What I'm now doing with the little studio - Bird Youmans - Blog 4
Today's Video
So now I finished the new little studio in July 2019. Blog 3 tells you about it if you haven't already read it. It took another couple of months to move all the gear I needed from the studio in Covington and get set up. But once I did, what a neat little set up. Since the projects I do now are basically a one man situation, it does not require the larger facility I moved from. I basically set up the recording gear in the front half of the room in a large U shape such that my mixer and monitors along with the computer monitor are in front of me and my keyboards are on one side and my machines are on the other. Tho I use a computer with a digital work station in it to record the tracks, I still mix down to a dedicated CD burner/mastering machine and that way the minute I get it into the machine I can then sequence the songs in whatever order I want them in to burn a master CD. I also have duplicating machines that I can make copies with on that side as well. It's a nice setup and very efficient. And the other half of the room has a green screen on the wall and my cameras and lights always set where they go making that efficient as well. As you will see, I could not do what I'm doing now time wise if it were not all set and ready to go all the time.
So what am I doing with it? This requires that I go back and do a bit of a back story. I was looking thru my comments one day and a sweet lady whose youtube name is Tammy Dear said "you need to be doing a TV show". I was 73 at the time and I sort of chuckled to myself and said (I talk to myself often lol!) "yeah buddy, the networks are really looking for an old guy with no hair and thick glasses to do a TV show lol!". Little did I know that it would plant a seed. Thank you Tammy! I had videoed the process of building the studio and was about half way thru editing the vids. I was about to bite off more than I could chew but of course did not know that until it was too late.
I was hungry to record some new songs and make some new videos when I realized that live stream was starting to happen a lot on youtube because once again, the internet was getting much faster and more and more people now had high speed internet making real time upload and watch possible. Livestream! And that comment came to me that Tammy Dear had put in a comment "you need to do a TV show". Oh my. Now that was possible. As I said, now if you have a youtube account, you have a hi def TV channel of your own that within the guidelines on youtube, which are actually rather loose, you can put about whatever you want on it and it is world wide, 24/7.
Well, as I organized the studio and put everything in place for future videos of my songs, this idea started to form in my mind. Why not do a sing along show that appears to come from a stage and put the words on the videos so people could follow along? And as I worked, I imagined and thought and pondered and started to work out how to go about it. It took almost 6 months of planning and development and finding the right look and feel but it started coming together and by November I was pretty sure how I would go about it.
So I found my "stage" and I had an old Amish rocking chair that Linda had given me one Christmas that I love dearly but has an "old time" feel to it and I had an old wooden table top radio from around the 30's that fit the scene and the mood perfectly. So I did some practice runs to see how best to set it all on the stage and such. Seems obvious now, but at the time I was still trying things. But I settled on the look and feel and then started to create content.
Unlike my single videos that were somewhat artsy for lack of a better way to put it, these had to appear to be live from the stage. So I worked on how to create that illusion and at first that was all I did, just put me "live" on the stage. In my traveling days I had started telling stories I had learned from the internet about the songs I was singing. Most writers write a song from some sort of experience or feeling about a subject etc. and I had been doing this the last ten years of my travels. So I sat in my rocker, told the stories and then sang the song from the "stage" and put the words up. Simple right? This took hours and hours and hours of work lol!
Sometimes we get into things because we don't know any better lol! But I was enjoying it and I've never been scared to work many hours a day because I love my work. So I threw myself into it and got the first show ready to go. We "opened the doors" in December of 2019 and the show started to grow. Every Friday night 9PM EST. But after a few shows I began to learn better how to present it and as I had ideas I would start to implement them. For example, when I would tell the story of the song, I'd mention artists that had done the song or who the writer was. I figured out a way to use the stage curtain behind me as a projection screen where a picture of the artist could appear and started doing that. It's amazing the pictures of all these people are now on the internet. But tons of research to find all this. There were other ideas here and there but after about a dozen shows I knew then that I had a good handle on the concept.
