Category: Music for Video
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Drones, Kingfishers, and Joey Cook’s Ukulele
Goa, India’s diminutive state on the west coast, enjoys a certain reputation as a party destination, full of backpackers and bikinis, in search of yoga or outdoor sports. But it also has its wildlife – especially birds. I wrote about our visit to Goa’s Dr. Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary about a year ago when we…
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Free Jungle Sounds
Every now and then I come across some sounds that might be of use to other video hobbyists. These are pretty clean, high quality recordings taken with a Rode Videomic. Feel free to download the sounds and use them for whatever you want. Frogs Sound – the sound of African bullfrogs croaking. Recorded at Kempinski Mokuti…
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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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Tired of Shelling Out Ten Grand to Sing “Happy Birthday”?
What’s that? You’re not paying Time Warner, the copyright holder, for the rights to sing “Happy Birthday to You” in a public place? You could be opening yourself up to a lawsuit! That’s apparently what they charge. It’s probably just enough to earn a coupla million a year, but not quite enough to prompt a…
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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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A Day in Lüderitz – Two Different Soundtracks
Recently my daughter and I took a trip to the small, somewhat odd Namibian coastal town of Lüderitz. I say it’s odd because we arrived on a Saturday afternoon, after driving a long, winding road which seemed unable to keep the sand dunes at bay – at several points the dunes were slowly making their…
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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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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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Autotuning Everything
A recent phenomenon (and an unfortunate one, in my opinion) to hit the music industry is the use of Auto-Tuning software to correct pitch. For just a few hundred bucks, you can get a plug-in for your audio editing software that will insure every slightly off-pitch note is automatically brought into perfect tune (corrected to…
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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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Too much time on your hands? Try this at home!
So my kids tell me this is SO last week, but I thought this video was HILARIOUS – somehow genius and somehow disturbing that this is what some people do in their spare time: Technology has brought the internet to 2 billion people, and a standard of living resulting in about 2-4 hours of spare…
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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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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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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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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”!