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Here’s the main video for my latest Common Chords column. It’s hard to believe this is the 18th post featured.

Nathan Belt was a pleasure to work with and an excellent musician and craftsman. His love for music is genuine and he has a good sense of life outside of his time on stage.

Please check out the last video on the post where some of the tribute artists at Legends In Concert get together for an impromptu jam covering a famous Beatles song.

Here’s the link to the Common Chords blog.

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My latest Common Chords column is on a 17-year-old North Myrtle Beach singer/songwriter named Steve Pethel.

I first heard Little Steve (he’s a junior) sing and play at the local open-mic I attend on Thursdays at Fresh Brewed Coffee House in Myrtle Beach. I noticed right away he was different and his songwriting skills were well beyond his age.

His playing is unique because he is left-handed and plays a right-handed guitar just flipped over. So the treble strings are at the top of his playing approach instead of the customary bottom. This gives him a sound that is opposite to most.

Being slightly different has not hindered his playing for he has adapted well and knows his way around the fingerboard.

This kid reminds me so much of me at that age. I too struggled to fit in with my peers at school and the guitar and writing helped soothe the pains of disappointment and rejection.

Steve’s advantage is he lives in a different time where uniqueness can be nurtured and encouraged. I know for sure his life will be better because of this trait, whatever path he chooses to take with his music.

For this CC, my friend James Rimes brought along his recording rig and he took care of the sound so I could concentrate on the visuals. This was a big plus and I hope you notice how well this one sounds.

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It’s hard to believe this is my 16th Common Chords completed and done.

On this installment I met with the jam band Ten Toes Up for music and interviews about how they travel together and then live together in a small home in Murrells Inlet.

The challenge for these videos was the sound. Recording multiple instruments from several different sound sources in the bands practice area and without a stereo point made for some muffled recordings.

In the end I found the best solution was to place the Edirol close to the source of the lead vocals and then let everything fall below that in the mix. This worked and so I feel the sound is as good as it could be in this situation.

I’m getting pretty good at working with the Edirol and it’s fun to see if I can find a limit for it. So far it has shown no limits. It is the perfect field-recording tool that lets me worry about other things like the 2 cameras and 2 tripods I have to juggle while shooting these.

Go here to the Common Chords blog to read my story and see performance only videos of the band.

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My latest Common Chords was fun to shoot as I got the opportunity to hang out with a group of awesome sisters for a warm evening of fellowship and music.

The Bellamy Sisters have one of the most loving relationships I’ve seen in my career and it was an honor to tell the world about them.

They have used this love to transcend hardship and sickness and make the world a better place for others. This is the heart of what my column is about.

I spoke with Jannett Bellamy soon after this video published and she liked it but for the close-up of her shoes. The sister’s claps and toe taps are the drums of the acapella group so I felt the need to show them working. Plus her shoes are the same color lime green as most of the rooms of her home. She said her daughters and nieces gave her a hard time about her shoes.

I’m having so much fun with this column and I’m hoping folks enjoy it as much as I do. It’s a lot of extra work but I’m learning so much about life and music from my subjects.

Go to the Common Chords blog page to see my story about the sisters and view extra music-only videos.

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Over the last several months, I’ve been honing my musical chops at a weekly open mic sessions at Fresh Brewed Coffee House on Thursday nights in Myrtle Beach.

During that time, I was impressed with the musical selflessness of the open mic’s host Brian Roessler.

I was hesitant at first to include Brian as a subject for my Common Chords column because I didn’t want the other musicians that frequent the session to feel left out. Brian’s community of songwriters is strong and there are several excellent musicians and writers that frequent the event.

After realizing the column is more about community action with music than about musical prowess, I decided the others would understand.

The video was difficult to piece together. I recorded two songs and the interview footage during our video session last Thursday afternoon. The first song “Fine Print” was an up-tempo, fast paced song and the other, “Never Meant To Last” was a slow beautiful song about the fleeting status of love.

For the interview video I chose “Fine Print” as the background. The fast paced rhythms of Brian’s guitar at times were a little overpowering when I inserted the interview footage because of Roessler’s soft pitched voice. No matter how low I took the volumes on the song, It still seemed to distracted from what he was trying to say. In hindsight “Never Meant To last” would have been a better choice.

On the Common Chords blog I was able to include both songs as music only videos so nothing was lost.

The time I’m spending on these posts is phenomenal. Because of codec issues with Final Cut Pro using the Canon 5D Mark IIs, the render times are taxing and causing me to reevaluate the process.

It is not unusual for a typical post to take 3 days to put together. Here’s a break down on the last post.

