(Want to know how the experts livestream? Check out these Livestreaming Hacks for Harpists.)

If you had told me three months ago that my living room would be completely taken over by lights, cameras, and streaming equipment galore, I would have had a good chuckle. As an orchestral musician, my living as I knew it was completely turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us have been forced to rethink how we connect with audiences and keep the music (and our bank accounts) alive. As I started developing a new virtual “Harpy Hour” concert series with a local radio station in upstate New York, I stumbled upon a post from my friend Olivia Jaguers (@15secondharp). All the way across the pond, she had serendipitously started a Harpy Hour series of her own! After two months of navigating these new virtual platforms on our own, we decided to put our heads together and share a user-friendly guide to help all harpists learn to stream live concerts. Whether you are a full-time professional musician or beginner, technophobe or streaming genius, your music is needed now more than ever, so let’s get online and share the music.

Getting set up

Our friends and family really are our best promoters.” —Olivia Jaguers

Lights, camera, stream! For those of you just starting out, a smartphone and a solid internet connection are the only two ingredients you need for a virtual performance. You can step up your game a notch by adding a small plug-in mic that goes directly to your phone. While investing in high-quality equipment is ideal, you can still achieve top-notch performances with this simple set up. Before you go live for your audience, I highly recommend you do a test stream (set to private so only you can see) that will show you exactly how you sound and look to make sure it meets your expectations.

Olivia uses a pair of directional Josephson C42 mics that connect through an Apogee Duet interface to her laptop, which she says really enhance the harp’s sound through Zoom. “They were a big investment, which I made a few years ago to start doing remote sessions from home.” Olivia notes that now is not a time most people can afford to invest in expensive tech equipment, though, so she suggests getting an idea of your baseline sound first. “It is worth recording yourself playing in a new Zoom meeting alone to see how your harp sounds without any additional support. Listen back to the meeting and experiment with adjusting the position of your device and the mic levels within Zoom’s audio settings.

Virtual venue

The two easiest ways to share concerts are publicly through Facebook, or privately through Zoom.

The beautiful thing about Facebook Live concerts is that they are accessible to anyone—your potential audience doesn’t even need to have a Facebook account to view your live video, as long as you have it set to public in the settings. The upside of this is that your music can be discovered by a friend, or friend of a friend, without them having to seek it out, buy a ticket, or even leave their house. The downside is that sometimes people are less likely to “commit” to watching an entire performance if they don’t feel personally invited or invested. Nevertheless, you can work to develop your Facebook audience over time by engaging with them in the chat section and thanking people for coming.

The great thing about Zoom is that you can see your audience, making it feel as close to a “normal” concert experience as possible. As the host, you have the ability to mute everyone watching and to withhold the ability to unmute themselves. Finally there is a way to enable the silence classical musicians have always craved during a performance! Your audience can eat, drink, and be merry during your performance without any chance of distracting other attendees. You can create your own (relaxed) rules in this new virtual concert hall. For example, when Olivia sends a reminder email to those coming to her Harpy Hour, she includes a cocktail recipe as a clue to some of the music she’ll be playing. So far there has been a Pixar Piña Colada (when she played music from Up and Toy Story), a “Forrest” Fruit Bellini (when somebody requested the theme from Forrest Gump) and a Moana Mocktail (for the beloved Disney character’s main song).

Marketing

Olivia is a firm believer that word of mouth is the best way to publicize, and that starts with family and friends. “The first Harpy Hour I hosted, 14 people came, and I knew them all,” she says. “They then shared the information with their friends and family and it has now grown so that, on average, 70 people are buying tickets to watch every Friday.”

Olivia encourages guests to buy a ticket as a gift to a friend, and then she emails the friend all the details like a gift voucher. “Our friends and family really are our best promoters.”

As much as we rely on social media, it’s easy for material to get buried in the crush of content. As an alternative, consider creating your own newsletter using a free e-newsletter service like Mailchimp. The benefit to newsletters is you can personalize them, share direct links to performances, and reach audiences who aren’t on Facebook.

