Did you ever see a video of your band performing?

[piano39]

For some reason, fans take cell phone videos of my band's performance and post them on social media.  I am in a three piece band- keyboards, drums and guitar/vocals.  We are all aging boomers (~67 years old).  I can't stand to watch the videos.  The music sounds good, but we look like a bunch of bored, old guys on stage.

 

I can assure you that we are not bored, we are having a blast.

 

I am sitting (or standing) behind a keyboard.  I am very busy playing, so I am looking down at the keyboard most of the time.  I notice that most successful pop stars are smiling constantly.  I am told that I always look serious.

 

Oh, well.

 

[BMD]

About a decade ago a guy called David Bash got in touch with me after hearing my songs on Myspace. He organises a festival called International Pop Overthrow, which happens annually at venues across the US and also The Cavern in Liverpool

 

He wanted me to play the following year's festival at The Cavern. Two problems with that: 1) I didn't have a band, and 2) I'm too shy to perform. So with his approval I put a band together (I wasn't in it) and they played the festival

 

I turned up with a camera and filmed the show. The band were (or was, if you're American) great. I uploaded the video to Youtube but removed it after a few weeks. My one and only claim to fame, unless you count the fact that Craig Anderton has covered a few of my songs

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

We just played in November, and fortunately for the civilized would no one has put us up on Youtube.  But I have seen videos our singer's father took.....  I realized I need to raise my stand up a little with some spacers (it's at max height already).  The upper keyboard is fine, but for my lower one I am too hunched over! 

[Bobadohshe]

It's always incredibly educational to see videos of yourself in action. It often stings! But you can learn what are good ways and bad ways to move your body on stage. What translates and what is actually distractingly bad. I'm still figuring it out to be honest.

[CHarrell]

10 minutes ago, Bobadohshe said:

It's always incredibly educational to see videos of yourself in action. It often stings! But you can learn what are good ways and bad ways to move your body on stage. What translates and what is actually distractingly bad. I'm still figuring it out to be honest.

 

Very true, but it's always important to also consider that single-angle footage--from phones usually, let's be real--can be a poor way to capture a live event. When we're there live, whether it's a concert, stage play, sports game, etc., there are so many dimensions we can instantaneously and simultaneously register, but when translated to video, so many of those dimensions are either nerfed, or completely lost. Imagine if ESPN just had a stationary camera for NBA for the court, no hoop angles, no swoops, tracking, nothin!

 

Honestly, the most valuable info I've usually gotten is that my emotional state can greatly influence how I feel about any given performance, and especially in the past, that would be a negative influence. 😂 I resist watching the video, expecting to cringe at my awful performance, but then I see it, divorced from the emotions I had at the time while playing, and think, "Huh, that was actually pretty good!" 

[stoken6]

39 minutes ago, BMD said:

were (or was, if you're American

👍

Cheers, Mike.

[Joe P]

I always seem to look too serious.  Look at my avatar....  I'm not a vocalist but lately I've been singing along anyway.  I've seen drummers do it and the joy starts to come through a little bit.  I try to channel any amount of Richie Hayward that I can.🙂

[Stokely]

I'm that serious guy as well.  Oh well.  It's not in me to turn into some dancing, pointing happy entertainer.  If that was part of the job description I'd just hang it up.   Best I can shoot for is "intense"    

I hate, hate, hate pics and videos of myself.

[Jose EB5AGV]

1 hour ago, piano39 said:

I am sitting (or standing) behind a keyboard.  I am very busy playing, so I am looking down at the keyboard most of the time.  I notice that most successful pop stars are smiling constantly.  I am told that I always look serious

 

This describes exactly my situation!. 100% accurate. Yes, I am trying to smile and look less to the keyboard... But with little success so far 😅

[Mighty Motif Max]

I always appreciate performance videos because they're great for learning from. I will often do videos of my own band's shows and my own solo gigs to analyze later (same logic as recording my monitor mix direct). It's also really good for the rest of the band to be able to hear what actually "works" and what doesn't work so well. Like excessively harsh guitar tones, or a rushed fill on the drums. I find it ups the quality of the subsequent performances substantially.

[Baldwin Funster]

 I don't like to see them or hear them. In my mind I'm 25, look like a long haired leaping gnome, and sound like all the greatest B3 players put together. Cell phone video recordings reveal the cold reality that I have no reason or desire to accept. 

