Have I talked much yet about my mashup hobby?
I started doing it sometime when I was in high school -- putting a few songs together on the spot for a crowd. Every now and then, if I can think of a way to relate two songs, I refine the mashup and put it on YouTube. (Right here.)
Although I started the YouTube channel back in 2010, I have relatively few videos. There are lots of reasons for that -- dealing with the ebb and flow of creativity, understanding that these are clever and gimmicky but not life-changing, having to practice, not wanting to promote myself (basically, don't count on me ever saying "please subscribe!" at the end of a video), etc.
But the main reason I don't make many these days is that I only have so many hands, and if two of them are at the piano, then they are not holding little kids and babies. And that always leads to adventures.
I really did want to make a video this afternoon, though. It had been a long time coming. I had come up with the idea to combine "I See the Light" from Tangled with "Whole New World" from Aladdin way back in January 2013, but it never came together well. When my sister J asked me to play a musical number at her wedding luncheon in August, I finally figured out what the song needed. I thought I would be able to make a recording of it to put on YouTube by the end of September.
Clearly, it got put off until now. I finally set a firm deadline that I had to do it by Valentine's, and before the weekend even. Today it was.
So when I put M down for an early afternoon nap, I got to work. I gathered up my crew of makeup and hair artists, costume specialists, videographers, and babysitters, and got to work!
(All of those were me. Except that Toy Story was the babysitter since it was too cold outside for me to find a real one.)
Short version: I made the video. And you will probably like it (at least after the first minute).
Long version: Here are the steps I took. Feel free to follow them at your own leisure if you want to create your own in-home YouTube piano series:
- Give your son headphones while he watches a movie
- Clean the living room, or at least mow what shows. (There's no time to really declutter, just to relocate the toys.)
- Decide that you want to allude to Rapunzel in your hair and clothes. Which probably means you should have some flowers in your hair.
- Make a flower out of fabric held together with Scotch tape. It may or may not look like a flower when it's actually in your hair.
- Calm the baby who has woken up to the sound of the heater turning on. Make a mental note to turn the heater off while you are playing piano.
- Set up a tripod with a high chair and books. Experiment with various angles.
- Dust the piano. That part you can't hide from the camera.
- Retrieve the baby, who has now woken up for good. Cuddle him for a bit, then set him down with a pacifier to contentedly look around and listen to you play.
- Start recording, only to notice the battery that claimed to have 66% power 10 minutes ago is now blinking low battery. It's okay. Toy Story is still going.
- Charge the battery and nurse the baby.
- After nursing and changing the baby, put him with quieter toys like stuffed animals instead of blocks. Hope that you can finish recording before he decides to jabber.
- Put makeup on after all. It might show depending where the camera is positioned.
- Turn the heater off.
- Put the partially-charged battery back in the camera. Move the high chair tripod around a few times to try and get a good angle. It may turn out that you didn't need makeup after all since they can only see your back.
- Do a few test runs with the camera. Change your clothes as necessary.
- Since the baby is antsy now, take him up to his brother (who no longer wants to use headphones). Scout the room for small objects that he can reach from his sitting position. Coast is clear. Tell them to sit and watch the movie for 5 more minutes.
- 30 seconds into recording, hear a lot of squeaking right above you. Go into the room and discover your older son standing next to a wiggling pile of blankets. "He liked it when I dumped blankets on him," he says as you pull them off your flustered but smiling baby. Explain that when they move at all it squeaks. Toy Story is about done, so turn on a short show for them. Don't berate yourself for all the screen time.
- Start recording again. Play the song with as much musicality and emotion as you can muster. When you make mistakes, don't think about your adviser saying, "No one could tell you made mistakes" when you played for graduation 5 years ago. No, don't do that! Focus on the music at hand! Don't mind the little bit of squeaking upstairs now! You're so close to the end! Don't mess up don't mess up you don't want to start this over . . . you didn't mess up!
- You did it! You made another video! Go rescue your children.
- . . . When you get cold, turn the heater back on.
And there you have it. Your guide to becoming a super famous YouTube artist.
I'm going to share this video again, just for good measure.
No comments:
Post a Comment