Day 2: "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield

Alright, things are already looking up! I found out that my mic will work with a stand, so I ordered a stand and it should be here next week! I contemplated ordering a shockmount as well, but online reviews tell me my mic (a Blue Snowball) might be too heavy for the shockmounts that are made for it. Ah well.

Yesterday's post focused on the sometimes overwhelming logistics of creating a video. These are the logistics that prevented me from auditioning online for...several things, but among them are American Idol and The X Factor. That will not be happening again!

Today's challenge is figuring out how to perform to a karaoke track and somehow getting the track, my vocal, and the video to all line up...since apparently these things don't occur organically. Today I'm trying to use Windows Live Movie Maker, since it seems to be the closest Windows equivalent of iMovie...and by that I mean not close at all, but it exists on my computer.

(an hour or so later)

*O.M.G.* getting the track to line up with the vocals was a pain. Why? BECAUSE WINDOWS LIVE MOVIE MAKER DOESN'T SHOW SOUNDWAVES WHEN YOU EDIT. So I had to use an up and down arrow to try to hear the difference between hundreths of a second. Thanks Microsoft. This is a perfect time to reference back to "throwing perfection out the window." Once I got close to something that sounded close I just went with it because I was tired. (To anyone who's wondering, I thought it was important to add the karaoke track because otherwise all you can hear is my voice loud and the karaoke track very faintly, which is pretty boring.)

Then, quite literally every other time I would play it back it would be lined up, then not. Then lined up, then not. I thought I was losing my mind, but I swear it happened. Of course every time I saved it it was in the "not lined up" format.

After two false start uploads to YouTube (and two e-mail from YouTube that I may or may not be violating copyrights for...performing a cover? unpaid?), I decided to just upload the "boring" video without the karaoke track. I figured if I didn't make a decision soon, it'd be midnight, and then this wouldn't accurately be a "Day 2" video.

In other news, having a gigantic microphone in my hand/bobbing along in the screen is really distracting so...I really can't wait to get my new mic stand. Tomorrow I might just put my mic on a setting that doesn't require me to sing directly into it. Hey, that might fix the whole "lining up the track" issue as well! Also, I think I need something more modern for tomorrow. Any ideas?