(Mr Socks likes to help)

The Being Afraid went live on Twitch sometime on Saturday night. I ended up not trying to promote it on socials as a) it was the first time going live and was destined to be rough as hell and b) I’d decided not to until I had a sudden change of heart and hit ‘start streaming.’ I was planning to just have a run through – which I should have stuck to, as any of the 4 people who randomly tuned in could attest. I’d left the laptop mic on so you would be able to hear every pedal click and ever sigh (and I apparently sigh a lot). I hadn’t set the Zoom Multistop up properly so had to scroll through various effects to get to what I want to. And the bass one one track sounded odd so I decided to run through various awful sounding bass sounds live on air.

It didn’t help that our beloved cat, Mr Socks, decided that he needed to be on camera at all times. He had a bit of a strut up and down the table before settling on the space in my pedal case just above the Elektron Model:Samples. Which threw me off a little. He also had a good scratch at the sponge on the case lid. He likes to help.

Sometimes it’s good to find out what not to do first hand. The hard way is the quickest way to learn in my experience. So it was useful to figure out how best to work things in future. I had some rough visuals lined up with vague timings for how long each track would last. This is pure folly as the whole idea is to keep things loose and free so in future I’m just going to do an hour long looped video I can fade in and out as necessary. Once I’ve figured out the finer points of OBS I’ll be fading into a blended version and an opaque version. It also clarified my thinking on how to best arrange the individual pieces for the eventual recorded versions. I’m thinking of shuffling two of the tracks played on Saturday out to Eremition II/III and go for a unified vibe throughout each one. Eremition I is currently planned as a peaceful, contemplative piece with the two tracks moved out having a darker, more bleak vibe to them.

I am a fickle man however. That may not be how things shake out in the end.

I’ll not be able to do a proper stream for a few weeks now. I’ll hopefully have things in place to get some done in November. Who knows – I might even tell people about the next one..