Jody Whitesides

Tag: video

  • The Remarkable Long Road

    The Remarkable Long Road

    Sitting here waiting, like I’m on the remarkable long road, for my studio machine to export video to a podcast. As if I don’t have enough to do. Much like you. As I’m twiddling thumbs waiting on the export, I’m thinking about the vocals I’ll be tracking later tonight. Then I got the wild idea of writing a random stream of thoughts instead of filling my head with things I can’t control.

    That’s not entirely true, I could control when I tell the computer to crunch the video / audio data. I could even stop it right now if I desired. However, that would be putting the work off until later. Experts call that – procrastination. I’m not a good procrastinator.

    Knowing that I have a data backup that I need to do tonight as well, I opted to let the machine do its thing while I get some busy work done for the podcast. Getting the YouTube page ready. Getting the website page ready. Writing out the description of the episodes coming up for Tuesday and Friday. Monday has become my relegated Podcast prep day.

    Yet another facet to my musical life, passing on the knowledge I’ve learned about recording, mixing, mastering music. The remarkable long road of a career musician who puts in too much time.

    Speaking of which, I read an article earlier today about a famous musician that passed away a couple of weeks ago. Of course the initial tributes that came out for Eddie Van Halen were warranted. I wondered how long it would take for the dark side stories to start cropping up. I had heard some of them prior to his death – the music business isn’t that large. Then again, it isn’t that small either. Today was that day. I came across an article written by a film maker talking about his time spent with Eddie.

    To paraphrase, there were DEFCON one moments and apparently kinda often in his remarkable long road of a career.

    One of the things I learned in reading the article was Eddie’s work ethic. It was tireless. Borderline merciless. Which got me thinking…

    I know there are several musicians who have played with me that would agree to the following statement. I am notorious for doing long rehearsals to make sure everyone knows their part. I don’t care how long it takes to get everyone on the same page, so long as they really want to be working on the music. I often would rehearse songs for hours and hours on end. The goal was to make playing the music, the songs, 2nd nature to the point where I didn’t have to think about it for it to be done right.

    Pushing myself for that type of practice and rehearsal is normal. That’s how I roll. Unfortunately I also expect from the musicians that I play with or who play with me. Some handle that well, many don’t. Which leads to frustration on their part and on my part. I expect people to do their musical homework. To come prepared. I always feel like I’ve let other musicians down if I haven’t gotten the music memorized and into muscle memory before a rehearsal. I don’t want to rely on reading charts.

    Turns out, Eddie had this type of drive too, according to the filmmaker. I had no idea. I figured he was an alien. However, one paragraph struck me. I’m paraphrasing here but, Eddie would play guitar when writing/recording songs 15 to 18 hours a day, then sleep. As if sleep were only there as a necessary evil. He’d go to sleep for several hours, get back up and go back to the studio and the guitar. Doing it day in and day out.

    In the studio he would expect the same of the the musicians. He expected they would put in the same work he did. Often, they didn’t and he’d get bummed out. Did you know Eddie played the bass on all Van Halen records other than Van Halen I? Learned that today too…

    Oh that is so familiar to me. I work alone much of the time as I find I can get things done quicker that way. Not always true, but often enough. I learned to sing, because I couldn’t find a singer with that kind of work ethic.

    When I do work with others, whether I’m bringing them on for something I’ve written, or I’m producing another artist – the most common phrase I hear is: Damn, I’ve never worked so hard in the studio. I’ve got multiple stories of musicians like that. When striving for that type of perfection, it can take a toll. Especially on others. I know I’m not the easiest guy to work with musically, based on that work ethic. Though I have had multiple musicians that prefer to work my gigs because – I’m consistent, I know what I want, and they don’t have to guess. I will always go back to guys and gals that I’ve worked with who can handle the work.

    Getting asked how I’ve managed to make a remarkable long road career out of music, I think it stems to that work ethic.

    BTW – **ding** my export is done and I need to get on with the uploading of the video and podcast audio, so that in an hour or so I can get to tracking vocals. Have a great evening!

  • Try It One More Time

    Try It One More Time

    Today I got around to working on a lyric video where a few days ago I decided I would try it one more time. The main reason why had more to do with not being entirely happy with the first attempt.

    The last several weeks have been highly productive with a lot of output. Not only for music, but for videos related to my music as well. I’ve been working diligently on making lyric videos for a whole lot of my songs. Generally it’s been taking about 3 to 4 hours for very song to get 2 lyric videos per. One song in particular is called Supernova (expect it’s release sometime in 2020, that’s the current plan). I had done a lyric video for it, but the video I had in the background was poorly shot – me handheld of footage from a 4th of July fireworks show.

