Russell Gong is a ukulele player who lives in San Francisco. Mary-Anne McTrowe is a ukulele player in Alberta, Canada. They have never met in person, yet they keep producing better and better music videos for YouTube. Earlier this year they produced their first collaborative video, If I Had a Million Dollars, a song by Barenaked Ladies. Spurred on by the success of that project, they decided to compose an original ukulele song. Here is their hilarious new music video, People Suck. I could not stop laughing while watching this.
Russell came up with the chords/melody and wrote the first verse and chorus. Mary-Anne then wrote the second verse and made some edits to the chorus lyrics. The third verse was written together. Russell explains that it was “surprisingly easy to write a song together via email.”
Russell edited the video using Sony Vegas 8 software. He says it took him about 10 hours to produce the video as he is still learning video editing. He credits Internet tutorials in getting him up to speed.
Mary-Anne has made a habit of producing collaborative music videos for YouTube. One of her most adorable is "Hello Ma Baby," produced with Nigel D'eon of Nova Scotia. You might recall this song as one of the most popular songs of 1899. Back then, there was this big new invention called "the telephone."
If you enjoy any YouTube videos you see, don't forget to leave some constructive feedback for the producer of the video. You might also choose to add the video to your YouTube Favorites, which is how I keep track of the videos I like.
(The blogger is a musician, writer and educator in the Washington DC-area. He is hankering to buy his first ukulele. You can reach him at philshapiroblogger@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/philshapiro)
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