Tag: Music for Video
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I Wonder What Mrs. Mangelly Would Say Now
Way back in 1977 – I was about 10 at the time – I wanted to learn the piano. But we had to be concerned with something called a “weight allowance” – the maximum weight the US government will agree to transport from assignment to assignment at their expense, every time they ask you to…
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Hark!! The Breadman Cometh
Every afternoon until well into the evening, at approximately half-hour intervals, you can hear an odd whistling sound loop in the village where we are staying, just outside of Weligama, at the southern tip of Sri Lanka. At first I thought it was the “ice cream man” but eventually we managed to find the source…
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Check out Namibia’s ‘Shishani’
One of Namibia’s rising young talents needs your help! Namibian musicians have a hard time “breaking out” – primarily as a result of Namibia’s small population – just over two million, around the same size as the city of Houston! Namibia also has one of the biggest income disparities in the world, which means that…
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The Right Music for a Video. But Not Quite.
Sometimes finding exactly the right ‘feel’ music for a video is the most fun part of video editing, and other times I dread it. Because I already know that it’s going to be impossible to find music that won’t be too depressing, won’t be too happy, too distracting, irritating – in short, that won’t even…
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Underwater Videography: Things I’ve Learned
If you’ve ever managed to take along a camera snorkeling, you probably had the same reaction I did when you got your finished footage home to the computer: “It looks nothing like it did when I was actually snorkeling.” Colors are washed out, everything is a dingy blue, all the fish you saw are nowhere…
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“One Day on Earth” Music Video
The “One Day on Earth” project, which collected video from all over the world on 11.11.11 (and also, by the way, on 10.10.10), has stitched all their footage together into a full-length film, which is to be screened at many venues worldwide on April 22 – Earth Day. One of the benefits of contributing is…
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Best music for hanging out with giraffes
When you’re editing vacation videos, it’s always fun to come up with the best music – ideally one that conveys the right mood, maybe something that relates to the place you’re visiting. But sometimes the best music to convey the mood is no music at all. In this video, we managed to get awfully close…
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Rob Morsberger – show review
The Boston Herald describes his latest release as the “album is the kind of hyperliterate pop-inflected singer-songwriter outing that went out of style when Warren Zevon died. He can write a hook that could make angels weep.” The Boston Globe: “Think ‘storyteller’ with a literary, cinematic, intellectual bent.” I had never heard of Rob Morsberger…
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Mmm mmm mmm…Jammin with the Crash Test Dummies
I had the opportunity to catch the Crash Test Dummies the other night at Jammin’ Java – a cool little coffee house/restaurant/bar. Best known for Brad Roberts’ distinctive bass baritone voice, they had a few pretty big hits including “Mmm mmm mmm mmm” and hauled in 14 Grammy nominations in the 90’s. Then a number…
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Charlie Hunter rocks Jammin’ Java
Never heard of Charlie Hunter? Well, I hadn’t either – but he has recorded 17 albums, so the joke is on me, I guess. Last Sunday I was talked into checking out “an evening with Charlie Hunter” at Jammin’ Java, a coffee house in Vienna, Virginia – and was quite impressed. I especially like these…
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Music mashup using video editing software
So while it may appear obvious to others, it turns out you can use video editing software to create music mashups. I had noticed the similarity between certain tunes and wanted to give this a try, but couldn’t bring myself to navigate the learning curve required to learn music editing software. So I took some…
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Full-Length Album Composed on Sony PSP
That’s right, on a Sony Playstation Portable. Killing time at various airports, trains, on the beach, and during the kids’ sports practices, and using the game Beaterator, I’ve composed and recorded a full-length album. I’ve stopped short of designing cover art until the Grammy nomination arrives in the mail. You can try this out for…
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New Music
I created some more music. Feel free to download it and use it for stuff (Creative Commons / Share Alike) – all I ask is to see what gets done with it, really. Maybe eventually I’ll put this on a separate page if there’s more, but for now: Some variations on a theme I’ve had…
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Recording Live Concert Footage
When I was a kid, often you couldn’t take a camera into a music concert – probably they wanted to make sure they had the market cornered on posters and publicity photos back then. Now, in the days of ubiquitous mobile phones and pocket camcorders people are not only sharing photos, they are sharing music…
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A Pair of Articles on Royalty-Free Music
Videomaker’s free online magazine published a couple of great articles which, in combination with my earlier post on where to get royalty-free (and other low-cost or flat-fee) music to make your videos legal, is a great resource for ensuring (a) your videos don’t get yanked from YouTube and (b) you don’t get sued. Check them…
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Words Matter Too
Finally giving credit to the “lyricist” part of songwriting, an interesting article in today’s New York Times talks about growing interest in charging royalties for song lyrics. The article points out: For decades, printed song lyrics lived in relative obscurity, relegated to album sleeves and sheet music. And until now, they provided no significant source…
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Things to do on a Plane
So I spent a couple of days flying around in a plane for no reason (don’t ask). The not-to-be named airline which ferries Dutch troops back and forth to Kandahar go out of their way to spend pretty much all their time handing out food (2 meals in a 6-hour flight, and 2 each…
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Making Music on a PSP
In spite of the lengthy list of online royalty-free music sources I listed in my previous post, finding the right tune for your images can be a challenging and time-consuming process. So I’ve recently acquired some new gadgets to help make music for my videos myself – one conventional, and another quite unexpected. Not that…
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Adventures in our Nation’s Capital
Just returned from a grueling,longer-than-expected trip in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t all for naught – though I had to wait until Friday for a series of grueling job interviews that had been scheduled for Monday, it resulted in a job offer. And while I waited, I snagged some video footage of the DC blizzard –…
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Two More Contest Entries
I’ve re-tooled an old video from Washington DC – in fact, this is the video that inspired me to start this site (with some friendly encouragement) – and entered it into Lonely Planet’s video contest. Also, my video joins at least two others in a quest for a $1500 prize in Reel Insights’ monthly contest…
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In search of raw materials…
Those of us who aspire to make video on a budget that is significantly less than, say $100 million have our own challenges. One of these is finding raw materials – legally – to incorporate into our work. Music is the obvious shortcoming- unless you’re also a songwriter and musician, you probably can’t afford to…
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The importance of music
Music can be the make-or-break element in any video product. The skill with which this tool is wielded can make all the difference. If you decide to use music created by others, insure you read the “fine print”!