You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Up Your Stream Game

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

Because of the pandemic, many industries (including musicians) have had to adapt to streaming. Today, Peter and Adam give you some tips to take anything you stream to the next level.Today's Open Studio Live Events (All times in EDT):1:00 PM - Adam's Daily Guided Practice Session (for Members Only)For the rest of this week's calendar, follow this linkInterested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is this a live thing. And I'm Edamanus. And you're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Music advice coming at you. Coming at you. Coming at you. No, we're not streaming. We're going to be talking about streaming.

Yeah, we are going to be talking about streaming. And we're going to be talking about anything that we just played. No, not at all. But I think it was a fun, you know, we like doing the little bit. Well, that's kind of part of it, actually. That's a little bit. Well, we'll get into it. It is part of it because we're improvising, which is what streaming is all about.

So, yeah, we'll get into that. So I think the purpose of this episode is we've done so much streaming since the Rona hit. That's right. We were not a streaming company before that. No. We've been a mostly recorded, you know, jazz education content company since the inception. And now, like the rest of the world, we're constantly on Zoom. We're constantly live on YouTube.

There's like five-year-olds in there. kindergarten on Zoom, aren't there? Oh, yeah. Everybody's. My five-year-olds. Yeah. I don't have five-year-olds anymore, but you know what I'm saying. But we thought we would just share some really important things that we've learned to help

musicians that want to up their stream game. That's right. That's right. Because I think, you know, we were just in here talking about all the ongoing difficulties we have. But when we look at it, we love to flip things upside down here at Open Studio and here at the you'll hear a podcast specifically and look at them from a different lens, look at them from a different direction.

and we've put out some really, really edifying and interesting streams, actually, very proud of the work we've done. And so we realize in talking to each other, you know, like, let's, let's, we're not experts in this, but we're experts in how to figure this out on the fly in a couple of months and a couple of weeks. And most importantly, kind of keep the content getting out there because that's really when our priority has been, how do we serve people when we can't play music for them directly? How do we get content for people that are on lockdown that might want to learn how to play jazz better? Yeah, the podcast is great. The lessons, we've got all that stuff. But we were looking for ways to do it even more immediately help people connect with people and really provide what we had for people during lockdown.

And live streaming was kind of the channel and the methodology we found. That's right. And so some of the ways that we live stream, I mean, we do so many different kinds of live streams. So we do, we'll do like your standard, your bog standard Q&A. Yeah. We've done plenty of those. We also do concerts. Like you do your Friday night shelter in place concert, solo piano concert. We do things like our listening session every Tuesday evening on YouTube. We do a session where you and I just sit down. We listen to a record that we pick and we do it with our audience and we talk about it in between tracks and we discuss the history of it and what we love about it and things like that. We do things like tutorials. We do things like guide to practice sessions. Got to practice sessions. We do all kinds of things. Duo concerts where we do remote duos between two different musicians where they'll sort of switch off.

Yep. Kind of remote situations with a guest. Right. Not playing together because the technology is not quite there yet. We're not all James, uh, Jacob Collier, you know what I'm saying? Like we can't all figure out how to do that on the fly. That much we haven't figured out. You got to go to him for it.

He has a tutorial on that. Ain't that the truth. Yeah. But I think the thing, and this really can be our, our first main point with this is like, you have to be open to improvisation. with streaming. Like that is an important thing. It is an immediate medium. This is not for people that want to script everything out because it's live. You know, it's just like doing a concert, but because we'd like to bring the spirit of improvisation to everything that we do, we've tried

a bunch of different things. And most of them have actually kind of stuck. We've let a few things fall by the wayside because you can't do everything. But I think going into this, we made the decision along with the other open city artists that we're going to try some things and see what broad value to folks and then really start to double, triple, quadruple down on those. So what are the things that matter when you're streaming? There's, I think there's like a kind of a top five things that really make the difference between a good stream and a bad stream. The first, I think, is obvious.

