"Blink" + Lessons Learned: Making Live Video Recording a Little More Interesting (Patreon)

I posted video of me singing "Blink" today. The recording came with some Lessons Learned moments that I want to share. 

But first, watch the video. I recorded it because my friend Dawn reminded me that the NPR Tiny Desk Concert was accepting submissions from musicians for their annual competition.

It took me about 20 takes to get this video. I'm glad I did them. The first video was fine. The performance was fine. Fortunately, the sound was poor, which is why I decided to re-record. But in the process I figured out how to do a better Internet show.

Let me start with the sound quality. The DI for the autoharp wasn't loud enough. You can hear the autoharp fine because I have a good mic. But if I'm gonna try and record audio, I really should make sure the sound is good.

It took several video recording takes for me to get the autoharp at a good level that didn't overpower the vocals. I think this sounds pretty darn good. The only thing I'd like to add is some reverb to the vocals. But that means I need an effects rack that plugs into my mixer. That requires money that I don't have.

I've always had a problem with the *look* of my videos. I see these YouTubers and they have a really good look I've never been able to replicate. Today was a different.

I made some adjustments to my setup. The camera is still above eye level looking down. That's good.

There are some angles in the video. That's good.

This time, I zoomed out my camera so that I can could zoom in when I edited the video in iMovie. That was a smart move. It gave me flexibility to zoom in and out to make the video more interesting.

Sure, it'd be great to have a second camera. Maybe one day, I'll figure out how to use my phone that way.

One of the things that I felt really helped the my performance was using my microphone as a vocal prop. . I was trying to make the video more visually interesting. So I used mic technique to make it more visually interesting. People who are good with mic technique move closer to the mic when they are singing quietly. When they sing louder, they move away from the mic.

That's what I did here. But because of the video angle, you can see me move in with the quiet parts. So now my body is moving throughout the song, instead of me sitting in one place like I did with that mediocre video at the start.

I also sing TO the microphone at times, instead of to the camera. Then I'm not staring endlessly at the camera. It again adds visual interest.

I think my biggest complaint with this video is seeing the microphone hogging the screen. I need to fix that for my St Patrick's Day Internet Concert next week. I'd also like to simplify my background a wee bit more. Some of it is distracting to me.

Oh! One final thing I did that I liked for this video was I told what the song was about at the end of the song. Normally, I do that at the beginning. But my hope is that someone will watch all the way through the song. At the end, they'll hear it's about Doctor Who and want to re-watch to catch the inside moments.

I don't know if it'll work. But I think the idea has merit.