Massive Christmas Ukulele Collab

In a little over a week, I hope to release a ukulele video cover of "Do They Know It's Christmas." This is a collab I've been working on for months. It involves over 40 performers, most of them UU members. Some of our talented UU members are not just playing the ukulele and singing, but there are also bass players, flute, violin, cello, drum, and djembe players.

I've been asked to start a separate thread to talk about the collab and where I'm at with it and also, how it came about. Hopefully, video editing won't take up all my spare time and I'll have time to post info on the collab here.

For now, this is just a warm-up post. I'll have more to tell you in the morning.

Cheers,

Ronin Wong (musicmonsterw)


Edit: Addition. It's now Nov. 26 and the video is already out. For those of you who are new to this thread, I'm going to post a video link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=272HvdsI8jQ

Aloha Ronin,
That's a good way to showcase the tremendous talent we have here at the UU..what an awesome idea....Hoping to hear more of it....MM Stan...

I've done something similar at my school for this Christmas, although nowhere near as complicated as you're attempting. (Just vocals)

I've got just the teensiest idea of the amount of work that you'll have had to put into it!

Can't wait to hear it.

Congrats

mm stan said:

Aloha Ronin,
That's a good way to showcase the tremendous talent we have here at the UU..what an awesome idea....Hoping to hear more of it....MM Stan...

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Sir said:

I've done something similar at my school for this Christmas, although nowhere near as complicated as you're attempting. (Just vocals)

I've got just the teensiest idea of the amount of work that you'll have had to put into it!

Can't wait to hear it.

Congrats

Click to expand...

Thanks, Stan!

Sir, yes it is a lot of work. Probably several hundred hours by now. Yikes!

Wed, Nov. 17 3:35 pm.

I've finally captured all the video I need. Most of the video was in a long time ago but there was some extra inserts that I hadn't got yet. Currently I'm on the second draft of the video. The first draft was nothing but a very broad storyboard with no attempt at synchronizing to the audio. In the 2nd draft, I'm following the main ukulele fingerstyle players and lead vocalists. For the chorus section at the end of the song, I'll map it out in broad strokes for now.

Back date: March, 2010

I saw this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMspUgjQJyY




I thought this was a tremendous idea! I've been playing music for a long time, but I was very new to the ukulele Internet presence. I had barely heard of UU. I had joined but hadn't really done much. I contacted keonepax to see if they still needed participants but it was already full. I kept in the back of my mind that it would be a great idea to work on a big collab at some time in the picture. But, for now, it was just a dream.

I am sure this is going to be fabulous!! Thanks for all the hard work in advance!

fitncrafty said:

I am sure this is going to be fabulous!! Thanks for all the hard work in advance!

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Thank you for the kind words!!

Wed, Nov. 17, 5:27 pm

Just finished sorting through the clips I captured earlier this morning, and shot last night. I don't like the importing features in Final Cut Express. So, I tend to import them into i-Movie and then sort the shots for uploading into FCE. It took a good hour and half to do.

It's amazing how much time is spent in getting stuff into the computer and getting stuff out of it. Most of the errors I make happen here.

Wed, Nov. 17, 6:47 pm

Major failure!!

I started to work with one of the clips I shot last night. The audio was just a series of bleeps. It means the audio was unrendered. I try to render it and I get a message that there is insufficient room on my hard drive to do this.

So, I go back into i-Movie and move a bunch of my video clips from my hard drive to my external drive. I do this to manage my hard drive from time to time. Usually, it's not a problem. Most of my video uploads have been pretty simple. I just use i-Movie.

Anyways, I go back into Final Cut Express and now I find that a bunch of my video clips no longer work. Apparently, FCE keeps track of your video clips based on where they're stored. So, by moving the underlying clips, I've essentially made a lot of clips disappear. This is very painful. Some of the clips have already been edited into position to synchronize perfectly with the audio. It means I will have to do this work all over again. Fortunately, it affects only around 20 to 30 clips. All those clips not shot by me are perfectly fine.

Still, I hang my head in shame for a good 10 minutes before moving on.

I feel yer pain, brother. I've had it happen and it rips something out of you.
Get back in there, though. Y'heal faster if you do.

UncleElvis said:

I feel yer pain, brother. I've had it happen and it rips something out of you.
Get back in there, though. Y'heal faster if you do.

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Thanks, Mike! I'm back in. The good part is that doing things the second time around is a lot faster.

