Record Everything

Hey, what's up gigging pros. It's Jared Judge and welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Today, I wanted to share with you the secret weapon to help bolster your website, your social media profiles, your YouTube presence, just how to maximize the potential of somebody coming in to any of those places, and jumping to the conclusion that they have to book you. So when somebody is browsing for you, or for a band, or a musical acts similar to yours, to potentially hire for their event, they're going on those profiles. And the thing that they look at first, is the videos. So they will be clicking on your videos, they will be watching your videos. And how do I know this? This? I know this because I've got a lot of analytics tools. On my website, where I can see when somebody clicks on my video, they click on the play button. And they can actually see that. For those of you who are kind of curious, what is that tool, there's a tool called Hot jar that I use to monitor where people visit on my website and what buttons and things they click on. So hot jar, there's like a free plan, but then there are paid plans. So I see when people click on my videos, and it's nearly every single website visit. But then I also have analytics tools built into my videos, I use Vimeo, I actually pay for their Vimeo plus, which gives me analytics tools to see how much of my videos do people watch. And it's a significant amount, they give you a graph of you know, people start watching it. And then as time goes by, people will drop off so the graph shrinks down afterwards. So you can see that people do watch a lot of videos. So I definitely recommend those two tools. But what if you don't have a lot of video on your website? Or what if you don't have any video. And then, of course, the third case scenario is what if the videos you have are not very good? Well, the solution to that is record everything. If you and your group are going to do a rehearsal recorded, set up your phone on a music stand if you don't have a phone tripod, or just go on Amazon, grab yourself a phone tripod, they're pretty, pretty cheap, like $15, I think I saw was one of the most common ones. And that is good enough, like just start recording on your phone. But if you want to over time, start to improve the quality of your videos. That's when you might want to invest in some some better equipment. But you know, record everything, record your rehearsals, record your practices, and then record your gigs. This is something I don't see a lot of people doing is, it's so easy to just set up your phone on the tripod out, you know by the wall near when you're near your gig. So just set that up, press the record button and then play. It's that simple. And you'll get great footage, you might want to ask for permission from the person who's hosting the event. You know, it's totally up to you. And as I mentioned before, you might want to start to increase the quality of your recording equipment. Which, if you have an iPhone, I would definitely recommend the microphone that I'm actually using to record this podcast, which is a Shure MV 88. I've mentioned it a while ago on this podcast. But it's it's still such a great tool. So get started off by upgrading your your cameras or your phone's microphone by getting an external microphone. So short MBA is a great option. And then as you start to get more successful, and if you've built a profit margin into your gigs, you have some more money to invest in equipment. That's where I would actually suggest getting to where I'm at right now, which is I bought a DSLR camera, which is I've got the Canon EOS 90 D, which is pretty expensive. But if you again build it in your profit margin into your gigs, you can get this amazing camera. It's a DSLR camera, which you know originally was meant for just taking stills. But with the advent of digital, it is now a really amazing video camera. You know, I don't think you even need to go the route of getting a camcorder these days just DSLRs work perfectly for that situation. So EOS 90 D and it has a pretty decent onboard microphone. The most important part here is getting a tripod for it. So you'll want to invest in its own tripod. That way you can set it up, you might even want to get extra battery pack for it. And then the onboard microphone does, you know have its limits. So you might want to consider upgrading to a Rode Microphone rode I think makes the best DSLR attachment attachment microphones. So you could check that out too. I haven't than that yet, I'm still using. I actually bought a kit for the camera that came with a bunch of accessories. And it came with an external shotgun style microphone, which works pretty good but I think I'm about ready to pull the trigger on getting one of the Rode Microphones for my DSLR. So, yeah, bring that to every gig. Bring that to every rehearsal and just record anytime you play a note you it's another opportunity to add to your social media presence add to your website. So just set up the your your phone if you starting in that with just the phone or set up your DSLR camera and just hit record record everything. And that's how the game is played. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I hope this inspires you to record the next time that you play a single note and then upload it to to YouTube or wherever you host your videos. And shoot me a message if you do that and you find that helpful. Alright, thanks for tuning in. I will see you in the next episode. And remember, you are just one gig away.