No, is that going to be? Well, kind of. It's content. It's content. No matter how quality your stream is. Right. How matter how good your cameras look and how great your audio sounds and, you know, if you are talking about terrible stuff,

right. It's not going to be good. You got to stick with your wheelhouse. You got to stick with what you know. That's right. You have to be authentic. I mean, you know,

look, we believe this deeply in everything that we do. And that's what this podcast is about is listening, but it's really about authenticity. We're talking about stuff that we love, that we know and that we're passionate about and that you guys are the listeners as well. So that doesn't change with live streaming.

But what it does is live streaming exposes if you're not, being authentic because with editing with selective use of footage um with color grading with all these different technological things that we can do you can kind of wash over some and make things seem authentic that aren't in live streaming you can't because it's just like you're naked there on stage where you're not actually naked that's a different kind of live streaming that we are not involved in but you are who you are and so the content to your point that you're presenting better be an area you don't have to be the world's foremost expert Oh, certainly not.

No, but I mean, but it has to be something that you know that you bring value to and that you're passionate about, really. Yeah, it has to, I mean, authentic is the word of the day for that. And I love that we started with this with concept because I know a lot of people are thinking, oh, is it what kind of mic that you have? Is it what headphones? Is it what streaming platform? Not at all. Like that's all important, but not nearly as important as what you bring, your heart, your spirit. I mean, you could just, and we've done this many times.

You know, we've gotten with the phone. And sometimes people see the equipment. They're like, oh my God, how did you do this? And sometimes, you know, we're like something's not working or whatever. And we're just sitting there holding the phone and talking to it and using the built-in mic. You're better off doing that and speaking from your heart and really trying to put something great out into the world to the best of your ability, authentic content that resonates with you and your audience, then you are to have the perfect setup and you're not authentic with your content. I would say the other thing to do, I mean, really the first thing you could do to up your quality is to really, you know, make sure that you have a, the highest quality.

internet streaming that you can get. Get your Ethernet game together. Everything you do. Oh, how do you hear about Ethernet? That's an interesting thing. I remember. Well, I did a lot of research. You knew a guy, right?

No, you hit me to this. But I mean, I also upped my, like, as soon as this went down, I called up AT&T, and I was like, yo, I need whatever you got. Did you say they had you on a 1998 plan? They were like, oh, we just been waiting for you to call. Yeah. Oh, you want it faster internet? We had you on the slow one that costs more actually.

You also want some of those AOL disks to load up with? And I was like, no, I'm good. I'm good. No, but like, internet speed for sure. Because no matter, again, you get the good mics, you get the good cameras,

if you got potato quality internet speed, exactly. None of it matters. It's actually worse because if you're trying to show, I mean, it's just like a garden hose. The more information and bits that you're trying to put

and all the, the better equipment for streaming has more demands. I mean, if you want to stream in 4K and you've got potato level internet, it's going to be no bueno. You're better off just going

with your phone in that case. And in a lot of areas, you know, I got AT&T fiber. It was actually cheaper than what I was, paying and it's like literally a hundred times faster than I was getting. And let's just, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, so I think the key is just call your, you know, your internet provider or, you know,

like look it up, see what your options are now as opposed to even a year or two ago. Yeah. You're going to, you might be surprised. And an important thing with streaming, um, in general that this really ties into is you have to have a growth mindset with this because stuff is changing all the time. It's very dynamic. So a lot of times people will be like, oh, they might look at this and be like, oh, I live in an area where my internet, you can't get fast internet. And that's a big problem in the US, especially. Like, we have one of the worst internet systems

of the so-called developed world. I don't know if you knew that. That's weird. We're kind of the richest country there. Exactly, exactly. But don't stop there. Like a growth mindset is like, well, no, no, I'm going to still figure this out.

A non-growth mindset is like, oh, I live somewhere, so I can't do streaming. Yes, you can do it from anywhere. You might have to get more creative with your things. And I would just say this. And the whole reason I knew about the Ethernet thing and told you that that's basically a hardwire whatever you're doing as close as possible to your router. And a lot of times people are on Wi-Fi.

