“Christmas and Glowsticks” Videos

Over the last few days, I’ve been making a series of little videos in which I discuss my new album “Christmas and Glowsticks”.  Here’s the first one in the series:

I have an old webcam that outputs 15 frames per second (video is usually approaching 30 frames per second), and I found a free online screencasting site called screencast-o-matic.com, and I started making little “behind the scenes” videos to accompany the songs on the album.

I kind of like making these little screencasts for the songs.  It’s fun to talk about the songs, arrangements, and inspirations for the track.  But another part of me thinks that making these videos is pretentious and self-serving.  I have decided that I made the album, I arranged all the tracks, I played all the instruments, and I even designed the cover art, so why shouldn’t I make a series of videos about the songs?  As long as I’m already being outrageously DIY in my musical career, why not take it over the top?

The inspiration for these videos comes from an issue of Keyboard magazine that was published a few years ago that focused on “electrolounge”.   In the issue there were three profiles of up and coming electrolounge bands.  The article took it’s coverage one step further by printing a screenshot of a track for a song from each of the bands.  This was huge for my development as a musician, because it was the first time I saw what tracks looked like in a ‘real’ produced song.

I wish Keyboard or Electronic Musician would post more screenshots of songs from current artists’ catalogs.  I find them really interesting.

So, this is where I got the idea to do an in-depth video on each of the songs on the album and to show what it looks like when I’m mixing the tracks on my computer.

Unfortunately, because the computer I’m using isn’t up-to-date, it doesn’t have enough power to play the original song files, with all of the softsynths and plugin effects, and run the screen-grab software.  Instead of the original files, I’m using the mastering stem files that I used to do the final mixes for the songs.  So, instead of having 30-50 tracks and asking the computer to synthesize the entire song on-the-fly, while at the same time running a webcam and a screen-grab program, I’m only asking my computer to stream three or four tracks.  Computers are much more comfortable streaming already printed audio, than synthesizing it on the fly.

Along with my videos on each individual song, I made an ““Christmas and Glowsticks” history and concept ” video, in which I discuss the history of the project, and the general philosophy that governed the creation of the album.