JoCo Day 2012

Angelastic

It's getting toward that time of year again, when we forum people put together an amazing video or other collaborative gift for JoCo's birthday at the last minute. His birthday is on December 1, so around five weeks from now whoever has volunteered to do the final assembly of the thing will be panicking because they have nothing to work with yet, and about a week later Jonathan will tweet or even blog about how awesome we are because we have somehow managed to pull off something better than we ever imagined.

Here are some previous JoCo Day videos:

2009: We're Having A Party (thread)

2010: We Hope You Like Cake (thread)

2011: A Talk With JoCo (thread)

So, what should we do this year?

I'm excited because I now have an actual musical instrument: a rain stick, which I might not shake in rhythm but it's still better than banging on random objects such as packs of toilet paper rolls.

I had an idea while we were finishing last year's one, so I'll throw that out here (with a small change) just so there's a starting point. Of course if you have a completely different idea, don't hesitate to bring it up. It's to the tune of Pizza Day but it's about a day when you're going to a JoCo concert (I originally called it JoCo Day, but Concert Day is easier to understand; I think I called it JoCo Day before figuring out it was about a concert day.)

Did you notice something?

Did the world seem different since the moment you woke up today?

Everyone's excited,

Everyone feels happy in a way they can't explain today.

Doesn't matter who you are,

How your week has been so far, 

Cause you heard a hopeful arrr, and everything will be OK (or if for some reason Paul and Storm isn’t enough to cheer you up, ‘just wait for the final arrr, then everything will be OK’. I wanted to put in the rhyme that JoCo skipped in this verse but not in the other one.)

Hooray, concert day

Hooray, concert day

Some of us are lucky

Some of us see lots of shows, we’ll still appreciate today.

Some of us are far-flung (there has to be a better two-syllable word for that.)

Some of us can’t go there but it doesn't matter much today (so tempted to say ‘but we know it will be great today’ to add another rhyme)

'Cause even if we miss a show, 

We know another fan will go, 

And we know the video will be on YouTube anyway

Hooray, concert day

Hooray, concert day 

skyen

I'm up for audio-mixing, as ever

BrettGlass

If music arranging/orchestration is needed, I'll pitch in. It'd be easy to do a nice, rich arrangement of this song, with fingerpicked guitars and strings. Maybe even pedal steel or fiddle.

kate

I would like to contribute with vocals.

Angelastic

I forgot to mention a possibly-important fact: He'll be 42. The answer to the ultimate question of Life, The Universe, and Everything. Perhaps we could work that into it somehow. One possible way would be for those of us who went on JCCC2 to have the '42' on our cruise towels visible in whichever video parts we make (I'm assuming there will be a video, as usual, but who knows what we'll come up with?) People without (or even with) such towels could find more creative ways to show that number. Or we could just have a cheesy intro stating that the ultimate question is 'How old is JoCo today?'

Of course, this is all about JoCo, so turning it into one big Douglas Adams tribute would be a bit weird. But the towels have both JoCo and the number 42 on them, so that's an obvious thing to work into the video, even if it's just panning from his face to the number at the beginning. I want to link to a picture of a JCCC2 towel so that people who don't have them will know what I'm referring to, but my searches are turning up pictures of towel animals, so if anyone else has a picture of the towel, please post it.

ETA: I'll tweet to ThinkGeek that we're doing this, since they said in 2009 they wanted to be involved in the next video, and they indeed did contribute some footage for the next video. But I just thought, maybe Slashdot would want to return the favour by getting involved in this too. What do you think?

mtgordon

Actually, up until last month, ThinkGeek and Slashdot had the same parent company.

Angelastic

Oh, I didn't know that. Anyway, I was more thinking of the people at the two companies rather than the companies themselves (which I'm told aren't people), e.g. the ThinkGeek people who participated last time and CmdrTaco, who the Code Monkey video was addressed to. I guess they don't have the same parents.

mtgordon

True, they don't, but contacts at ThinkGeek could help put you on contact with the right people at Slashdot.

Oboewan

@Angelastic ; I don't know where you're hearing that.  It's all over the news here in 'Merica that companies are people too

BrettGlass

Yep. Invulnerable, immortal people. We mere humans are just their interchangeable parts, to be thrown away when we wear out or "malfunction" (e.g. by blowing the whistle on them or otherwise standing in their way). Or so says SCOTUS (the US Supreme Court).

Angelastic

@Oboewan: I linked to where I heard it; I presume it was a reaction to the news over there.

