Gregg, Tracie, Rachel, David and I had our Christmas at Home concert with Alex on Saturday!
We were apparently her first!
She performed the show in her Shine Performing Arts studio (which is on her yard). She had spent weeks gathering decorations, testing different backdrops, and preparing tracks to perform for her concerts. Because we were her first show, we took a bit of time to get some settings adjusted and give some feedback. She sent us instructions before the show for how to configure zoom properly for the singalong portions.
Her camera had some difficulties focusing on everything in the picture at once. She was in pretty good focus, but things on the fringe (like the tree) were a little blurry. I didn't think it was a big deal at all though. The set still looked pretty and the most important thing was that we could see and hear Alex!
The connection was really good. There was little or no jitter during the concert. Alex sounded fantastic! She sounded clear, she was loud enough, and there didn't seem to be any audio clipping. She sang to backing tracks she had playing through her system, the same way she's been doing her recent Soul Song Sunday episodes.
Some tips if you have a show coming up:
If doing a group zoom and she's talking to the audience (you) in between songs, get back on mute if not talking. We could hear her the whole time she was singing, but sometimes when we were chatting with her between songs, her audio would cut out unless we were all muted. It was like it was picking up sound from one us and muting her when that happened. There's probably a setting we can use to fix that for her, but it's still on my to do list.
If you're planning to participate in the sing-along portions, follow her instructions to set it up but also test it in zoom before the show (maybe a day or two before the show so you're not trying to do it at the last last minute). If you start your own zoom meeting as a test, you can record it, play it back, and listen to what you sound like when you sing. By default, Zoom will start suppressing your volume if you do things like music (including singing), but the right settings will stop that from happening to you. Note: the singalongs are pretty hilarious in a group zoom because of the latency differences.
We had lots of fun with it. My singing was so bad, I tried playing whistle as accompaniment a little. I think that went decently considering I only learned those songs within 24 hours of the show. I wish I'd practice with a backing track though. That was weird playing when other people were singing.
If you haven't picked your songs yet, consider picking Santa Baby. That was one of the songs we picked and she did a phenomenal job with it. It was really entertaining!
We absolutely loved our show with Alex! I'm so impressed with how well it turned out and I'm grateful to her and everyone who helped her set it up for all the time and effort it took.
Alex will let you record the show, but she has to grant each participant in the zoom meeting permission on her side. Each person that's signed on to the zoom meeting needs to make their own recording. It starts / stops recording when you tell it to and saves the recording(s) at the end of the meeting.