Audience interaction

Your audience members might not be sitting next to each other in a concert hall, but they can still interact. Olivia points out that the chat feature on Zoom enables audience members to give feedback during the performance. “Yes, you are at risk of receiving virtual heckles, but that is very unlikely if your audience members have chosen to set aside the time to watch your online concert,” she says. “I personally love that I can find out immediately if the audience particularly enjoyed a piece.” She says some audience members strike up conversation between each other while she’s playing. “That’s great too—you want to create a good vibe and friendly experience.”

Olivia notes that she will unmute some people, and ask them where they are listening from and to introduce their request. “I have been loving the human connection now possible between myself and the audience, which feels especially vital in this strange lockdown land.”

As an advocate for interactive performance, I love the intimacy and accessibility of Facebook Live concerts. While it may be difficult at first to multi-task between playing and talking, I eventually found the interaction to be incredibly rewarding and comforting. As you perform, feel free to cue your friends who are watching with a prompt. “As I perform this beautiful Handel concerto, feel free to comment on your favorite Handel piece!” This encourages people to chat with each other and helps to break the ice seriously.

Programming

One major consideration in choosing the music you play is copyright protection. You need to have permission from the piece’s copyright holder unless it is in the public domain. Facebook will actually delete a section of your live video if they believe there is any chance of copyright infringement, so it’s definitely something to take seriously.

I have found that generally, shorter pieces are nice because they help maintain the audience’s attention span. In Olivia’s Harpy Hour, people send song requests when they purchase their tickets. “Yes, somebody requested Pachelbel’s Canon in the first week, but I’ve also had requests for “Sanctus” from Faure’s Requiem, the second movement from Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and more humorous suggestions of aptly named songs like The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” “I’m a big fan of contemporary classical music,” she says, “and if you’d asked me before COVID-19 if I would ever have done a concert of pop songs I would have said no. However, when lockdown started I just wanted to create something that would make people instantly feel good. Now nothing cheers me up more than playing some Queen or ABBA on the harp. It has actually probably been good for me to reflect on snobbish tendencies that are created by the classical music world. It is important to remember that it takes a strong sense of rhythm to play a good cover of a pop song. A piece doesn’t have to be technically challenging for you to show off your musical talent.” Olivia adds that she has also started playing at least one original harp piece each week, which the audience (mainly non-harpists) seem to enjoy discovering.

Monetization

Olivia says that as a freelance professional musician she knew she had to start charging straight away for these concerts out of her immediate need to earn a living. “I have posted a lot of free content on Instagram and Facebook (@15secondharp) over the past several years, giving tips for composers about how to write better for our instrument,” she points out. “Although that bought exposure in the long-run, I needed to think of a short term plan, and fast!” Olivia says she believes people value an experience more even if they have only invested even a small amount of money. “For my Harpy Hour, I ask for a donation via PayPal from about $3 to receive a ticket,” she says. “I appreciate that this is a difficult financial time for most people in the world, but there are also a lot of people who can afford  to spend the cost of a takeaway coffee on entertainment during lockdown.”

Live and let livestream

Just as musical mistakes happen in a live performance, technical problems will happen during a livestream, no matter how big or small an enterprise. “It wasn’t until my eighth Harpy Hour that my screen froze on Zoom,” Olivia recalls. “In a state of panic I thought I should try turning the wi-fi on my laptop off then on again. My laptop then refused to reconnect to the internet, and I had to restart my computer.” Olivia texted a friend who was in the Zoom audience, and the friend chatted with the rest of the audience, telling them  that Olivia would be back and they should take a 10 minutes intermission to refill their drinks. “Of course it was less than ideal, but everyone came back and the show continued. I’ll just have to wait and see how many online concerts it will take before a string breaks!”

Silver lining

As much as I love my seat in the back of the orchestra, I am grateful for this unique opportunity to connect with new audiences and put the harp front and center in the virtual concert hall. As we navigate these crazy circumstances, it’s important to have some softness and a sense of humor about these new endeavors. Inevitably there will be something that does not go as planned—you start the livestream playing upside down or you forget what you were saying mid-sentence because someone unexpected pops up at the concert—but the unexpected is the beauty of any live performance. Keep your focus on  sharing your gift with a real audience, no matter the platform, the audience size, the pieces you pick—it’s your recital and you are amazing for putting yourself out there.