The Meat Puppets "Plateau" cover is up!
Sometimes I feel very confident in my music. Like when a set of lyrics syncs up perfectly to the music I'm writing for, or when I get a recording that I love on the first take.
"Plateau" was not that way.
This is a new process for me, I don't usually film short videos. I knew I wanted to show y'all my face though, so I figured out a way to do it. I didn't have money to invest in a camera, but camera phones are getting better all the time. I did have lots of recording equipment for the music at least, I thought that would be pretty simple. And then I have a basic movie editing program, so I can put the recording over the video. EASY!
My first attempt to get this video was ALL the way back in November. I had a video file that was too large (too high of quality) for the simple program I was editing in. After many compression efforts, I decided to throw in the towel. It hadn't been my favorite recording. The video was pretty good, but my vocals could have been better.
The next time I tried was in December. It took a while, but I got a video I liked and the vocals were better. I was so spent after we finally got it, I saved everything so I could work on it the next day. When I went back to listen to the track again, I was furious.
There was a blip in the track.
I have a fairly old music mixing program, and every now and then a piece of the recording will be randomly cut out, or a weird blip will be added in, slightly throwing off the timing. It's annoying because it sounds bad, but it's more annoying because it stops lining up correctly with other tracks OR a video. That's exactly what happened here. I had an extra half second in the vocal/guitar recording that wasn't in the video recording. I couldn't get them to line up correctly, as the blip was in the middle of the track.
UGH.
Which brings me to yesterday. I knew I wanted this video to be done by January 20th, so yesterday was my recording deadline. I set up my camera, and after many takes (It's taken me longer to get a take I like as I go!) I finally had it all ready. The part I had thought would be easiest had taken me 3 months of frustration to get right. Now began the part I thought would be tricky, lining up my vocal track to the video file.
And that took me about 20 seconds.
The good news is, I do think this is the best recording we did out of all of them. I learned a lot about camera angles on my singing face while setting up this shot numerous times. I feel much more confident about the editing process.... but I sincerely hope my next video recording goes better than this.
Enjoy "Plateau"! You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL1zpcR1cLo