Backdate #2: March 15, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW1boRK-A78



The "We Are the World" ukulele collab comes out. It is fabulous. I think once again how great it would be to take part in something like that, perhaps even organize it. I thought "Do They Know It's Christmas" would be a natural one to do. I have no real intentions of doing it though. For one thing, I was not on friendly terms with computer technology. At this point, all my Youtube videos were extremely simple or they were shot and edited by someone else. For another, I barely know anyone in the online ukulele community. Who would I collab with?

Wed, Nov. 17. 11:32 pm.

After several hours of wrestling with Final Cut Express, I got my missing clips back and forged on ahead. I've been working steadily since around 7. I took an ice cream break but that's it. I met my goal for today although it took several hours more than I hoped. I have a complete 2nd draft of the video now. The video and audio are in sync. Mostly, I have focused on some of the main singers, about 20 of them. There's a priceless scene with a group of seven kids which will probably steal the whole show.

Things look better now. It's now time to wrap up and make some goals for tomorrow. And, I might eat some more. Editing really does make you hungry.

Wow Ronin, what a massive job mate. Just wanted to throw in my words of support, encouragement and excitement!!! It's a brilliant idea and we're all hanging out to see the end product of all those hours you've spent weaving it all together. Can't wait actually. And also the fun of being able to put faces to names of all those talented UU members! Awesome brother!

musicmonsterw said:

Backdate #2: March 15, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW1boRK-A78

The "We Are the World" ukulele collab comes out. It is fabulous. I think once again how great it would be to take part in something like that, perhaps even organize it. I thought "Do They Know It's Christmas" would be a natural one to do. I have no real intentions of doing it though. For one thing, I was not on friendly terms with computer technology. At this point, all my Youtube videos were extremely simple or they were shot and edited by someone else. For another, I barely know anyone in the online ukulele community. Who would I collab with?

Click to expand...

Backdate #3: July, 2010

A few months later, I am no longer a stranger to UU. I started to poke around a lot more starting in April -- asking and answering questions in various threads. I entered a few contests, and I made my way over to the mini-jams. If you haven't tried them out, I highly recommend you give it a shot.

Mini Jams

At the Jams, I met several PoHos, the inhabitants of the LeaderBoard thread. Sally (salukulady) invited me to check it out. It was fun. At first, it seemed like a virtual coffee house/very slow chat room. I came to visit and I ended up staying. It became my online home.

Leaderboard

I started to feel like I was part of a real community. It was either on the thread or in a message from one of the PoHos that someone brought up the idea it would be fun to do a collab involving all the PoHos. We joked around about possible song ideas. Then, it hit me. "Do They Know It's Christmas" would be perfect for our group. I knew we didn't quite have enough people to do the whole song but I could always recruit more people for the collab. Since March, I had gotten to know many ukulele Youtube performers.

I didn't bring up the idea right away. I still had a major hurdle. I was just not that comfortable with video editing. I did have some experience working with audio and mixing recordings but a lot of my knowledge was far out of date. I had been on an anti-technology stance for about 10 years. I decided that this was no longer a good thing.

eugene ukulele said:

Wow Ronin, what a massive job mate. Just wanted to throw in my words of support, encouragement and excitement!!! It's a brilliant idea and we're all hanging out to see the end product of all those hours you've spent weaving it all together. Can't wait actually. And also the fun of being able to put faces to names of all those talented UU members! Awesome brother!

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Thanks, Eugene! I will be mentioning the performers over the next few days.

musicmonsterw said:

Thanks, Eugene! I will be mentioning the performers over the next few days.

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Ah I was just gonna ask if you could give a run down of the countries represented.

CoLmes said:

Ah I was just gonna ask if you could give a run down of the countries represented.

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Yes, I will do that. Off the top of my head. it's

Canada, US, Germany, Switzerland, UK, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Australia, Bermuda. When I have more time, I will get a more certain list.

eugene ukulele said:

Wow Ronin, what a massive job mate. Just wanted to throw in my words of support, encouragement and excitement!!! It's a brilliant idea and we're all hanging out to see the end product of all those hours you've spent weaving it all together. Can't wait actually. And also the fun of being able to put faces to names of all those talented UU members! Awesome brother!

Click to expand...

How come we wont be seeing your talented mug in this video??

fitncrafty said:

How come we wont be seeing your talented mug in this video??

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I guess I didn't make that clear. I am performing in this video too. yes, you will see me. he he he