They're like, oh, no, I've got really good Wi-Fi or whatever. Whatever it is is never going to be as good as if you're hardwired in. And so that's the easy. And the only reason I knew this is because I use two things, the growth mindset, but also networking. Like talk to people that know this stuff. That's right. I mean, you can listen to what we're saying, but even go take what we're saying that we learn from experts. When this whole thing started, I was like, man, how can we get our streaming better?

I was thinking, like, do we need better cameras? Do we need, like, how do we do this? And I called a friend of mine that works at Lincoln Center is one of the top engineers there. And he was like, usually he's working all the time. And, you know, he's amazing front of house engineer in some of the biggest halls there. But he was just chilling. There's no live performance. He's like, I'd be glad to talk to you.

And he's like, well, you know, streaming is not my expert area. He's like, but I'm going to call the head of streaming for Lincoln Center. I'll call you right back. He calls me back 20 minutes later. And he's like, how's your internet speed? And I was like, come on, man. Tell me about the equipment. I got a Bible.

Our internet's fine. We're really fast. We got, it's as good as it can be. And he's like, no, no, no. He's like, are you hardwired? I was like, no, but we got good. And he was like, no. He said, how long is your cable?

How far are you physically from your router? He's like, that he said, the most important thing is the speed of the internet. He's like, all the other stuff is just like window dressing if you don't have that. And so that's the only reason I knew about it. No, some of the stuff is counterattuitive. Like the next thing that I would spend money on after the internet would be actually CPU power. Yes. Like that is the thing.

Again, you can have the nicest camera. You can have the live stream software. You can have all the different angles. And if you have a puny MacBook error that you're trying to run this on, it's not going to work. That's right. It's not going to stream. It's going to look potato quality. It's going to crash.

It's going to be bad. And even if it's working now, there's going to come in time when you're going to want to add another camera angle. You're going to do something. You know whenever it's like, oh, let me make my quality worse. Yeah. So your computer might be okay now, but prepare it for the future. And actually, everything besides this, you can get. really good on the cheap. So invest in the CPU power. That's right. You would not ever be disappointed

if you spend money on your CPU power. Then after that, I don't know about you, but I'm not going video even after that. I am going audio after that. I'm spending money next. Yes. On these little boxes that we've invested in. Yes. Our little focus rights. Man, we need a sponsorship from FocusRide, man. We really do. So we use FocusRod on pretty much everything on the shelter places. Yeah. Well, we have our two-channel Scarlet, we have our big 16 channel, we have I have a four-channel at my place that I use for all my live streams.

And these are like 150 bucks, right? Yeah, no, these are, this is what I'm saying. Like you spend money on the CPU, you get better internet, then you can, everything else is relatively inexpensive that you can slowly build up over time. Right. So go with that focus right first. I would say even before

microphones, because this, this is the interface between your microphones, your whatever into your computer. So it's really important that you have something, reliable and that you meets your needs we use two channels for the podcast uh i use four channels at home we use more here in the studio it just depends on what your needs are uh but again i'd like to overshoot when i buy this stuff i like to to go for what if you know again i'm probably growing this

so what am i going to need two years from now that's right and and and the the conceptual thing about audio versus video it's a little bit counterintuitive or or at least folks are always surprised by They think video. It's video, so the video is more important than the audio. Those two elements, the one that has an outsized proportion on people's perception of how good the stream is when they say is actually audio. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, both are important, but audio is, if it sounds bad, people are more likely to click off very fast.

And they won't know why. Like, actually people will say like, oh, that stream looks terrible. And sometimes you look at it. It actually looks okay, but the sound is wet. Or you're out of sync. Well, I don't know if we're going to have a chance to get into. that gets a little complicated with latency and stuff, but that's important because if you're out of sync with your video and audio, and this is another reason I'm saying, like, don't get

overwhelmed by this and be like, oh my God, they're talking about interfaces. I don't have the cables. I can't. A lot of this stuff is hard to order right now. We did have an advantage because a lot of this equipment we had. It's catching up. It's getting easier. But a lot of you might get frustrated. I can tell you this. If you don't understand all this, and this is going to be our next point is, first of all, start streaming today. If you want to stream, don't wait until you Don't wait till you have the perfect system. Everyone has a phone pretty much. And you can stream with just this.

