AN email from the Homesong admin reminds me I’m playing a short livestream set for the this evening. I’d forgotten all about it, although it woulda popped up in the diary later.

My main job today is to film and record a four or five song session for Newtone Strings who make and supply my signature guitar strings. I also use some of their standard strings on acoustic/electric guitar and banjo.

This calls for a little more than a camera and mic flung up, it needs a bit more set design, good lighting and pristine sound.

The set up alone takes me all morning – playing/performing is the easy part and I nail that all in one take.

I let the video ingest into the system while I have lunch then go back to the studio to mix the sound and bring it into the video editor before editing the final piece.

I like the setup and decide that it might be appropriate to use same for tonight’s livestream, so I carry on editing, do some social promo for tonight’s Homesong then go out a quick walk up the hill and do some livestream updates.

Back home I have an hour or so before I need to log on and chat with the Homesong admin before we go live at 8pm. I suddenly realise that my filming setup isn’t gonna adapt quite as simply for a livestream, particularly as I’ll be playing in the live room and the computer/gear is in the control room. Margaret will be managing the stream, but I really need to be able to see and hear the host..and it’s useful to monitor the comments etc coming in so I can give shout outs to folks.

A technical clusterfuck and panic ensues..but we get all sorted in time. There’s something weird happening with the video – it’s a bit pixelated despite an ethernet connection to the internet. The sound’s good tho’, so it’s all OK in the end.

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