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I grimaced, but I wasn’t going to take what I said back. Hearing how sound traveled in my house with others in it, I don’t know. It did something to me. I wanted to see what this place could become. What kind of home it could grow into with more than just me using it. I had really liked this house when I bought it. The break-in had turned me off it, but seeing everyone here, acting like it was their own home made me feel warm and hopeful. Comfortable.
“Let’s leave them to figure this out,” Toby nudged. “We need to set you up, figure out what works and doesn’t work.”
Once we were in my attic, Toby looked around slowly, standing in different spots in the space, and even holding up his phone and looking at it through a camera. I stayed to the side and just opted to watch him work. He seemed to know what he was doing. Apparently, just turning on a camera and having a mic wasn’t going to be good enough.
“Here should be good,” Toby finally said, facing me. The wall behind him had my guitars mounted on it, along with some of my photos with other musicians. A few signed record albums
“What’s so good about it?” I asked.
“You need a good background,” he mumbled as he brought over a table and positioned it in front of the wall, about seven feet away. “Computer goes here. What systems do you need? Are you going to use your guitar?”
“I was going to DJ for them?”
Toby’s eyes sparked. “For real? Jacey will love it.”
“You know him?”
“Yeah, I’ve been on some of his streams too.”
I did not know that.
Toby saw my surprised expression and chuckled. “I join him every so often from Aunt Laura’s house to jam out on his streams. I’m one of his special guests. I yelled at him for not telling me you were invited to his stream. Good thing we don’t need to download any special systems. Did he send you a link?”
“Yeah, he said once I’m ready, I just click on it and I’ll be brought to a virtual lobby and when it’s time, he’ll switch it over to my video feed on his stream.”
“Good. We do need to set up Bryan’s computer though so that they can hear your music. It won’t be too hard. You can set it up so they’ll hear what you hear through your headphones so it’s just making sure you can properly hear everything. And test the mic. Oh my God, we have too much work to do before you go live. What time?”
I glanced at my phone. It was still mid-morning. “At two.”
“I hope it’s enough time.”
“We have five hours.”
“While tech can be the most reliable thing in the world, it can be finicky. We need to make sure everything is up-to-date, working, and test it all out. Oh, I brought my camera and microphone. They work great for music and sound quality.”
I let Toby ramble on about more than I ever knew as he set up the computer, got everything plugged in and then began messing around with the keyboard. There were even three monitors. What was I supposed to do with three monitors?
Very quickly, I realized why Toby was nervous about only having five hours to set up. First he had to figure out how to get my sound to properly work. Then as I did my DJing stuff, he had to figure out how to get that sound to work properly too. There was a microphone issue. We had to figure out where to position everything so it was all within my reach, but also not awkward. He couldn’t figure out where to place the camera for like thirty minutes. Then Bryan tossed in another camera and promised me they’d handle that little bit. Something about viewers liked to see what I would be pressing on my equipment.
Once we got the ethernet cord hooked to the computer, Seth sat back and watched the chaos. Half the time I was with him too, but the other half the time, Toby wanted me in my spot so he knew everything was where it needed to be.
Then the explanations began and it all went over my head. I wasn’t a streamer and I never watched a streamer before. I only crossed paths with Jacey because he sang at an event I did—also for a fundraiser—and he liked my style.
And he may have attended the club I liked to go to once in a while to DJ.
He said it was an easy choice for him.
“Okay, I think we’re all set.”
“What’s that light for?” I asked, pointing to the circular lighting that was currently off but was set up right in front of me.
“It makes your main light source in front of you so that you don’t have any weird shadows. It’s pretty common to have for any kind of video recording, that way people can see you better.”
I hummed as I double checked to make sure my DJ software was all set and all my settings were as I needed them.
“How are you feeling?” Toby asked.
“Nervous now,” I admitted. “You made this such a bigger deal than I thought it was.”
