My First Music Video!

Well it took me 10 years to put out my first hard rock album, so I guess I can be cut a little slack for taking three to get my first music video out. It’s for my song Seaside Strut from I’ve got a guitar and I’m not afraid to use it!

Oddly enough, while I’ve always been a big early adopter, I’ve had to cut back of late being married and having a daughter so I was really happy when HD cameras became available, but I actually didn’t even have to use on for this. I had some friends in Hawaii set me up with some footage of them surfing that they recorded in HD. It was really easy for me to put this all together. Why surfers? Well, when I wrote the song it kind of came to me after watching the surfers one day and San Francisco doesn’t have the nicest beaches for surfers. They’re pretty angry waves even if they’re small so they needed some angry music. Unfortunately filming at Ocean Beach gets kind of rare because I don’t surf anymore and the sunny days are pretty hit or miss. My friends had the waterproof cameras and did a great job on what they shot.

For me what’s the most interesting part is that prior to 2000 this wouldn’t have been so easy. We’re only talking a little over 10 years and now, today you can buy a computer that comes with audio recording software that’s decent, but not the best [it’s still better than what you could do 20 years ago] AND you get video editing software that comes with it. It’s only been a few days, but you’ll probably be able to do all this on the new iPad 2. How good it will be I’m not sure yet, but it’s definitely going to be a new wave for multimedia people. So on that note, enjoy the video and leave me some feedback. I know some of the readers are old friends of mine from college who went through broadcasting just like I did, so I’d like to hear what you think for my first time go around.

For those who want the technical specs, the song was recorded in Digital Performer and I played all the instruments. The drums are actually built in touch sensitive samples that I triggered through an external source [i.e. an old electronic drum kit]. The amp for the guitar & base is a podXT Pro which can replicate pretty much any amp out there. Final mixdown and mastering was also done through Digital Performer and then I brought the music into iMovie and basically tapped along with the song to determine where the cuts will come. Total time for getting the video together: 3 hours and mostly that was because I exported it twice and realized I had made a couple of errors. Enjoy!

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