Thoughts on Streaming (Page 4 of 8)

People are talking about webstreams trying too hard to be festivals and take the place of live shows but there's also people saying they're too weak with bedroom shows and lack of visuals. . .

Also, as I've said, I have seen the majority of artists add new stuff to already existing or exclusive unreleased tracks. Artists have added guitar, drums, keyboards, effects, drum machines, live sequencing, etc.

Roboctopus DJ mixed and added live effects, Cooshinator or Dsv101 once wrote a song live, I've played my album with additional equipment not heard in the original, Frostbyte remixed his own songs live and even did 1xlsdj versions, the list goes on and on with stuff you'll never find on their bandcamp pages. I mean, I'd pay to watch Cheapshot do more dancing while avoiding waking up his baby or praying to the chipgods that his battery doesn't die.

Edit: and I know, visually, I have lots of hang ups with technical issues, but people say they don't even mind because of the audio.

Last edited by Auxcide (Dec 18, 2012 1:26 pm)

I wasn't asked, but I think this is worthy of its own topic if enough people have something useful to say. I also believe that there are too many musicians and not enough spectators in chipmusic, because with some of my other stuff (Vocaloid fanhood) I experience the opposite, where everyone buys figurines and CDs but few have worked with the software. (I understand that this impression may change if I learn more 日本語.) I don't have any solutions or corrections to suggest, though, I think it is just what happens when you have low barriers to entry.

As for my wife, I'm pretty sure she thinks it's all weird.

Could you define the middle of the night?  We've organized our shows to work best for everyone's time zones (because we wouldn't want say, Whitely, to go on at 4 AM just to work for our friends at -5 GMT.)  Our shows have started around 5 PM GMT for the last couple  of times.

I absolutely agree with you here.  The only difficulty happens to be that the stream has a momentary pause between feeds, and there doesn't seem to be a lot we can do with that.  Ustream offers ideas of showing videos or pictures inbetween sets that we're looking to expand upon, but it's effectiveness is questionable.  There is a program that would allow you to simultaneously host multiple feeds through your own, but it's quite expensive for what we're doing here.  I was lucky enough to have Xsplit show my video and the video of Hoodie for an intermission at Clip II.  Even then my audio got borked.

There's no question of any of that.  It's a very different situation than a stage, and that was actually a hang-up of a few artists.  Not to drop names, but Rainbowdragoneyes (as "Taste the Rainbow") and Trey Frey had some of the most entertaining sets so far.  Instead of just playing and singing into a webcam (which would've been awkward for him,) Taste the Rainbow was him playing drums over his RDE tracks.  Trey Frey threw a living room dance party with his wife, a handful of their friends and their cat(s), had colored lights and everything.  Nonfinite ended his set by dumping a metric shit-ton of various gameboys onto his equipment like a honey badger that stopped giving a fuck.  CCDM was just him with his TV, an Amiga and an incredibly balls-to-the-wall performance of him going nuts to his Amiga gabber set.  I still have people asking me about where he found that "WHO HAS THE FOOTBALL?" sound clip.  I then tell them to ask him, since I will never reveal the secrets of the Wu-Tang clan.  (Edit:  Yikes, forgot to summarize--  my main point was if you have no way of making your performance not awkward for a stream, you should give it a shot.  If there isn't, then maybe we can find a way eventually.)

Also of course, to bring it to the table, any of you with ideas on having visually awesome or just entertaining sets for a web show are more than welcomed to come on sometime to set an example for the newer and up-and-coming artists.

Edited for clarification, grammar, etc.

Last edited by Glenntai (Dec 18, 2012 5:29 pm)

That might be cool, have a vh1storytellers kind thing where people describe the process of making a song and share tricks.

CCDM and Decktonic were on our last show, and they used an Amiga and DS, respectively.  We're always looking for more than just NES/Gameboy, but it's harder to find anyone in those areas willing.

I'd be entirely cool with that idea.  It'd be part show part workshop/Q&A...  Anyone up for trying that out?

Oh yeah. I forgot about those. I have seen some non-80's-Nintendo performances.

And just so this post isn't completely pointless, I just wanted to say that I always type stuff like "Wooo!" in the chat box at times in which it'd be appropriate to say such at a live show. It's more fun to me that way. It probably gets annoying for the other people though.

As for things that would be interesting to see at any live event, streamed or not,  It'd be cool to see some kind of tracker shed-session type thing in which you'd have 2 or more artists synced to a machine with a click track (or bassline or drum beat), and they'd go around the room taking turns showing off their impromptu/deaf tracking/tabling/composing/EQing/etc. skills for 2-4 bars each. Since composing is a bit different than playing a live instrument. Kind of like a freestyle battle, they'd get a couple of bars to do the sequencing equivalent of "Oh! yeah, uh huh, Ungh, alright, alright, I got dis" that freestylers use while their thinking of what to say next, lol.

And then at the end everybody triggers their phrases at the same time for a fun chaotic mess.

Kind of irrelevant to the topic, I know, and it relies on having the artists in the same venue together, but still, it could be fun.

Also true and a fair point.  I'm just willing to try different things out and see what people enjoy.

I've wondered how people have felt about that, really.  I'm also guilty as charged, but at the same time, there's no real definition for how to react to the stream.  I normally follow it up with a compliment or thanking the artist for their set, but it's hard to really blame someone for their excitement.  Regardless, I do understand why that feels a bit out of place.

Also, the whole synchronization idea is cool--  SSD Engage (I think that'd what they're calling themselves?) actually consists of three artists doing something similar to that, if I recall correctly (spry feel free to correct me if I totally got that wrong just now.)  As long as they're all in one place, it works out either live or streamed.  It's a very cool result!