I’ve finally done it!! I managed to not only find the videocamera, but I also made a trip to WalMart and purchased the CORRECT videotapes, got all of the cables hooked up right, and recorded myself playing some songs on the piano. And it doesn’t stop there…oh no…I even managed to figure out what cable I needed to download from the camera onto the computer and had Damon go online and purchase said cable from monoprice.com (GREAT place to get stuff, btw!). The new firewire cable arrived yesterday afternoon (on my birthday, how appropriate), so I inevitably spent the evening trying to figure out the whole movie making/editing process. Using Windows Movie Maker, it was a SINCH to download the video from the camera to the computer. When you open the program, there is a nifty little link that says “download video from camcorder”. When you click that link, a wizard pops up and walks you through the entire process. You can even select to only capture portions of what is on the videotape – there is a button to have it start and stop recording as you please.
I had managed to play through four songs somewhat decently, so I got them all downloaded to the computer. Then I went over and setup a YouTube account so I could upload them. However, when I went to upload the movies, it was taking about an hour and a half to upload each one…turns out I had some pretty high quality videos going there! No problem, all you have to do is open the video in Movie Maker and select “Publish Movie” from the File menu. On the next screen, you can ask it to compress the video down into a MUCH smaller file size (original 650 MB file compressed down to 24MB). YouTube definitely seemed to like the compressed files much better!
The new files each uploaded in less than 5 minutes, and YouTube also allows you to input a description of the movie, tags, etc. along with your upload.
So anyway, enough about how to upload videos – I’m probably the last person on the face of the planet to try this out. 
So here is my NEXT adventure of trying to embed the aforementioned videos in my blog… … … ….
I originally wrote this song when I was in 5th grade, though it has evolved over the years into what I just recorded. Who knows where it may go from here.
This is me playing Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” on the piano. This song is broken into three distinct sections – I played “section A” for my 2nd grade piano recital. Section A is the most popular part of the song and is known by most piano players. Only recently did I discipline myself to learn the rest of the song at the request of Zeth, who is like a “godson” to me. He recently moved to West Virginia, so I uploaded this onto YouTube for him! Unfortunately, my high E and E flat keys are a little sticky, so it sounds a little choppy on the high parts. Oh well…
This is me playing a song called “Sililoquy” on the piano. It is from a yellow songbook titled “Sketches in Style” for piano by Jack Butler. I love a lot of the songs from this book since they’re mostly easy to play but sound really good too. They all have such a peaceful sound. Some of my favorites!
This is me playing a song called “On A Cloud” on the piano. It is from the same book as “Sililoquy”.
This is me playing “Bastille Day” by John Tesh. I learned this from a book that I borrowed from someone a few years ago, so I’m not positive that I’m playing the song exactly as he wrote it. I think I skip the intro part, but this is the main part of the song that I really liked. It’s super easy to play too, so I’d highly suggest it to anyone that likes it!
Hope you enjoy my music!!
