Devon has been learning how to play the piano for a few years now. Classes are expensive, so he only takes 5-7 lessons each session and he practices a lot between sessions. Earlier this year, I got Devon inspired to learn the Beatles classic Here Comes The Sun. Some parts of the song are rather difficult, so we rearranged the song so that Devon could play it more easily. When you see the video, you'll see how we completely changed the beginning.... because I'm always telling Devon, "when you cover someone else's music, you have to change it to make it your own." And that is exactly what we did!!!!
I asked Devon if he would like to make a fun video to put on Youtube for the whole world to see. Obviously, he said 'Yes'!!!!
To begin the process, I had Devon just play the song using his piano - with no singing. I then took that audio file and made some adjustments, copied and pasted it over and again... because it repeats and soon we had the audio track ready to add vocals as well as visuals!
We filmed most of the video in just one day! I asked Devon to sing some parts of it, so we could line up his moving mouth with the soundtrack that we would record later. That later never happened!!!! As I was putting the video clips in order in my editing program, I fell in love with the audio just the way it was... so I left it! I felt that it made the video more charming and more 'real'!!!! In some parts of the video, we didn't even record some of the lyrics... I left the recorded sounds in place! Like, near the beginning, when Devon is playing in a splash park, you can hear him shouting "I'm gonna run through this!" as he runs through the water! I just felt that this added something really special to the final outcome! In another part, you can hear my voice... coaching Devon.... "Now sing 'here comes the sun'" and he sings it... but on top of my words and you can hear him say "oooops" and then I reply, "No - that just fine!" and all of this is in the video.
The first part of the video was another spontaneous event! I told Devon that I was making an intro for the video and that I needed some kind of noise to fill this time until his song started. A few minutes later, Devon was climbing a ladder onto the awning part of our garage roof and I began handing him a couple of drums to take up with him!!!! A few bangs on the drums later and our intro was born!
The thing that I enjoyed the most was the spontaneity of the process. We didn't really have a complete plan, when we started.... we just started and after each part we filmed, we thought about the next part! Creating art and music videos in this way, really makes the whole experience fresh! And I like fresh things!!!!
So - with no further adieu... let's enjoy some of Devon's musical creativity.....
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