EMBRACING the online world of UK lockdown is not something we may have wanted but it’s happening and we have to get used to it, so you might as well get into it. So I am giving it a go – starting with the very basics. Zoom and Facebook Live.
Yes it’s annoying and embarrassing if you let it. Somehow you have to be patient with your own lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity – which means being confident enough to fail and blunder your way through until everything flows smoothly and pleasureably.
This week I started with one guitar lesson on the Zoom teaching platform, one hour long chat with a musician friend and last night I took the plunge into Facebook Live. That’s how slow and anxious I am when it come to learning totally new techie shit – which I find humiliating and yet enjoyable at the same time.
Zoom? Sure, just sign up and start following the instructions on the screen in front of you. I watched this guy’s ESL zoom US tutorial to begin with zoom esol tutorial taken from a YouTube Channel, Teaching ESL Online. The guy is clearly spoken and northern – kind of who I want to learn off – and a teacher of English as a Second Language not a guitar teacher. And, as usual, the actual tutorial wasn’t synched up with what I saw on the Zoom screen when I first signed up. But it got my attention and my brain going.
(by the way if you are like I am and every strange term, abbreviation or bit of jargon annoys you when you fail to recognise it and people appear to enjoy using it at your expense – which is paranoid – then here is a link to a glossary of terms used on YouTube YouTube Glossary )
I immediately slacked off from scheduling on Zoom and went straight to the idea of starting a “meeting” there and then, e mailing my student (then later my musician friend) to send them a link to join the meeting. Then I made sure that I was facing my laptop with a reasonable looking background behind me – the conservatory in the rented house I’m in with a leather sofa given to me by a nice couple at the bar.
You can sign in with your e mail and a password – once you’ve registered with Zoom and follow the download instructions. On the first screen that opens it says “Schedule a New meeting” but you can just click on the top right “host a meeting” and start following the instructions which pop up on your screen – for me, I agreed “with video on” as I was using this laptop but you can do that on your phone.
Either way, if you have someone at the other end who is patient and friendly, and not the sort to blame other people if they can’t work things out, you can work through this together. Then you start doing my favourite thing – start learning on the job. Afterwards if you go back to the YouTube tutorials they start to make more sense.
The next thing to do is learn how to use Facebook Live and I recommend starting with this How To Use Facebook Live: Hubspot
I went to my Facebook page – Mike Kneafsey Guitar – pressed “Live Video” sat on the sofa with my guitar and went for it in a foolhardy way – in public. I didn’t know what I was going to say or what I was going to play. I did know that I had a lot of friends on that page who had followed my cruise musician posts from San Francisco, Mexico and Hawaii and I trusted them. I knew most of them personally and many quite closely over years.
The visuals I could handle in terms of surviving your own vanity but my chatter felt embarrassing and the sound was dreadful to my ears. A kind of gurgling, lost in the wind, fuzzy nightmare. Thankfully, for reasons not clearly understood by me, I got a really decent number of views, likes, comments numbering in the 20s and 30s which for my posts is good. With some truly nice encouragment.
It felt like a good way to connect and great way to play and practice. It was also seriously enjoyable to do as a musician. I came back from the US on March 11th and firstly recovering from COVID-19 and then buying a 4K camera but not knowing how to use it has meant I have had no one to play to for a month.
I have a bunch of songs – over 100 covers – which I love playing and can play inside out plus many of my own but I’ve had no audience. Also, the gurgling sound meant my guitar playing and musical impact was totally negated.
I believe the thing to do is persevere. Try again tonight and try and link up my camera or a microphone to Facebook Live settings. I have no idea, yet, how I might do that.
I also want to bolster the live recording with a pre recorded film of song in better quality using my film camera. I have no real idea of how I am going to do that today. But I’m in a better place with it than I was a month ago.
That’s as good as it gets. First though – it’s England so it’s time to sit out in the sunshine and offline while you can. Here goes.
Check out my Facebook page Mike Kneafsey Guitar tonight at 8.15 if you want to watch the next attempt to get it right while it’s happening. April 10th. 2020. 8.15pm. It’ll be on there afterwards.
The Music Workers Diary 