Starving Artistry

Cee Lo iPad Cover

// April 1st, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Music, Video

Well, I started this within 4 or 5 days of my Katy Perry iPad video, and it took my until now to finish it. Honestly, i was like 85% finished about 3 1/2 weeks ago, but I just couldn’t find the spare time to get that last little bit in… until this morning.

This song is way more intricately arranged than the Katy Perry song. Significantly more time went into figuring out how to replicate all the instruments I heard, especially in regards to figuring out what sounds to use for each one. Turned out that the best sound for that one shaker part was the salt-shaker app.

I ended up splitting up the piano part into two different apps, as it was too difficult to try to squeeze all my fingers onto one and play it the way that was needed to play. And the guitar strum, well… there is no good way to strum a guitar on the iPad, so I put some delay on the fake guitar sound and played it as you see in the video. The delay kind of makes for a good “strum” sound. Kinda.

I was really stumped regarding what sounds to use for the vocals. I ended up settling on the NES video game sound, and decided to play it on the game-pad instead of the keyboard (which the App offers). But since I couldn’t switch octaves fast enough, I split the melody into three parts which I played separately. You see, the Cat piano doesn’t have the option to change octaves, so luckily all of Katy Perry’s song stayed in the same octave. Cee lo… not quite the same.

Unfortunately it’s been so long that I’ve even forgotten one or two of the apps I used to make it. Except for, obviously, the panda piano…

NESynth – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nesynth/id323362982?mt=8
Salt Shaker – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/salt-shaker/id303186136?mt=8
Music Studio – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-studio/id328608539?mt=8
Drums! – http://itunes.apple.com/app/drums/id311549739?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2
Synth – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/synth/id364905862?mt=8
Magic Piano – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magic-piano/id356416346?mt=8
Tambourine! – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tambourine/id343819796?mt=8
Dog Piano – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dog-piano/id322005897?mt=8
Panda Piano – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/panda-piano/id368328295?mt=8

Please Please Me Cover

// February 2nd, 2011 // 3 Comments » // Music, Video

Well, I finally finished it. As I said in an earlier post, adding video to this whole recording business makes everything take 3x as long… and THEN you have to edit the video. Although I learned a couple things.

I set up two cameras for each take, which added to the length of recording ’cause i had to mess with two cameras the whole time. I pretty much only used one angle for each instrument… pretty much. So next time I do something like this, I may not do as much with the cameras. One angle is probably fine.

I didn’t do much to the song. You’ll notice it’s a couple of clicks slower and has a modern spin on the sound, but it’s pretty much the same ol’ beatles track. I actually started working on this song before the Teenage Dream ipad cover was even an idea in my head, but due to it being a pain in the butt to record I put it off until now.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and for reference, here is a link to the original song: YouTube

What if…

// January 30th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // Video

What if you took that EYEphone picture idea I had but made an entire video from it. Dammit I’m so mad I didn’t do this first!!

The Ice Book

// January 29th, 2011 // 2 Comments » // Video

I haven’t posted just a plain ol’ link to another video in a while, but this one is just so creative and amazing, you should really put aside 2 minutes to take a look.

My Vid Goes Viral

// January 26th, 2011 // 5 Comments » // Video

When your video goes from 300 plays to 61,000 in 36 hours, does that count as going viral? ‘Cause if it does, for the first time, I have a video gone viral. Or in the process of going viral. I was at my mom’s yesterday sending off a fax, and all of a sudden i noticed i had a lot of emails. They were all comments on my video saying that Gizmodo wrote about my video. At the time of this writing I have gotten over 20,000 views from Gizmodo alone. Then today at around 11, I glanced at my phone and saw i had like, 79 new messages in my inbox and this time apparently Katy Perry plugged the video on her facebook page. Which then gets added to her real website’s feed.

I’ve been really enjoying reading all the comments, which range from “cool!” and “fun!” to “Oh GOD MY EARS!” but I always understood that this video was something you either loved or hated.

When I made the video I figured it had the right ingredients to go viral, but Gizmodo was really the catalyst that started it down that path. Doesn’t hurt that Katy Perry is apparently a real big Cat person.

Anyway, I’ve been googling the video trying to see the sites that are linking, here’s what I’ve come up with so far, let me know if you guys find anything I can add…!

Gizmodo – link
Katy Perry’s Facebook – link
Katy Perry’s Main Site – link
Buzzfeed – link
Maclife – link
Guyism – link
Macstories – link
ThatPanic – link
YouTube-Trends – link
Kitty News – link
Frequency.com – link
MatrixSynth – link

This person turned it into an MP3 and you can download it from her blog:
TheDailyMew – link

And this is a German blog!
Gilly’s Playground – link

And THIS guy ripped my video off youtube and uploaded it to a different site as his own. Jerk. I guess that’s the real sign of going viral though…?
Jokeroo – link

I’ll be interested to see where the numbers go from here. Anyone have ideas how I should capitalize on this? I’m thinking maybe another ipad cover, but this time sans-cat piano. I think one cat piano song = novelty. Two cat piano songs = trying way too hard. Thoughts?