Yep. The beautiful thing about this is you don't have to worry about latency. Your video and your audio, it's not the greatest, but it's pretty darn good depending on your model of your smartphone. We stream with these all the time. We stream with them all the time. And the good thing is if you don't know what you're doing with this other stuff,

your audio and video will at least be in sync. And that's a danger once you start going multi-cam, external camera. Because, you know, we got some great cameras in here, but they have horrible audio, worse than this, actually. So then you've got to get good mics and stuff. And it's all worth it. as you do it, but don't let the technology be a barrier, you know. A next big thing for the audio is a microphone.

And so we use the sure SM7s. These are definitely... I think we're the only podcasters in the world using these currently, right? Yeah, I can't believe more podcasters don't use these. No, these are, this is like the podcast microphone. This is Joe Rogan. Yeah, yeah. Let's call it what it is.

But it's because of the sound that it gets, especially for lower voices like ours. Yes. Baritones. Yes. And the progen, and the prox, proximity effect that it has. It's really, really cool. Definitely worth an investment. And remember when our buddy, Dr. Chuck started their podcast, that was one of the first things that we advised them to do is like invest in some decent mics next. And you don't have to spend $450 on the, on two of these things, you know, each. You can, you can spend,

again, you know, a little bit on a hundred bucks, a little bit over a hundred bucks. It's going to get you actually about 80% of the way here. Yeah, what's the road over there we have is a pretty good? That's like a $60 mic. It's a little road. $60. It's probably 80% of this. It is 80% of this. Yeah, we actually, that's, it's a road USB mic that we send to our artists

who are sheltering in place in New York or other places in the country or the world. And we just advise them to, you know, make sure it's close enough to their face that it doesn't, you know, that they can get picked up. But it sounds really good. It sounds really, really good.

So make sure that you're not doing all this stuff. You got your focus right. You got your fancy internet. You got your Wi-Fi. You got your fancy CPU and then you're just using your laptop mic. No. At least get a USB mic. It's something that gets, what happens is, is when your mic is all the way over here,

you can hear a lot more of the room. It's harder to hear what I say. But if it's right here, you're all good. When you got a nice mic and then you can put a right up against your face, it's like a smooth pat of butter. It's butter. Like a little vegan butter up in there. Like a little vegan butter.

Yeah. And actually, if you, you know, if due to budgetary constraints, What you could do is get that road USB, that little $60 sucker, use that because it's USB, but you can also get a version that goes into your phone or we can talk about integrating them. Use your camera from here because the camera is really good on here. The mics are not great on here. Mike's not great. But you can buy a lightning lab.

You can buy any kind of mic that goes into your iPhone. Yeah. And then you know, you're going to be in sync and you're going to have some surprisingly good. Then you just got to make sure your content's on point. Again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's audio. That's CPU. That's Wi-Fi. What about video? We talked about the iPhone, but what else? What else do we use around here?

Okay. So we're on a bunch of the different platforms because we have not been able to find one streaming platform that can do everything we need. So the big thing with this is be flexible and be ready to learn. Like there is no one item. I mean, even for professional like broadcasting networks and stuff I've noticed, they have to use several different things because they're bringing in. remote guests and, you know, in different ways. So I think what we have found is, well, let's just talk about Zoom first because Zoom is a little bit unavoidable for anything for anything. I mean, not only for like talking to people, but, but it's so useful for some of the GPS as we've done with you and with, well, I mean, all of the GPS is that you do internally, but also even like when we've had guests doing GPSes and even like live streaming, if you want to have multiple people on camera from remote locations, Zoom can do things that nobody else can do.

and you can go straight out of there. Pretty much, pretty simply, right to YouTube or Facebook as well, which is nice. Yeah, but Zoom has some issues. Zoom has some issues that are very anti- they're not anti-musician. It's just if you go with the default audio settings, you're going to get something that's optimized for voice

and not voice coming out of a good mic like this. It is optimized for either talking on your phone with the built-in or really it's more for just the laptop thing. You know, getting rid of background noise and stuff like that. What you want to do is go in your audio settings in Zoom. There's that little microphone icon. go to your advanced settings and turn off all of the audio processing turn off as much of the you know get rid of background noise of all of that stuff just just get rid of it you just want the mic and back and forth and so that zoom isn't cutting other people off and then you're able to get clear and this is this works really well actually for for instruction i know a lot of people are teaching over zoom yeah so if you're teaching over zoom go check your audio settings tweak it there's also there's a ton of great videos yeah yeah just put yeah music settings you know play playing music uh zoom on on youtube you'll see some great things.