    In looking back at it, I felt it just seemed to lo-fi. Didn’t fit the title well enough and in a sense, lazy. I thought fireworks would work, but the quality of the video in low light from a phone, meh.

    Now that I’m starting to dig further into the capabilities of Motion, I’m figuring out ways to really make things pop, or sometimes taking an easier route. Today however was a day of really making something pop. I managed to create a really cool outer space animation that looks super stellar (pun intended). This took a good deal of time, but the end result is something that is constantly evolving over the course of the song and it’s interesting to look at.

    I still have to get the words in, but I’ve found a cooler font, a nicer look, and animation that makes more sense. Thus all the way around, I’m happier with the result so far. I believe I will get the lyrics in and done tomorrow.

    Musically, I’ve got another song that I’ve been working on with Chris Hellstrom. It’s turning out really great too. Fun lyrics. Fun concept. Tongue in cheeky type of song. One that has more than one hook and one hook in particular that I imagine might become a catch phrase. Two reasons on that, one, the melody is easy to remember. Two, the words will catch people by surprise and they’re words that a vast majority of people say – but may not have said them in this order or sung this way. But once heard, you can’t forget it.

    I did get the mix and master of another single done a couple of days ago. It’s on the list of videos that needs to now get done.

    Additionally I’ve been asking fans of sports teams like the Washington Nationals (congrats to them for winning the World Series this year) if they would send me video footage they’ve shot for lyric videos. HINT HINT. If you’re reading this and your a fan of a sports team – I ask you to reach out with video footage you have rights to, if you would.

    This same thought about lyric videos for teams has led to another idea for me. But I’ll keep that under wraps for the time being. Though you’ll likely see the reason pop up on my website in the not too distant future.

  • Creative Time Cut

    Creative Time Cut

    It’s been an odd day. I woke to a feeling of not wanting to get out of bed, which isn’t common for me at all. Likely it stemmed from lack of sleep and a developing issue of an eyelid with irritation. The one thing that brightened my morning was a random tweet by Lisa Loeb. She appreciated my tweet about Ed Cherney passing yesterday (Tuesday). I wrote a tweet to her in appreciation and she responded. That little gesture from her was super sweet.

    Mind you, she doesn’t follow me on twitter. It’s highly likely she doesn’t remember me auditioning to play guitar for her on a tour. She also probably doesn’t remember when we bumped into each at NAMM talking to a mutual friend. Either way, she’s a lovely person and it brightened my day.

    I felt like a task master getting rolling. Chris Hellstrom and I got our second podcast/broadcast recording in the can today. Compared to the first episode last week, this episode went substantially smoother. I pretty much had the outputs of the audio and video within an hour of finishing the recording. Compared to the 8 hours it took last week. that’s a huge savings in time. Massive creative time cut.

    My goal for next weeks episode is to have everything output and ready for releasing within 30 minutes of getting all files. But that might be a little optimistic, as it does take time for Final Cut to export the video. Then for me to upload it to YouTube. And we’re only doing episodes in 1080. Imagine if it were 2k or 4k. It’d probably take a bit longer.

    As I was waiting for Final Cut to export the video and Logic to export the audio for the podcast, I worked on yet another lyric video output for the vertical lyric video version for Hero Unexpected.

    Once all those outputs were done, I shifted gears back to checking the mix for another single. A song that I co-wrote with Manda Mosher. I made a couple of minor tweaks to my mix and deemed it done. Thanks to some new mixing templates, I was able to output multiple mixes at the same time. Passed it over to mastering and got a master back shortly thereafter.

    I sent a copy of the song to Manda and another friend Jesse Stern who played bass on the recording. Both of them enjoyed the mix and the song. I’m looking forward to getting the song into the release schedule for next year. We’ll see when. I’m also looking forward to hearing Manda do an Americana version in her style. I think she’d do a killer rendition of it too.

    No, I’m not using something like LANDR for mastering, I think that it’s a joke and I don’t believe in it – and no I wouldn’t recommend using it. But I am working with a mastering setup that can do a fairly quick turnaround with a great sound.

    When I look back at the work output for this day, a podcast, a podcast video (both of which are an hour long), a lyric video, and a song single. It feels like a pretty damn productive after a late start for a day where I didn’t want to get out of bed. That seems pretty impressive as I’m looking back on the day. And I’d like to thank Lisa for the kind words and response that helped set the day on a good path.

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