Show went well
My first full VRChat concert went pretty well considering it was my first time doing such a large set. Previously I’d done single-song performances or song-circle gathering type things, so there’s a bunch of stuff I learned during the process of doing this.
First off, I really need a better way to deal with my controllers. For this performance I tried putting my forearm through the Index controller hand-hole, which ended up being a big problem since it added extra pressure to my tendons and I ended up needing to take a break very suddenly (like, right in the middle of a song). The audience was understanding, at least, and previously I’d experimented a bit with strapping the controllers to the backs of my forearms and I have ideas about how to actually do that. I’ll need to put that into effect for the next time.
Secondly, this isn’t a new learning but wearing the headset on my forehead for the whole time (so I can see my guitar) is far less than ideal. I’ve asked around the Bigscreen Beyond Discord for how people handle this stuff and I was pointed to a nice alternate face mount which just rests on the bridge of the nose and is also attached magnetically, so I’ve printed that piece and have ordered some appropriate magnets for it. Hopefully that’ll give me a good better solution, where I can see my surroundings while also having my primary visual focus be inside the world.
Third, I definitely need to find a better world for performing in. I used Karaoke in Sync because it’s a world I’m familiar with and provides some useful performance amenities (notably a large video screen that I can use as a backdrop, and whole-world mic boosting), and the karaoke functionality is essentially locked out while my backdrop video plays. But what I didn’t count on was having the most heavily-populated public instance of the world, so people kept on getting directed to it when they wanted to sing karaoke, which led to some audience incidents. I’m trying to find alternate performance spaces, but it’s hard to find something suitable for my needs as an in-world music performer (most performance spaces are set up for DJ sets which have entirely different tech requirements). I’ve got feelers out for better worlds for that, at least.
Mostly I need a stage with mic boost, and ideally a way of preventing other people from grabbing the stage when I’m using it. Having a settable backdrop (via e.g. video player) would be good for that, but it’s not required. And it being a space that’s specifically intended for performing is a must — I want to keep my instances Group Public so anyone can join off me or anyone else in the instance or random folks can discover me and just wander in, but I don’t want it to be an area where people are likely to show up for a thing without expecting a performance to be happening.
As a compromise I might just switch to Group+ instances, which allows friends to join off people already in the instance, but I’d still like it to be a world that’s not advertised as being for singing karaoke.
Oh, and finally, most of my songs work way better on acoustic guitar than electric, or at the very least I’d prefer to have a setup where my guitar isn’t being distorted. For now I’ve been using a small lunchbox amplifier with a line out passthrough as my monitor, but it’s very difficult to find the balance between “getting an audible signal” and “distortion ROCK!!!” Even if I am using an acoustic guitar I’ll still need a monitoring setup, though, since a couple of my songs need a loop pedal for a proper live performance.
The Fediwave Streaming Series concert was done in my actual recording studio, so I had a much better monitoring setup there, as in actual studio monitors with a good clean signal. I do have some spare studio monitors from my old setup but they don’t have a passthrough, so that heads into territory where I need to bring a lot more hardware into my living room (such as a mixing board) and that’s starting to get too complicated for VRChat, especially something that I’d want to keep set up all the time without being too much clutter.
Oh, also, sometime during my stream, my chat stopped working, so if anyone had posted any messages there, I didn’t see them, sorry. The OBS chat overlay had also stopped working even earlier, so I think in the future I just won’t bother with that at all. I also probably won’t bother with the RL camera, either, especially if I get a good hand-tracking setup going.
Anyway, I’ve posted the set over on YouTube.