Doobyis x Josh the Butcher - Good Problems
So there are a few ways to look at music videos. Thought a lot about them. We’re definitely in an era where people expect to be engaged visually. No ones trying to shut their eyes and listen to a song for 3 (or especially 4) minutes at a time. Everything around us is flashing and eye catching, so to create something that’s entirely audio based seems antiquated.
The other school of thought is one I’ve stuck to for the most part throughout my music making: that I’m a musician, a lyricist to be more exact, and I make music. I don’t model, I don’t direct visuals, I don’t make graphics which I call art. Some people are happy sticking in a lane and just doing the thing. For me at least, there was always sort of a thought that anyone who would enjoy the music I make probably doesn’t need a visual to accompany it in order to vibe.
Truth is, it seems like visuals are the only way anyone will hear a thing in the first place in 2022. As years went by I picked up a few other skills, and now I can sorta kinda do graphics, and I’ve been just beginning to tackle some of the tricks of video editing and that set of software as I’ve been learning how to stream on Twitch. I’m still far off from feeling talented enough to be very visually artistic, but I figured it might be a good approach to start throwing together some sort of videos for my music if I want more people to hear what I have to say.
That drive to have some form of visuals was one part of what pulled me to Twitch to begin with really. I’ve been learning to stream my own studio sessions over there in the past year or so, and been having a lot of fun creating while sharing the process with anyone who drops by. It’s taken some hours and some dollars to get the setup running smoothly, but currently I’ve got 4 cameras and 3 mics, and capability to run them (for the most part) problem free during recording sessions while streaming live audio from Ableton.
It was probably my job at Mic Club at the SCS as well as working with youth creating music every day that made me realize how much I enjoy the studio vibe and creating in that environment. I mean I knew it before, but I didn’t fully realize how much energy you can circulate through the people who are there sharing the creative process with you. So much give and take both ways. Previous to that gig I had always looked at recording mostly as a solo pursuit that was just for me and the walls of my room in the middle of the night, but lately I’ve really been loving streaming while I write and record new material. It gives me people to talk to when I’m adlibbing before my verse, so that the typical “turn my snare up in my headphones’ type shit is actually me talking to people on stream in chat and joking around. It’s a perfect balance between having someone actually in studio pressing record and engineering for me (which makes me feel like I’m being annoying if I want to make changes and be a perfectionist), and working alone (like I’ve gotten used to doing throughout my years). Having people to bounce ideas off of or make suggestions always makes for better results.
TLDR: Anyways, all that to say this: I wrote a new song last week and then I spliced some of the footage from the recording session streams together with the mastered audio from the finished track to give people a video of an emcee rapping into his studio mic that wasn’t me lip syncing my words pretending to rap. This was actually the footage of me saying the words you’re hearing on the song as they were recorded. Felt like a good mix of genuine behind the scenes documentary type footage, and the standard “watch me rap my perfected audio while standing in my studio in neon lights with a popper stopper blocking my lips” trope.
Hope you enjoy.
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