So I replayed the first 12 shows to buy me some time to "rearrange the furniture" so to speak and the show became pretty much what you see today. I also started adding a segment I called "Philosophiz'n" where I try to impart some spiritual truths into the program. I am not a preacher but I was raised by one and a lot of what I heard Him say, I began to realize had value. But I saw a lot of judgementalness in the Christian community and I was most guilty of it myself. But I knew that was hurting the cause because most people don't appreciate some know it all trying to force their own beliefs on others. I began to try to change and after all, Jesus told us not to judge each other. He's speaking of spiritual judgement here, not the kind of judgement that we use to decide if we want to hang out with someone or not. That's another kind, but also a topic too deep to go into here. Maybe later. He also told us to love one another and to treat others as we'd want them to treat us, feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the needy, stuff like that. Something inside me realized that if we don't start being kind to each other, this descension that seems to be running rampant in the world these days would eventually destroy us.
So all these thoughts just started to come to me and I suppose you could say God was talking to me. No, not in a voice I could hear like I hear you, but more less this realization of certain truths that was starting to form and become very clear to me. You may hear different things, but for me, I just realized we need to get back to respect and common decency for each other. The love of money and material things has given the politicians and certain religious leaders a lot of "juice" to divide us. And my how we have fallen for it.
So I spent two years working non stop either physically or often times mentally creating the content for the show. It was never out of my mind. I was about half way thru editing the studio build videos when I started the show and suddenly there was no time left to finish those edits. Two years went by and this past fall of 2022, I just reached burn out. I was thinking of discontinuing the show tho I really didn't want to, but I was tired. When I mentioned it on the show, several people began to ask me not to stop because it sort of kept them going in many ways. What to do?
But God takes care of us and helps us with solutions when we seek His guidance. Well, it turned out that as I watched my BirdYoumans channel fill up with videos, now we were approaching 80 Sing along shows and the single vids were getting lost in the shuffle. I needed to separate them. Idea! Start a new channel just for the sing along and re-upload them to the new channel. That way we could still get together for the chat room each Friday night as we always had, but I would not be having to spend every minute creating new shows. And as I upload each show, remove it from the single video channel thus clearing the way for people who don't have 45 minutes or an hour to watch a sing along to be able to find the single vids.
I have been working on a new album all during this time trying to bring some new content to the show, but the show was so time consuming that it has taken me 3 years to finish 7 songs lol! But now that I'm uploading the replays, I've had a bit more time and actually finished 3 of the 7 in the last couple of months. Also, having the 3 month respite has renewed my energy and I'm feeling like doing some more shows. So what I've started doing is replays for a while and then do a new show that I call a special now and then and this will be able to go on as long as I can maintain my health. At 77, who knows how long that can be, but for 77, I am blessed with reasonable health. No pain to speak of and no meds necessary. Thank you Lord.
So now I'll just continue recording new songs and making the occasional special. No where near as taxing as it was for a while. I'm also going to finish editing the studio build videos and catch up on some work around the house lol! But I thank God for all of this. I could never have imagined my life winding up like this back in my "secular" days. But God will bless you if you let Him!!
Next time I'm going to tell you about Linda and I. I hope some young folks will read it. You might find some good life lessons in it.
To explore my other youtube channels, click the links below:
A Play List of all my Gospel Songs
Bird's Old Time Gospel Music Sing Along
The sing along channel is where I do a livestream each Friday night at 9PM EST. I put the words on the screen to my videos and we all sing along and I tell stories about the songs as well as some "Philosophiz'n" here and there. We have what might well be the most loving chat room on the internet. Hope you'll join us if you like the old songs! 💔
If you'd like to see the studio being built, here is a play list for some video I shot while building it. I got so busy with my livestream that I am still trying to finish the editing, so there are still some videos to come, but they will be added to the playlist as they become available. Here's the link:
A Play List for building the Little Studio
And the link to my Music Store for my CD's:
Click here to go to My Music Store for CD's
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