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Roland Jones examines the meteoric rise in popularity of the on-line video sharing site and what it means for amateur musicians.
It’s very rare for something to come along and change your life for the better and yet cost you absolutely nothing. You Tube is, I assure you, the very best case in point so far this century.
If you haven’t discovered it already, ‘You Tube’ is a web-site designed to facilitate video sharing. In layman’s  terms this means that anyone who visits the sight can watch videos that have been uploaded by other visitors. By registering on the site (free of charge) users have the capability to upload an unlimited number of their own (or other peoples) videos for others to watch. Videos can be simple amateur clips caught on mobile phones or digital cameras or they can be professionally produced content such as television shows or movie trailers.
Such a simple concept was bound to catch on. You Tube’s popularity in the public domain has sky-rocketed since its invention in 2005. The numbers are truly astronomical! 100 million videos are viewed ever single day! Over 65,000 new videos are up loaded every 24 hours and on a monthly basis 20 million people world-wide visit the site.
Video content reflects the diversity of such vast numbers of people. You can find clips relating to almost anything you can think of and You Tube works hard to respect different people’s freedoms and values; however, there are a few fundamental rules to keep it all viable the most obvious of which is that videos must not contain nudity or anything deeply offensive. Inevitably, videos are occasionally posted that breach the terms and conditions but generally they are removed fairly quickly with little to no harm done.
So, what does an amateur musician stand to gain from all this. I tell you, you won’t be disappointed. Firstly, You Tube is a treasure trove of rare content which it would be almost impossible to find anywhere else. By simply inserting the word ‘Violin’ in the search box on the home page, the site revealed 74,000 clips in some way relevant. Within the first 15 clips I discovered some old black and white footage of Yehudi Menuhin playing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto No 1, Nigel Kennedy playing the second movement of Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin using a bow on his Les Paul and Ed Alleyne-Johnson busking with his electric violin in the historic city of Chester. A truly eclectic collection!
Repeating the search for ‘Bassoon’ revealed a bassoon quartet performing the soundtrack to the ‘Super Mario Brothers’ video game. Fantastic!
It’s not long before the real value of such an enormous resource becomes apparent. Search for ‘Learning to play the saxophone’ and you are presented with several uploads purporting to be from teachers who have thoughtfully recorded and posted a series of lessons for beginners. The resource is interactive. Upload a couple of minutes of video of you playing your chosen instrument and You Tube allows visitors who have watched your clip to publish comments. As an amateur pianist I have done this and was amazed that after just a few weeks my clip had been viewed several hundred times and I had received lots of encouraging comments and tips from other amateurs and professionals alike. You can see my clips on You Tube by clicking this link.
No one underestimated the huge impact technological advancements have made on our lives in the last 20 years but You Tube and the increasing number of like sites have revolutionised how on-line video can be utilised as an education resource or just for pure entertainment value. This is especially true for anyone who loves making music - no musician should miss it.
www.youtube.com
August 2007 |