BrettGlass

BTW, here's a prototype (dashed off in a few minutes between tech support calls) of a full band accompaniment for "Pizza Day." It uses fingerpicked guitar, piano, strings, and fretless electric bass.

http://www.brettglass.com/pizzaproto.mp3

skyen

If we really wanted to 42 the heck out of him, then we could all just send him towels with no explanation whatsoever. Just towels, being delivered by confused mail-men all day.

BoffoYuxDudes

I'd like to help out where needed. 

Also - I'm planning on a secret release the same time involving the PAX East Devil Dogs controversy. More to come on that.

Angelastic

I finally got time to listen to Brett's prototype (I've been far too busy lately.) It sounds different from the original and I'm having trouble imagining it with the lyrics, but that's probably just because I'm not a musician. @skyen can probably make more helpful comments. Anyway, it's about time we did some more stuff! Any ideas/recordings/pictures/cakes?

BrettGlass

It's an arrangement, not a slavishly exact copy, so it will sound slightly different. A little fuller, I think. But I can thin it out if folks prefer it that way.

Angelastic

I'm probably just not that good at imagining musical things. I just figured I should say something about something in an attempt to get the discussion going again.

23 days left! That's 9 more than the first video was done in. I think I forgot to notify people on twitter of this discussion.

skyen

Commenting here to bump it and also fix it in my mind that this is a thing I need to do something about.

skyen

Okay, took a little look at all this. I have very little time to spare because I'm working on a ton of nonsense for university.

I think BrettGlass' arrangement is good - since we'll want as many voices as possible included in the song, I think a fuller arrangement is the way to go, but that might just be me. My only problem is that it sounds so clearly like MIDI. I can deliver guitar, bass and drums to a "proper" arrangement, and I'm pretty sure someone around here can do piano should it be called for. I do think the song needs to retain the familiar fingerpicky melody-line - I found it hard to sing along without it.

That said, incorporating a bunch of voices on the chorus is simple enough - question becomes should we all sing the verse as well or should we pick a vocalist or two?

Angelastic

Finally sent a tweet to a random selection of people who were either in previous videos or said they wanted to be or I know are likely to be who I don't remember seeing on the forums much lately. There are many more (these people, for example), so feel free to spread the word (just don't @mention JoCo!), I figure some other concerned people who follow me will see the tweet anyway since they follow thinkgeek.

sporksmith

sporksmith checking in!

I think I'll be able to help out, at least with contributing audio/video. I've actually been singing a lot more in the last year or so, so it might even be on key!

Also, not sure if we're locked into a song yet, but...

someone is crazy (and it's you) -> someone is forty (and two) ?

Not sure where to go with the rest of the lyrics though.

Blue

Ha ha ha ha I am one of the people who is rarely on the forums!  I'm in for whatever the plan is, just tell me when I need to send you a video of me wearing a fez or a towel or whatever.

chicazul

I support there being a JoCo Day thing, but I have very little time or ability to focus this month. If somebody else does all the hard work of deciding things and telling me what to do I'm all for participating!

BrettGlass

By the way, the prototype arrangement I posted above uses MIDI only for the piano. All of the other instruments are samples of live players.

mikeyc0312

I'd love to help out with this where possible. I'm always happy to sing, if that helps.

dkplewis

I'm ready to help out too. I'm also desperately hoping for a 2013 UK tour, so I can hold this towel up and wave it around: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/8e20/

mtgordon

I'm thinking it might make sense to have a bunch of people sing and/or dance to the instrumental track, submitting some combination of vldeo (dancing or lip synching) and audio.  The vocal tracks can be either ripped from video or recorded separately.  Video could show people getting ready for shows, wearing appropriate t-shirts, footage of the outside of traditional venues (some stills of venues with JoCo on the marquis might be good to throw in), etc.  I'm thinking we could cut between soloists on different verses, footage permitting, with more vocals in the chorus.  What makes sense to me is for people to generate whatever they can: video and audio for the entire song, multiple takes optional, plus any relevant stills, and throw them into the pot, knowing that most people will likely only be in the video for a few seconds and that it's up to the editor(s) to decide which seconds get used.

It sounds like we still need to finalize the lyrics (though I think Angela's general idea has momentum) and people to do video editing and audio mixing.  Any volunteers on that end?

For "far-flung," we might consider "remote" or "distant."  Alas, "antipodean" has far too many syllables. ;-)

Angelastic

'Distant' is good, it has the accent on the right syllable.

