Did you ever see a video of your band performing?

[CEB]

1 hour 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.

 

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.

 

Oh my … talk about sounding bad. … I played a bar gig a few years ago.  A guy showed up with a video camcorder on a big tall stick.  He walked all over the bar taking aerial video.  We let him on stage once and told him “Don’t trip and fall”. LOL.   It sounded bad.  It did a lot of weird phasing stuff. Then he put it on YouTube LOL.  
 

What the hell … I’m retired.  No one cares anymore. 
 

 

[SamuelBLupowitz]

22 minutes ago, CEB said:

 

Oh my … talk about sounding bad. … I played a bar gig a few years ago.  A guy showed up with a video camcorder on a big tall stick.  He walked all over the bar taking aerial video.  We let him on stage once and told him “Don’t trip and fall”. LOL.   It sounded bad.  It did a lot of weird phasing stuff. Then he put it on YouTube LOL.  
 

What the hell … I’m retired.  No one cares anymore. 
 

 

 

Oh mannnn love that subwoofer-adjacent camera audio!

 

I wonder if PoleCamGuy.com is in any way related to DrivingCrooner.com...? 🤣

"I gotta figure out how to make money on this!"

[Theo Verelst]

Yes, I've looked at video of performances I played sometimes since about '90, and I was fine with that. Video (or HD or film) can better be made by people with some professional training and feedback, it's easy to get recordings with bad sound, nauseating picture, bad edits and unpleasant effects. Still a not so great recording from a phone of magical music can be fun, and for memory's sake an old video could be entertaining.

 

T

 

[Montunoman 2]

Most people aren’t natural born musical prodigies and getting to a point to be able to be anywhere good enough to perform publicly takes years of concentration/ practice. On top of that most of us ( especially males) are not brought up to be emotionally and physically expressive. I hate to stereotype here, but I think musicians who were brought in an African-American church/ community or another culture that encourages expression and movement often times have a more expressive stage presence. But a lot of us were brought in homes where “ your mama don’t dance and daddy don’t rock and roll.” 

[eric]

My brother is an amateur "iPhone videographer" and he does a really nice job of capturing some short compilations of live shows. Over the years, his videos have been the best representation of my various bands. It is always fun to see them. Here's a few examples from the original touring band - 2017 and 2023. I have a multi-camera video with pro audio for the 2023 show, though it's not completely done with production.

 

 

 

 

[16251]

That Vox stand from Fighting Gravity video is cool. 

[MathOfInsects]

23 hours ago, CEB said:

 

Oh my … talk about sounding bad. … I played a bar gig a few years ago.  A guy showed up with a video camcorder on a big tall stick.  He walked all over the bar taking aerial video.  We let him on stage once and told him “Don’t trip and fall”. LOL.   It sounded bad.  It did a lot of weird phasing stuff. Then he put it on YouTube LOL.  
 

What the hell … I’m retired.  No one cares anymore. 
 

 

Nice gig! I had to laugh that when it was time for the keyboard solo in SHA, he made sure to get a nice detailed shot of....the audience.

[MathOfInsects]

The only possible outcomes from audience recordings are:

1) Most frequent: All that time you were bathed on stage with a perfect mix that allowed you do your best work on the keyboards, no one out front heard a note you played. = Bad

 

2) The stuff you thought you sucked at was actually pretty good and you should have committed more to it instead of handing what you thought was a disastrous solo over to the sax player so soon, and/or the stuff you thought you destroyed at was a plate of rotten cheese and you definitely should have stopped that sooner. = two different kinds of bad. 

3) You see yourself and hate it, regardless of sound. VERY BAD. Never look at these. Why do you do that with your neck???

4) You are exactly one foot outside the frame of the video at any given time--an idea, a rumor, an inconvenient theory-nerd taking one-fifth of the split and zero percent of the consciousness, including that of the still-holding-on-nicely cougar planted in front of you who you thought was feeling it but whose cell phone video reveals that she had the same hungry interest in the guitar player as everyone else did and always had for his whole guitar-playing life. Very, very bad, never ruminate on this, abort! abort! abort!!

[eric]

21 hours ago, 16251 said:

That Vox stand from Fighting Gravity video is cool. 

 

Thanks! That's my current custom stand that I've had in use since 2016 or 2017. I've used a similar type of rolling/tilting stand since the late '80s and decided that it would be cool to have one inspired by the Vox Continental Z shaped stand.

[Delaware Dave]

i think some of you are missing the point of the topic, it isn't about how the audio sounds in the phone recordings, it's about the video and presentation of the band. A boring looking/acting band is just as bad as bad audio, even if you sound great if your music presentation is boring then that is just about as bad as sounding awful.  this is why when i hear about a band i want to see live video/audio (and so do many higher quality booking agents).  anyone can clean up a studio recording and get out the mistakes, add the backing vocals (by the same lead singer) but live exposes not only the audio (how you really sound live) but the show presentation.  One of the things i never got were guitars/bass who spent hundreds (back in the day) on wireless yet never left their 1' x 1'  space the whole night, they stand there like bumps on a log..

[Stokely]

I heartily agree.   And I say that as someone who really struggles being comfortable with being "entertaining" at shows.  I am bailed out a bit by the other members, but frankly none of us are Freddy Mercury up there.  

I'd take it further to say that the audio doesn't matter much at all to the audience.  Hell they put up with fake tracks at almost every show.  I guess live playing might be shoddy-sounding next to tracks, that could be a problem.   If you really want to win people over sound-wise, just put up fake tracks and do windmills on your guitar and jump around like a monkey on crack knowing the sound is there    You don't really have to be that good at faking it.  (And to be sure, this is my idea of musical hell, but based on popularity of bands around here, it's what you should do to have a following.)

One of my goals this year is to make myself more presentable on stage.  That includes attire (already done), getting in shape (work in progress) and stage presence (to whatever degree this old dog can learn that trick).   Oh and finally getting up on stage with a guitar after wanting to for 40 years  

 

If making a video demo, not only should the band not be bumps on a log, the video should be dynamic.  We hired a local guy who set up one or two static cameras, but most shots were done with an DSR with him on stage with us, moving all around while shooting.   The final edit was mostly these moving shots with a few of the static ones.   Audio-wise, we recorded that show multitrack and I mixed it later,  then combined it back with the edited video.  And yes I did replace our bass player's one-step-out-of-key backup vocals with some of my own...geez.    Also, the final edit wasn't full songs, but a medley of shorter snippets from three of them.  Ymmv.