[gfirob]

I would add that the lighting instruments themselves are only the hardware. You need to think about (or learn about) what kind of lighting is pleasing and what is not. Which side of the camera or the subject to you want your key light to come from? How much modeling do you want and so on.

Regarding a background, I agree that black is death, but the best backgrounds are out of focus, which means you need distance between the subject and the background. This also speaks to the lens you use (wide angle or long lens).

The best advice I give people in this situation is to look at a lot of performance music videos, choose the ones you like and figure out why you like them, what it is in the production that has contributed to a pleasing look to you.

There is an odd inclination on many performance videos to use low lights with blue and or red gels on the lights, which almost always looks awful. You can always add red or blue in post production but it is almost impossible to take it out. So I would avoid the casual use of colored gels unless there is a compelling reason to us them.