A Livestream That Reveals More Than It Intends
Universal Audio's livestream with Black Pumas is, on its surface, a product demonstration wrapped in a live performance. The Austin-based, Grammy-winning band plays a handful of songs from their studio while a Universal Audio host steers conversation toward the UAFX pedal lineup. But beneath the promotional scaffolding lies something more interesting: an unguarded look at how a working band relates to its tools, and how the sponsored content format both enables and constrains musical discovery.
The session opens with host Ben from Universal Audio setting the commercial frame immediately -- a giveaway, a plug for the pedal movie, trivia questions designed to drive traffic to uaudio.com. The transactional architecture is transparent. Yet the musicians who appear on screen seem genuinely engaged with the gear, not merely performing enthusiasm for a paycheck. The tension between authentic creative exploration and corporate sponsorship runs through the entire event like a ground hum.
Rhythm as a First Principle
When asked about their approach to effects, vocalist and guitarist Eric Burton offers a response that cuts past the expected gear-talk platitudes. He frames the relationship between musicians and pedals in terms of rhythm, not texture.
One thing that I really love that you know how we come together is by way of rhythm and you know I think one cool thing is I was just playing around with the tap tempo here on the Starlight... we're already locked in rhythmically as musicians and people... the pedals have kind of encompassed that vibe a bit.
This is a more sophisticated observation than it might first appear. Most discussions of guitar effects focus on color -- the shimmer of a reverb, the warmth of an analog delay. Burton is describing something structural. When a band's rhythmic identity is strong enough, effects become an extension of that pulse rather than a decorative layer applied on top. The tap tempo on a delay pedal is not just a convenience feature; it is a bridge between the human feel of the performance and the mechanical precision of the effect.
Producer and guitarist Adrian Quesada reinforces this point when describing signal chain choices. His preference for placing reverb last in the chain is not arbitrary.
I like how reverb reacts to modulation going into it... a big part of our sound is how reverbs react to the way that both Eric and I play. I think we're both such rhythmic players... when Eric's strumming, if he brings it down in volume the reverb comes down and when he brings it back up it goes back up.
What Quesada is describing is dynamics-driven effects processing -- letting the musician's touch control the spatial character of the sound rather than setting a static wash. This approach requires a level of control and intentionality that separates working professionals from bedroom noodlers. It also happens to be precisely the kind of nuance that gets lost in a typical gear demo, which tends to showcase extreme settings rather than subtle interactions.
The Troubadour and the Machine
The most revealing moment in the session comes when Burton discusses his musical origins.
I grew up kind of like playing music troubadour style, acoustic, vocal, on the street, no pedals, battery powered amp. And so to have the modality that is these expansive pieces of equipment, it kind of feeds the creativity because it does a lot that I would not otherwise hear or do myself necessarily at face value.
There is an honest tension here that Burton does not try to resolve. A musician who learned to hold an audience with nothing but a voice and an acoustic guitar does not need effects pedals. The fact that he finds them creatively generative rather than crutch-like speaks to a particular kind of artistic maturity -- the willingness to let external tools reshape one's habits without abandoning the core skill set.
A counterpoint worth considering: the troubadour-to-pedal-board trajectory is also a well-worn narrative in sponsored content. The story of the raw, stripped-down artist discovering new dimensions through a company's products is marketing gold. Whether Burton is being entirely candid or partially performing a role that serves the commercial context is unknowable from the outside. The most likely answer is both simultaneously -- genuine enthusiasm filtered through awareness of the occasion.
Improvisation Under Commercial Pressure
The session's most musically interesting passage comes when Burton puts the band on the spot with material they have barely rehearsed. He introduces a riff he has been sitting on, acknowledging that he does not always share his ideas with the group.
I kind of had a riff for a very long time and I don't always get around to showing these guys everything that we're constantly creating ourselves. And so to have the opportunity to work off of some really cool pedals and in such a vibey place like our studio, it feels good.
The resulting jam is, by Burton's own admission, a risk. The band navigates it with the kind of loose precision that only comes from deep familiarity with each other's instincts. When the host asks Quesada how he achieved a particular ascending line, the answer is disarmingly simple: he got excited and hit all the pedals at once. This is the opposite of the careful, parameter-by-parameter demonstration that gear companies typically script. It is also far more persuasive as a demonstration of the pedals' musicality.
Quesada's description of the band's evolving creative process adds further texture. He reveals that Burton recently created an entire song using a Juno synthesizer and a drum machine -- instruments outside the band's established palette.
We're trying different palettes... on Friday night Eric was in here and I couldn't be here and he had created a whole song with a Juno and a drum machine and all, you know, palettes that aren't colors that we were necessarily creating with on the first record.
This detail matters because it suggests a band actively resisting the gravitational pull of its own established sound. The temptation for any successful act is to keep making the record that won the Grammy. The willingness to reach for unfamiliar instruments -- and to do so individually, bringing half-formed ideas back to the group -- indicates a creative restlessness that bodes well for whatever comes next.
The Format's Limitations
For all its genuine moments, the livestream format imposes real constraints on what can be communicated. The audio is captured from a single-room setup without the benefit of a proper mix, which means the nuances both guitarists describe -- the way reverb responds to playing dynamics, the interaction between tremolo and chorus -- are largely inaudible to the remote audience. The viewer is asked to take the musicians' word for sonic subtleties that the medium cannot faithfully reproduce.
The giveaway segments, inserted between songs, break whatever flow the performance builds. The trivia questions about the Beatles and Bill Putnam Sr. are transparently engineered to drive website traffic. This is standard practice for sponsored livestreams, but it underscores a fundamental mismatch: the musicians are in a creative headspace while the commercial apparatus demands periodic interruptions to remind viewers of the transactional nature of the event.
There is also the pandemic-era context to consider. The session was recorded during the COVID-19 lockdown period, when livestreams replaced touring as the primary means of audience engagement. Many of these streams have aged poorly, their forced intimacy and technical compromises feeling like artifacts of a constrained moment rather than deliberate artistic choices. This one fares better than most, largely because the band treats it as a genuine studio session rather than a simulacrum of a concert.
Bottom Line
Beneath the promotional apparatus, this livestream captures Black Pumas at an interesting inflection point -- between their debut record and whatever comes next, experimenting with new sonic palettes while remaining grounded in the rhythmic interplay that defines their sound. The most valuable moments come when the musicians forget they are selling pedals and start talking about music as practitioners rather than endorsers. Quesada's description of dynamics-driven reverb and Burton's meditation on the troubadour's relationship to technology are worth more than any scripted demo. The format works against the content at nearly every turn, but the musicianship is strong enough to survive it.