Well, I didn't want to push my idea on everybody, but people seem to have gone along with it and they're asking for someone to tell them what to do rather than suggesting other things, so I'll tell you some ideas I had for the video.

First verse we could have some people waking up happy, perhaps to an alarm for an event on their phone/calendar for a JoCo concert (maybe we could show the phone alarm going off for the first line, and someone waking up and looking at it on the second line. But perhaps we don't want to show a close-up of what the event actually is until the first 'concert day' bit)

Hopeful arrr=perhaps a short clip of Paul and Storm going arrr at the end of their set. I can provide plenty of those. Or one of us in a P&S or otherwise piratey T-shirt going arrr.

for the various 'hooray, concert day' bits, we can show various short clips/photos of us holding up concert tickets or outside a venue clearly advertising a JoCo show. Or just venues and tickets by themselves. This should be easy for a lot of people to contribute to, since many of us have taken photos of concert tickets or venues.

For most of the rest we show people singing/lipsynching. For these lines we show people who go to a lot of shows:

Some of us are lucky

Some of us see lots of shows, we’ll still appreciate today.

For these lines we show people from far away who has never seen JoCo live: 

Some of us are far-flung/distant

Some of us can’t go there but we know it will be great today (yeah, I caved to my desire to add a rhyme.)

These lines could be anyone, I guess. Someone might want to get creative and briefly show some reason they can't get to a show, or even just a screen recording of someone typing on the forums that they have to sell their tickets, and asking if anyone is filmng the show:

'Cause even if we miss a show, 

We know another fan will go, 

Here we show people who put a lot of concert videos on YouTube, probably holding up cameras while singing, if they have spare cameras to film themselves with:

And we know the video will be on YouTube anyway

(more pictures/videos of tickets, concert venues, groups of fans at concerts, etc)

Hooray, concert day

Hooray, concert day 

And… that's it! It's actually a very short song, so that'll make it easier on everyone. If anyone can already do something which they think would fit (and it doesn't have to be something I've mentioned) then feel free to upload it to the collaborative box.net folder (I'm not certain that's the right link; I copied it from an old thread), or wherever else is convenient for you. Similarly, if you feel like recording a vocal track or something on whatever instruments you happen to have that you know how to play, just do it and @skyen will figure out how to mix it all together. If you can, record video of yourself doing so, and say whether you consider yourself distant, going to lots of shows, or YouTuberish, but otherwise, any audio will help (and you can always lip-synch later if you want to be in the video.)

sporksmith

@Angelastic - Sounds like a plan!

@BrettGlass - should we wait for your full track before recording audio? Or will singing against the original Pizza Day work? (i.e., do you plan on matching the tempo and key exactly...?)

BrettGlass

I'll turn out the rest of the track within a day. It will be very close to the original.

Angelastic

I forgot to work 42 into the above. Naturally, if you have a towel or any other object with a '42' on it, have it visible in your video. I guess the ThinkGeek people will have some interesting such props to hand (I'm trying to figure out how to summarise things so they know what to do.) Also, maybe somebody could show something terrible (but not too sad, we don't want to ruin the video) happening, or maybe just them with their head in their hands in a cubicle, for the 'how your week has been so far' part. Hey, maybe it could be somebody's planet being blown up to make room for a new hyperspace bypass. @Spektugalo, I believe you're the blowing-things-up-on-video guy...

As always, these are just ideas I came up with and blurted through my fingers. If you have any better ideas, feel free to suggest and/or implement them.

mikeyc0312

For the part where you show people from a long way away, I'd be perfect. I've never seen JoCo live. When he came to London recently, I didn't have any money, and the last time he was in the UK, I was stuck in Aberystwyth which is so far out of the way that it takes 3 and a half hours to get to Birmingham and, if you don't have a car, you have to go there to get just about anywhere else.

Colleenky

I'm in. :-)

Angelastic

Yay!

I forgot to mention: this song has some harmony parts! Or at least one 'na na na...' part, IIRC. Somebody should sing that. I also forgot to finish that sentence before.

Also, since JoCo day is on a weekend and nobody else has volunteered and I'm probably in an advantageous timezone, I volunteer to do video mixing. I'm happy to do it but I'm worried that since I came up with the song idea, if I edit video as well, this whole thing will have far too much me in it. And who wants a birthday present full of me? Eww. (I''m picturing a box full of guts.)

