Stupid free service

Sometimes it takes me a long time to make a tutorial video or learn a song, and that's ok. It's to be expected. But sometimes I finish my part and YouTube won't take the video, or it takes me days to upload something.

I really can't complain about a free service, but I will use it's little foibles as an excuse for why I haven't had a video up in a while and as a heads up for other people relying on YouTube. Some things that annoy me about YouTube right now:

1) YouTube uploading goes down sometimes. In my area, it went down for two straight days.

2) It takes about 4 hours for me to upload an 8 minute clip and I have a fast connection. That would be fine, I guess, but sometimes the connection (on their end) dies at some point over those four hours and the upload is lost.

3) There is a YouTube help page that claims you can upload clips longer than 10 minutes if you have status as a "Director". I switched my status to Director, waited seven hours for my 14 minute clip to upload, and it now says "Rejected (length of video is too long)". So either the help page is bogus or the programming is messed up. Either way, it shouldn't need to upload the entire clip, waste a whole night of time, to tell me the clip is too long.

A smart program would be able to tell the length before the whole thing is uploaded and immediately let you know if it's too long so you can get on with your next idea.

aha! From wikipedia:

At one time, when you signed up for a Director account setting, you were offered to have unlimited video length, but that is no longer offered...

So now I have a tutorial video that's 14 minutes long and has no home. I feel kinda like this kid. I don't really want to re-record it, and I don't ever want to split it into two parts. I'll probably just have to pare it down, which is unfortunate but maybe for the better.

If anyone knows how to get longer videos up, or a better way to upload, please help!

Needed: Percussionary Musicianist

I just found out my electronic drummer, Gorch, is moving to Japan (aGAIN). Now, that's all well and good for his life and what not, but it puts some of my Ukulala plans on hold. He has a great ear for drums and musical composition, and he was helping me plan out some interesting songs.

Although... he was all the way in Virginia before, so it doesn't actually change much. Hopefully once he gets settled he'll be back on the sequencer, and hard.

In the meantime, I want to try working with a real-life percussionist on a few videos. I replied to a craigslist poster (not THAT kind of craigslist poster--a percussionist!) earlier tonight, but... I gave him the link to this website so unfortunately he'll see what an amateur operation I got going right now. The plan is to do a Ukulala cover and video of every song I do a lesson for, and see from there if we get along well enough to "take it to the next level" (not THAT next level--the musical kind!).

So... anyone out there know a percussionist in the Boston area?

If anyone has any idea how Israel strums...

...this song, PLEASE let me know. The song is the beautiful Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World ukulele mash-up, by deceased ukulele hero Israel Kamakawiwo'ole.

I need to find a slow motion tutorial... which is exactly what I'll post if I can figure it out.

The song is just a ukulele and it sounds like it should be easy to figure it out, but there is something deceptively complex about the beat. I wonder if it's possible he uses a different tuning too. I did find this discussion, which only told me people are having just as much difficulty as I am having.