General FAQ
What effect did you use on your voice?
It's called a Vocoder. It uses a carrier wave which is basically a noise that is in tune. It also uses another input which is for speech, it combines the two and allows you to play the keyboard to make a tune with the speech. Vocoders are sometimes built into keyboard, and there are various software packages that have vocoders in them, like Reason 3.0 and Fruity Loops.
What software do you use to edit the video?
I use Sony Vegas 6.0 to edit the video. I find it a very powerful package and it does everything that I want so far - and it never ever crashes, not a single problem yet =) I use a program called MonkeyJam to do the stop motion. It is very tempramental and sometimes gives me the wildest errors, but it's free!
What do you use to write your music?
I use Propellerheads Reason 3.0 to write my music. Everything you hear on all of my songs is Reason. It is my synthesizer, sequencer, vocoder, production suite, drum machine, everything. Everything you hear is me playing the keyboard, even the drums! I never use drum loops or any pre-recorded material. I use an 88 Key grand hammer action MIDI controller, which you see in some of my videos. It has no sounds, it just transmits the notes I play to my computer and Reason makes the sound.
What cameras do you use? And how is your video quality so good?
I use a Sony handycam DV camera (DCR-HC42E) which belongs to my parents for the video, and my Canon EOS 350D digital SLR for the stop motion parts on the pancakes video. I used used my webcam for the stop motion in my other videos (Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000). The video quality is good partly due to Vegas being a great program, and also because I render the video in very high quality. If you want to get technical, WMV 9.1, 3mbit video stream, 720x576 resolution @ 25FPS, 128kbit WM audio.
Pancakes
What is your pancakes recipie?
The pancakes I made are different from what people in the US call pancakes, they are thinner and like French Crepes. Click here for the recipe I use =)
Addicted To YouTube
Where did you get the cow?!
It was given to me by my friend Donna for a Christmas present. I don't have a clue where she got it from. She also gave me the wombat (the brown one) which she bought in Australia :)
How do you make the animals move?
It's called stop motion animation. I take one picture of them, then go infront of the camera and move them all by about an inch. Then I go back behind the camera, take another picture, then go infront of the camera move them by an inch again.. It takes a long long time.
What happened to your finger?
I was grating cheese one day and slipped.. I grated my finger kinda badly. It needed stitches, but it's now finally healed!
Do you have the sheet music for 'Addicted To YouTube?'
I improvised the piano at the end of the song, and I recorded it in Reason. I have some sheet music which was made by my friend Stuart. It's not 100% accurate to what i played, but it will give you a good idea! I also have a piano roll, which shows you exactly 100% what i played, but it may be difficult to figure out. I hope it will be enough to let you play it. I'd be very interested to see someone else play it, post me a video of you playing it on YouTube =)
As far as the piano roll goes, let me explain how it works.. You will see a picture of a keyboard. If you follow the lines from the keyboard you see red rectangles, these are the notes. The song is played going away from the keyboard. The width of the red bars are how long the notes are held for.Click here to see the piano roll =)