Day one:

Shoot and upload video to my computer. Place both A&B footage of the recorded songs in the FCP timeline and render.

Day two:

Edit and remove unwanted raw footage from the b-roll camera footage. Synchronize the clips together with the better audio recorded from the digital recorder.

Create all the title slides for the two music-only videos and then export self-contained .mov files out of FCP for compression to the web.

Create main interview video by adding edited interview footage over one of the finished music-only videos.

Export that video to a .mov file from FCP.

Day 3:

Convert all .mov files to a working web ready file using the On2 Flix .flv converter. This process takes a while because I export two different file sizes for use on the Common Chords site and the Zero Comments site. I also use the double pass option for better quality.

Edit and caption the still images for the photo that will appear in the paper.

Write and submit the story to the editors.

After the story is edited, I format and upload the information to the blogging software for publishing on the web.

Day 4:

Sleep and then back to the daily grind.

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It was hard to follow my last post for the Common Chords column but I found the perfect musician. Keith Borshak is an artist/musician living in Socastee and he makes these incredible art guitars from old discarded archtop guitars.

The video came together pretty easy. Keith was great at staying on the point and a natural at being interviewed. His music choices were great and his art was wonderful. How could I do a bad job with all that going for me?

The new Canon firmware update for the Canon 5D has given me more control of my sound input and changed the frame rate the cameras records at. This has enabled me to synch sound from an external source without the synch drifting.

Only if the render times could be shortened with a codec update and I would be in heaven.

Please feel free to go to the Common Chords blog for the full entry.

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On January 11th, my friend and South By Southeast founder Jeff Roberts died suddenly from heart complications.

So with the loss of Myrtle Beach’s “Minister of Music”, a big void opened in the promotion of Americana music in the area.

Thanks to many of Jeff’s friends like Sam Hannaford and Nell Ciaccio, they have decided to continue the series in his honor.

Last week we made this video in Jeff’s honor and recorded some music. There are many songs on my Common Chords site, mostly spiritual in nature due to the feelings of the musicians.

Below are a few of the songs I sang and I noticed even I sound good with the right backup.

Please go to my Common Chords blog to see more performance videos and audio clips of the afternoon.

I’ll Fly Away with Nell Ciacco, Bob O’Connor, Mike Millsaps and George Marshall

One Too Many Mornings Dylan Cover with Nell Ciacco, Bob O’Connor, Mike Millsaps and George Marshall

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Here is my latest Common Chords video and the challenge was in getting clear recordings of the instrument. Let me tell you from first hand experience, bagpipes are loud and my Edirol R-09’s input level was set pretty low in order to get a distortion-free recording.

Peggy was great and the best so far at being interviewed. She made my work so easy.

To read the story go to the Common Chords blog at TheSunNews.com

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It was well into an hour of the interview with this month’s Common Chords subject before I found my story. The cameras had been put back in their cases and all I had to record comments was my trusty notepad and a borrowed pen.

Ronald Ott and I had met a few months earlier at a music instruction school fashioned like the one from Jack Black’s movie “School Of Rock”. There he was teaching a 12-year-old guitar slinger the guitar solo to a 70’s rock song.

Going into these interviews, I try not to have a preconceived notion as to how they will go. I do however try to have a basic plan for a storyline.

With Ott it was teaching. My story line would be acquiring knowledge from one level (i.e. Coastal) and the handing down of knowledge from another. (i.e. School of Rock)

The problem happened when he told me he had left his job as a teacher at the School of Rock.

Then I struggled to find a story line and in the end I found a better one.

Ott had used the guitar to find comfort during his time stationed with the Army in Iraq. He had spent a year as a specialist transporting supplies to troops in and around Baghdad.

This storyline is only reflected in the printed and word version of the column and is not mentioned in the video.

So please go to my Common Chords blog at TheSunNews.com and read more about Ott the other talented musician I’ve featured.

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Thanks to my buddy Joe Weiss, the creator of the Soundslides program, I had a way to continue my Common Chords column and blog despite 2-weeks away from the office this month.

The documentary style videos I’ve been doing take endless amounts of time to put together, dealing with long render times in Final Cut Pro as you convert the Canon 5D codec.

So last Sunday I recorded sound and took still images and put together this quick audio gallery for my column.

In my opinion, a soundslide is no less effective in getting a message across. The power is in the quickness one can put together a presentation and post it on the web.

This presentation took the better part of two hours to work together and I still had time to have dinner with my family.

Please check out my story and some more audio clips on this month’s column at TheSunNews.com

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