPro, iPhone, Samsung or just a cheap USB webcam, I think the actual devices are likely all good enough to get a solid quality video. No one is expecting ground-breaking cinema here. What is more important is to get the height of the video to be at eye level or above up to about 30 degrees. Anything lower and you start to bring out the double chin. Anything higher and you look like you are trying to achieve social following status as an Instagram influencer. As always, a test video will ensure you are getting the look that you want.
Hopefully this gives you some great ideas on how you can step up your living room concert game. Keep that audience coming back for more!