Don't wake me up, I'm happy in my fantasy.

 

[CHarrell]

If you wanna lead the orchestra, sometimes you gotta put your back to the crowd. 😉

[CEB]

I have bouts of grumpy face.  In the large gigs it wasn't a factor.  I was usually on a riser on upstage left.  I just dress appropriate and try to not clam.  No one cares about the piano player.  Everyone is watching the women, the rapper and guitarist that are down stage.

 

In more intimate settings there are things you can do to combat grumpy face.  Masks work.  Beware, sounds get really loud inside a latex mask.  

 

Or you can embrace grumpy face and wear hat and shades that play into the character or wear a billboard graphic Tshirt that says Grumpy. LOL  Embrace Stoicism.    

[16251]

When I played dance music/weddings, I preferred to play sideways, like I was playing a grand. I never cared for looking at the dance floor, if possible.

 

This way is also how I prefer when video is taping.

[TommyRude]

Some recent gigs I had there were numerous photos/videos.  Thankfully it was a large group populated with young energetic good looking people, all of them in front of me…. perfect!

[o0Ampy0o]

Here are some ideas: Watch videos of famous old timers like Michael McDonald, Richard Wright and Elton John. Notice how they look and don't look. Practice relaxing and imagine you look like them instead of you. Really feel it throughout your face, eyes and mouth. If this doesn't work wear a hat which casts your face in shadow.

[AUSSIEKEYS]

12 hours ago, piano39 said:

For some reason, fans take cell phone videos of my band's performance and post them on social media.

 

Pictures or it didn't happen.

 

Or should I say video evidence?

[franky64]

13 hours ago, Stokely said:

I hate, hate, hate pics and videos of myself.

"cheeeea - you are on non of the photos"
"why should I ?"
"????'
"don't like"
"not a single photo of you"
"yeah - but look at the {monument|impressive cathedral|magnifigue landscape|lucky shot|ambient light|....}"
"errr ja, nice ... [not looking at anything]  - no photos of you and your friends?"
"guess there is one , here" [photo of friends grinning into the camera like a horde of apes]
"oohh how beeaaaaautiful  [starring at the photo]  - but where is you on the photo???"
[starting to get pissed] "SOMEONE HAD TO HOLD THE CAMERA!!!!"
"BUT no photo of you!"
"Wait ... here - your photo of mine"
"BUT you're wearing a motorcycle helmet!"
"YESSSS  !!!!"
"No photo of you! Why no photo of you"
"I HATE THOSE PHOTO 'ME IN FRONT OF BRIDGE, ME IN FRONT OF TOWER, ME IN FRONT OF BAR, ME IN FRONT OF THIS AND THAT AND THIS AND THAT...' "
"You're an abnormal person"
"Photographs are for the scene, not for having the same people grinning like apes and covering any photo"
"There is something wrong with you"
"You folks only want to adore yourself"
"You're an associal person!"
"Really? And you're are all just self-regarding egocentrics"
"There is something wrong with you"
"It's my thing, isn't it ?!"
"....... but WHY are you never on photos???!!!"
"AAAAAAHHHHHHH $*%T!!X}!& !!!!"
(here happened the usual daily tragedy of a usual family)

[Jose EB5AGV]

In this era of selfies, I always prefer a nice picture of a landscape WITHOUT anyone disrupting that wonderful view.

 

I read the other day that, when the largest amount of pictures featuring the Egypt pyramids are selfies, something very wrong is happening. And I agree.

[Delaware Dave]

if you look look like a bunch of bored old guys in video then that is what you look like to the crowd.  use the video to make changes, make it a show.  No one wants to see a bunch of old bored guys, you'll eventually lose your crowd and your gig.

[piano39]

2 hours ago, Delaware Dave said:

if you look look like a bunch of bored old guys in video then that is what you look like to the crowd.  use the video to make changes, make it a show.  No one wants to see a bunch of old bored guys, you'll eventually lose your crowd and your gig.

This is exactly my concern.  A cellphone video is honest in one big respect- it is the exact perspective that that particular audience member sees.  The paradox is that the person taking the video is obviously very much enjoying the show. They do not see a bunch of “old bored guys”.  That is what I see when I watch the video.

