Three years have passed since I first started planning to create a Youtube channel, but I finally took the first step and posted a cover song: Life and Times of a Bonus Track from Edguy.
Looking back, it’s funny to see how long it took me to post a video because the whole process was actually pretty fast. The video took a couple of hours to be recorded and a couple more to be edited. It could’ve been even faster if I had not been nervous while recording and making a lot of mistakes. Editing also took a fair amount of time because of some misconceptions.
Point is, I really did not need three years to do a task that took around 4 hours. Why did I take so long then? Procrastination is the obvious answer. But I want to mention some barriers that I created for myself.
Strive for perfection
No one ever wants to do a bad job, even when it’s a boring task for work or a useless school assignment. I had my share of frustration after realizing I could not do a better job while doing something. It’s even harder when we know we are going to be judged.
If I was going to post a cover online for people to watch and judge, I was going to do everything perfectly: great recording, great sound quality, great video quality, great editing… But I didn’t know how to do any of those things.
It took me some time to understand that I don’t have to post a cover video with the same quality as an official music video. It’s okay to start as an amateur.
Self-image
Three years ago I was a lot more dissatisfied with my self-image than I am today. I wouldn’t admit but today I can say that I was more afraid of negative feedback regarding my image. People on the internet can be pretty mean and if you’re not mentally prepared to deal with that, you probably shouldn’t pick this fight.
I’m still not emotionally evolved to be A-okay if I read a mean comment but I’m stable enough to deal with it.
And what about the cover?
The choice
It’s funny even for me why did I choose this song to be the first one I ever recorded. It’s not a famous song, not a single, it’s not even in a studio album. Life and Times of a Bonus Track is from Edguy’s King of Fools EP. I have always found this song hilarious and it was a major accomplishment for me to learn to play it by ear. I could’ve played other songs but this is the one I am most comfortable with at this moment.
Recording
The process of recording the song was a little bit harder than I expected. As I was making mistakes, I was getting more and more nervous. I practice this song a lot and did not expect it to be so hard. It didn’t take much time as I said before, but it could’ve taken a lot less.
Editing
I know almost nothing about video editing and Talissa did most of the work here while I was giving opinions on the process. This part was the most challenging one because we spent a lot of time trying to understand why the final video quality was so bad. After a few days messing with exporting configurations, we discovered the reason: Google Photos had decreased the video quality I sent her. The problem was the input, not the output. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Coming next
I have always found difficult to start a project and even more to continue it. I already have the next songs planned (no spoilers) to prevent me from dropping this one. Agora vai!
