Music Theory Basics Episode 2: The Bass Clef

Not too much to say about this one.  It is just another short video, this time explaining the notes of the bass clef.  I used screen in screen this time for clarity among some other more subtle video editing tricks that I picked up.

I have very little time for making videos unfortunately, but I will keep producing them when I can.

Beethoven: Für Elise 3d Removal

It is a sad day when the bully wins.  I made a (not very good) 3d version of this video, but unfortunately I had to remove it.  As is standard when posting any musical video on youtube, some miscellaneous entity claimed rights to my video.  This is absurd of course because I sequenced the music so I own the rights to this particular performance.  I initiated the dispute process (which I amd forced to do with 95% of my videos) but lost the dispute.  As a result, the company that disputed my ownership of the music rights was allowed to place advertising on my video.

I do not mind at all if the video does not generate revenue.  Not all of my videos are monetized, and even with the ones that are, as of this post I have not yet earned the $100 needed for adsense to mail me a check.  No big deal, if I wanted money I would spend my time flipping burgers.  It would pay a heck of a lot more.  However, I absolutely refuse to let someone else make money off of my work!

Strangely enough, the other (2d) video has been in dispute pretty much since I posted it.  This is the way the world under the DMCA works (and other landmark decisions and laws).  Rather than go into those, I will just say that although it is very frustrating to post these videos due to such violations of MY ownership of rights, I will continue to post them.  If we give in then the bullies win.  The change has already happened, but the record labels and other powers that be have not yet realized it.  The big corporations don't just want to protect their own rights, but also to shut down any competition.  Why would you buy a cd when there is so much great music being produced?  There are so many talented independent artists that one does not know where to begin.

I would re-up the 3d video and re-dispute it, but to be honest it wasn't very good (and thus not worth the trouble).  However I will continue to make music.  And every time someone watches one of my videos, I will feel happy inside that we still have the freedom to create and distribute our own art. 

They killed public domain and they will kill this new culture of independent art if we let them.

So lets make some more videos!

Beethoven: Für Elise re-up

I was not happy with the original version of this video.  The sound was not properly synced with the visuals.  At first I thought that this was a result of the software used to generate the visuals from the midi file, but upon extensive investigation I have found that for some reason there is a sync issue.  I generate the audio directly from the midi, so they should match.  However using miditrail, MAM player, and some others all yield the same result.  The visuals go a bit out of sync and then catch up whenever there is a tempo change.  This has never happened to me before while making a visualization.  I have no idea what the cause is.  In any case I decided to prevent the problem entirely by using the zgame editor visualizer which uses (in this case) only the audio to generate the visuals.  I may have gotten carried away but what the heck it was fun.

It just so happens that the ZGEV has a stereographic output, so if possible I will upload a 3d version of this video as well.  I have no idea if it will look any good.  However I am a fan of 3d so I feel compelled to take advantage of this feature (if I can figure out how to get it to work.) 

Big Tick Rhino: Oberheim patch bank review

This video took forever to make.  It was not that one thing made it difficult.  Many semi-related events such as the holidays, getting a new sound card (and all the shopping and research involved in that decision), choosing a new daw (Reaper or Presonus its killing me I can't decide!), and some other things all coincided to make this video take far longer than it should have.

I must thank some of the users at the KVR forums for their constructive criticism on my last two videos.  It is not easy to give criticism for most of us.  Their input was really helpful.  In my last patch bank review I was really excited about at least 30% of the presets and I wanted to include them all in the video.  The result was a demonstration of many great patches, but overall the video was really boring.  Not many people want to watch a static screen of Rhino (and cubase) while I noodle around with some presets.

I chose a more focused approach with this video.  Instead of trying to show a plethora of sounds, I narrowed it down to just a few and gave my overall impression of the sound bank.  This bank is really great.  However there are also some things I did not like, which I mention in the video.

Well I hope that this one turned out better than the last as far as watchability goes!