[Jose EB5AGV]

20 hours ago, piano39 said:

This is exactly my concern.  A cellphone video is honest in one big respect- it is the exact perspective that that particular audience member sees.  The paradox is that the person taking the video is obviously very much enjoying the show. They do not see a bunch of “old bored guys”.  That is what I see when I watch the video.

 

Or... They want to share on social media that "old bored guys" show experience, hoping it gets viral, so they get plenty of views and attention 😉

[Mididude]

Music-playing takes up too many parts of the brain to always smile on cue…I try to force one out though if someone has a camera.  I don’t check back on the results later.

[Losendoskeys]

Every show. Very honoured people want to photo/video a tribute band. We don't even dress up like Genesis!
I too look very authentic - everyone comments that Tony Banks looked miserable all the time and so do i  - its called concentration!

 

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Since part of why I got into playing music was for another way to ham it up for people, I love seeing photos and videos of myself playing. Certainly, sometimes a video will capture a clam or otherwise less-than-pro moment in a show, but I enjoy getting to rest on the laurels of Having Done the Thing, and often I learn a thing or two about what does and doesn't work onstage. Every now and then you get something that looks professional, which I love, but there's something about having DIY audience phone videos floating around that lends its own air of legitimacy ("people like this, it's not just savvy promo") when employed properly.

 

One of the most helpful lessons I learned happened in the last few years, actually. I've always had a bit of a reputation for being an animated performer: throwing big cues as a bandleader, grinning big, swinging my hair around behind the keys. But as I had been developing my chops and beefing up my rig prior to the pandemic, I started to notice that those things were not reflected in the photos and videos I was seeing after gigs. Even though I was working really hard onstage to flashily cover the many parts and textures I had put together for my bands' recordings, most of that effort manifested in me staring really hard at my boards and gritting my teeth. The intensity was *internal,* and not really translating to the audience, even if the mix in the venue was good enough to hear the piano lick in my right hand, organ pad in my left hand, and sample triggers I was cueing with my foot pedals (as I scrolled through patches in Mainstage with my other foot to make sure I had the specific sound for each section of a tune).

 

As I got back to gigging after the lockdown break, I decided to streamline my rigs and arrangements a fair bit and focus on playing Crucial Parts with more energy and intensity, rather than trying to multitask to the degree where I felt more like I was solving equations onstage. I might miss some of the textures from the recordings, but I was looser and more relaxed, which meant I looked like I was having more fun, and it seems like audiences respond to *that* much more than they ever did to me using three or four limbs simultaneously to frantically do a middling job covering everything I overdubbed in the studio one part at a time.

 

I don't know if I would have come to that conclusion if I hadn't been seeing what I looked like performing after the gig -- though I might have burned out on it eventually anyway, it saved me some time!

 

 

[HammondDave]

I have always disliked watching myself play.  I hear and notice every clam that usually only musicians hear.  I prefer not to watch anymore.  

[stgermain]

Yesterday I spent all day recording video for a bad promo,  miming along to songs, over and over, and over again.

 

It was the most tortuous thing that I have ever had to do as a musician, especially as I hate every video or photo of myself in existence.

 

Luckily the comradery with the rest of the band made it slightly more bearable....

 

 

[wineandkeyz]

My biggest problem with cellphone videos being posted on social media is that invariably the person shooting the video and/or those around them are singing so loudly and out of tune that it makes us sound out of tune as well (which we sometimes are, but still).

[EscapeRocks]

The only cell phone videos of us I don't like are the ones where the person is standing right up at the stage, so the phone picks up the audio of the monitor.

 

Invariably, it is a 'horrible' mix, as far as FOH, as it's what the particular band member wants dialed in.  When it's posted, it makes it seem like the FOH engineers has no idea how to mix, or it makes it seem as we have no awareness of how own instrument levels.

 

Other than that, I enjoy watching us play.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

49 minutes ago, EscapeRocks said:

The only cell phone videos of us I don't like are the ones where the person is standing right up at the stage, so the phone picks up the audio of the monitor.

A fun variation of this is when they're close enough to the stage that they're only getting a little bit of the mains, so they mostly pick up the onstage sound rather than the monitors -- usually that translates to DRUMS DRUMS DRUMS (and sometimes guitar depending on who you're working with).