And also turn off the automatic level on anything, I think. On anything. Anything you're going to do music, that's really optimized for people with crappy mics. And if you don't have a good setup, it's fine to do that. But for music, it never works well. And really, this is good advice for whatever platform you're on, whether that's YouTube or we use Stream Yard, we use e-cam, all that stuff. Check the video and audio settings.

And don't just assume that the presets are there to help you for music. Because often the presets are there for speaking. That's right. And so playing music and instruments and going back and forth is a different vibe. And so make sure that your presets are on point for everything. Yep, yep. Okay, so let's now talk about music because that's ultimately what we're doing. I think, you know, talking in a live streaming situation, there's a lot of good info out there.

And that's a little easier to get to with a good microphone and, you know, video as far as that. But the music side with the audio is very important. If you're talking about a piano, if you're talking about drums, anything. the great thing and the difficult thing about this for live streaming is okay the great part about it and the simple part is it's really no different than trying to record the process of recording high quality audio in a studio that's right the way that you capture sounds so all the information that's out there in terms of microphone placement say for a piano and you know using really good quality preamps and having a really good mix and like being in a room like basically having it sound good yeah just starting with a good sound goes again to 80% yeah with yeah if you if you have a nice piano you know we did that live stream with fred hirsch he's got that amazing piano he had one microphone on there and it sounded awesome it sounded awesome no one was missing anything yeah so there's a lot of things that you can a lot of hoops you can jump through to try to improve crappy sound it is hard but you're better off

getting good good pianists good piano a good drummer good drums yep and then some really good mics and then what you're going to be pushing through the streaming system, it's just a matter of making sure there's nothing, basically it screws up that sound. So like in the Zoom, it's the audio settings. Streamyard has another setting that we found in there, that you have to do a similar thing where you basically just have to have to have the, the wherewithal to chase down everything that these streaming systems are doing

in their way of optimizing it for voice. You want to just turn all that off. So you've got a great sound coming in and then make sure that any kind of optimization is taken off so that you can get that pure sound. And you want that fast internet so that great audio and video can come through. And for things like MIDI keyboards,

yeah. Like be very aware of the software you're using. We use, for a lot of stuff, Piano Tech 6, and we got it because it's a very lightweight software. Again, if you don't have the CPU power to support something, it doesn't matter how good it sounds if your computer is constantly glitching. Right.

Right. And clipping, you hear a clipping sound, which is that classic, my computer is really struggling to keep up. Streaming is a different game than recording. It takes up even more CPU power. You have your camera on at the same time. It's all being run usually by the same thing. And so just be aware when you're running your MIDI instruments to get something light,

lightweight, light on your CPU load. Yep. And the thing is, too, that's kind of a philosophical approach. Like we've got this super powerful Mac mini here, probably for what we got that for. actually for this was less than like we could have got a really nice looking iMac that you would have been that visually would have been great that would that would have cost more and not been as powerful as this you've got a crappy little monitor over there but philosophically we've put

the the funds that we did have into the CPU power because like that's that's kind of what it's about yeah i mean if you've if you've got the budget where you can just go crazy on all this you get the power mac or whatever and you or you get the incredible power five thousand dollar iMac but we all have budgets and so allocate your money smartly in terms of like what is the end result are you trying to be in a studio where you feel cool and you really like it or are you trying to get the end result of what the person watching your stream like what is it that's important that you want them to be able to experience of your content and like what is the most efficient way to get that from point a to point b once you start doing that a lot of these decisions become a little bit clearer in terms of

like okay if i've got a five hundred dollar budget what do i put that for if i've got five thousand yeah you think that that's easier but not necessarily you know if you don't have that goal in mind and know why it is that you're doing this and really to that point i would say that you know and i was going to make this as our bonus but we'll go ahead and put it as maybe as a kind of final concept of our tips for how to up your stream game i got one more i got one more i want to miss okay good that'll be the bonus okay cool okay good um but that is just that like for all the things that we said what's important is that you do not take on more than you can handle with streaming like you have to be adventurous, but streaming is a little bit binary in that like it either works or it doesn't.

