Doing it Live - Kicking off Soundbox Sessions
The pandemic crisis has hit everyone hard, but it has been exceptionally difficult for those in the performing arts and music world. As live performances and concert spaces have shut down, a large source of income has been lost for musicians and music artists. Unfortunately, we don’t really see an end in sight and even if gigs start to make a return soon, it will be in a diminished capacity.
Controlling the stream from behind our portable stream setup. Artist: Melissa Ratley
Queue the creative solutions from the creative community!
A few months ago, Mindy Arendt with Denton Friends with Benefits, had the great idea to start a live music session and stream it for all to enjoy. This would be a way for local artists to at least reach a few eager ears and hopefully make some scratch while doing it. The sessions would be hosted by Denton music school, Soundbox Music Works and named after the school. This became Soundbox Sessions. Streaming and video expertise would be tackled by us at Colectivo Creative Media and audio by Totem Audio Engineering. Each organization volunteers their time and a way to give back to the community that is struggling and make the best of a bad situation.
We’ve decided to dedicate ourselves to 2 live gigs a month, with each month generally consisting of a different theme/genre. Our first few sessions have been a learning experience and manage to improve exponentially after each iteration. Our first gig featured local violinist, Leoncarlo, and his expansive talent for creating musical soundscapes.
Leoncarlo had a great idea of visually focusing on the music rather the musician. We interpreted this idea and focused on lighting his instrument, while having him solely in silhouette.
We feel like our sessions are quite a bit different than other sessions around and pride ourselves on putting the music first. With every artist being very different in tone and style, we’d rather not approach each session with the same visual style. Hell, we’re a creative media company, let’s create some cool looking visuals. This was our opportunity to really experiment visually. Our goal was to create amazing, cinematic looking sessions in a flooded landscape of generic, plain looking online performances. We wanted the audience to be engaged not only through the music, but what they’re watching as well.
Leoncarlo lending his piano expertise for some test footage as we prep our lighting setup for another artist.
The final image from our actual live performance featuring L25.
As we continue to do Soundbox Sessions, we’ll continue to share our behind-the-scenes stories and insight to how we approached the artist with a unique setup. We have a lot more sessions already booked well into next year. Stay tuned and be sure to check out each session at Soundbox Music Work’s Facebook page. Enjoy the show!