This piece from “A Walk in the Woods” needed a storyline, and I couldn’t think of any way but stop motion to tell it. As I was writing this collection, I thought about how wild rabbits have to outsmart many dangers, and that led me to imagine them in a film noir spy / super hero story.
Most images are cut out of paper. A few, like the stars, I drew in the paint program and layered over my photos, and some sequences were photographed and then corrected in photoshop. I had quality issues with my lighting and camera so please forgive that it's not 100% stop motion.
I am NOT a visual artist — but I try really hard to make things that are acceptable. As one person said about something I once painted: “It’s too good to be bad, and it’s too bad to be good.” Yeah, that’s it. And there’s a lot of effort and trial and error. Lots of error.
So…… this two minute video took a month to complete.
I hope you enjoy it, and that it helps harpists who don’t know the piece to discover it for themselves or their students.
Most people don’t know why I do this — make videos that rarely get more than a few hundred plays — or less. Monetized? I’m nowhere near the requirements. (Youtube puts ads on everything — but you have to reach a huge level of plays to be monetized as a creator.)
I think a lot about how I used to be able to go to the music store and check out piles of piano music for review, and then go back and buy only what I wanted. Or at the very least, examine the thousands of books in stock, and sit down with headphones at a keyboard ant try them out right there. That brick and mortar store is long gone, along with all the band instruments, pianos, the concert hall in back, the teaching studios upstairs, the helpful employees.
So how do music teachers and their students, or musicians in general find new music?
If you don’t write your own, or have to play pop music (most of my gigging life), you have to buy it online now. And that cozy music store has been replaced by a website.
So I make these videos to represent the pieces online, and hope at least to put a smile on someone’s face. And, it’s good to create.
But does anyone out there remember the smell of a music store like I do? It was like the high school band room with a slightly woodier note, and that hopeful feeling… that I would make such a discovery: some wonderful piece of music to fill my senses and play over and over.