Yeah. There's certainly a qualitative part. And we've tried to talk about ways to kind of level up your quality specifically for music. But sometimes it's just a matter of it works or it doesn't. And so if you have everything right, but you miss one element and the end result of the user not being able to see your great content and everything. So and then there's a learning curve to it. So if you've made it so convoluted and complicated and we've fallen prey to this sum,

although we've got a lot of still. Never. Possibly. No, but I mean, like you want to avoid things that are going to keep you from being able to get up. I mean, a certain point, you've got to turn the thing on and be like,

hey, I'm Peter Martin and this is my live stream. Oh my gosh, there's two people there. There's seven people. There's 700. We've done stuff with all those different numbers. But at a certain point,

it's you and the camera and you try to help people or entertain them or do whatever. Yeah, and so you can't put up too many barriers between you and that. Yes, you want your quality to be as good as possible. But until you jump in, and start doing this, it's very hard to figure that out. Let's do our bonus. Hey, put the bonus bell on.

If this is helping you up your stream. Hey, you know what? If we did this correctly, they're seeing it. If not, we screwed something up and we missed the... Very possible. They're seeing it. Go ahead and get notifications. We go live all the time. Go live with us. Yes. The bonus for today is buy yourself a light.

We have this little square light here. You can get... We didn't even talk about light. No, you can get lights super cheap. They make all the difference. Like, we're... I think that's an $18 light. It's an $18 light. We are going for like a very... What are we going for you?

We're going for kind of a moody look. You got a little shadow on the side of your face. You know what I mean? I got a darkened, rustic, in many quotes, studio behind me. But it's intentional, at least. You know what I mean? And that happens with the lighting. Buy yourself one of these little square lights.

You can get them very cheaply. LED lights, I think they're. LED lights, and you can get so much mileage out of it. It's way better. But again, you don't even have to start there. If you're with your iPhone, just make sure that the window is behind your iPhone. Yeah, use natural lighting. Exactly.

You're all good. Use natural light. Yeah, I would say the two things, if you're like, okay, I'm overwhelmed or three things that I would ask you to focus in on that we said today, if you're not going to be able to grab all this at one time. And we didn't figure this all at one time either, but is up your audio game. Yep. First.

Yep. Internet connection, really good, hardwired, if possible. Yep. Max that out. Totally. And pay attention to lighting. Even before you go buy a fancy camera and all that stuff, use your phone and some lighting or use the outside.

And look, don't be afraid to learn. Like a lot of this stuff, we just like went on YouTube and, and there's so many thoughtful, smart people. But look, if you want to learn about lighting, don't go on YouTube to somebody whose channel they have constantly bad lighting and they're going to tell you about buy these lights. You know, I mean, that's really easy. That's the great thing about this. You can, you can look at people and see what the, or if it's not the style that you're

looking for. Don't follow what they're saying no matter what their name brand is or whatever. That's right. Go with a look that you want. Find someone that's been willing to share and that knows how to do it in a lot. I love our little, you'll hear at Moody look that we got going on here. This is emergency. Pandemic version.

Remember we're in our basements remotely? Awesome. Well, thanks everybody for paying attention. I hope you found some of this helpful. You know, this is really lessons that we've learned out of necessity during this time as we've kind of transitioned to do much more live streaming. You can always go to open studio jazz.com slash live to check out our live stream schedule. We're live like all the time.

Yes. And our artists as well. I mean, we got folks down in Brazil. some of our artists that are doing lives and we're doing remotes and yeah cool until next time you'll hear