BrettGlass

Backing track pretty much done. Who's doing the mixing?

Angelastic

I think @skyen volunteered to do mixing.

skyen

I am the Mixer. It's my secret super-hero identity. Got my powers after a freak incident with a radioactive kitchen-appliance, while in the company of a radio DJ.

Angelastic

Look, up in the skyen! It's a nerd! It's insane! It's the Mixer!

BrettGlass

In much the same way that I am Wireless Guy:

Colleenky

All righty. I'm planning to record some vocals today, once I read over this thread again and figure out exactly what I'm supposed to be recording.

Angelastic

YAY! I was just about to post something saying that it's the weekend, the perfect time to record stuff. It's 2p.m. and I haven't had breakfast yet and I'm getting a bit hangry but I'm going to hastily make some executive decisions on lyrics and post some kind of summary:

Okay, everyone who can, sing the lyrics written below to the tune of this, preferrably in front of a camera, potentially with some kind of '42' visible, and/or something else visible that might indicate you go to lots of shows or are distant or whatever. Then send audio to @skyen and video to me by either putting it here or on some other file upload service. If you're not comfortable with singing, feel free to just lip-synch on a video. This is what I might do, since I have a bit of a cold.

Other things you could do are:

Sing the harmony parts (the la la la, la la la la... that comes after the second 'hooray, pizza day') also on camera if possible, because more footage means more options to mix things together.

Record some kind of instrumental track (also potentially on camera) if you have an instrument.

Record other snippets of video or send photos illustrating things mentioned in this post, or any other ideas you come up with that could be related to the song. Anyone who sends some kind of video by uh... [todo: think of some kind of deadline and translate it to a timezone. @skyen, do you have a deadline for audio submissions?] will end up in it somehow.

Record yourself doing a hearty piratical 'arrr' which could be inserted just after the 'you heard a hopeful arr'

Tell other JoCo fans about this and encourage them to join in the fun.

Summarise this post and tweet it to @ThinkGeek (without @mentioning JoCo), since they asked me for a summary and I haven't given them one yet.

Tell other people what to do (because it seems people want to be told what to do, and that seems to have become my job, but I'm not very good at it and I'm not awake all the time and I don't want people to think they can't contribute their own ideas etc.)

The lyrics: [EDIT: Download Colleenky's vocal guide or these other guides and sing along to them; the lyrics have changed a little.]

Did you notice something?

Did the world seem different since the moment you woke up today?

Everyone's excited,

Everyone feels happy in a way they can't explain today.

Doesn't matter who you are,

How your week has been so far, 

Cause you heard a hopeful arrr, and everything will be OK

Hooray, concert day

Hooray, concert day

Some of us are lucky

Some of us see lots of shows, we’ll still appreciate today.

Some of us are distant

Some of us can’t go there but we know it will be great today

'Cause even if we miss a show, 

We know another fan will go, 

And we know the video will be on YouTube anyway

Hooray, concert day

Hooray, concert day 

tl;dr: Do stuff! First to do stuff gets to decide how it's done.

skyen

RECORDING NOTES:

If at all possible, record your audio as mono-tracks, record EVERYTHING separately, don't add your own compressions or effect (like echo or etc.) that'll be my job, and try not to have tons of background noise.

Record the Hearty Piratical Arr seperately as well, and to allow for it in the mix, leave a gap after "hopeful arr" and "and everything will be okay". Don't flow straight from one into the other.

DEADLINE:
ASAP. I can pull off a mix overnight, but it's better if I have time to mess about with it.

UPLOAD:

You can email any audio-files to me at fghtita over at gmail.com - in several batches if necessary. Remember to give me your forum user-name, and if you want to be really nice, clearly label the audio-files to make things easier on me.

@BrettGlass if you email me the individual instrumental tracks, I can basically get started right away

Colleenky

ThinkGeek has been notified and is "on it."

Also, some thoughts from a Johnny-come-lately. Even though the song's technically about a concert day, I  think "JoCo Day" sounds better, and I suspect that's what the listening ear will be expecting. And in the second verse, might I suggest "Some of us can't get there"? For some reason, "go there" sounds a little odd to me. Thoughts?

ETA: Should the "Arrr!" be hearty and piratical or hopeful?

kate

Yay, I am so excited! I hope I can figure out how to record something for this!

Angelastic

Ooh yes, everybody should clearly indicate which name/pseudonym they'd like to be identified as in the video, and a location if you'd like the video to show where we all come from.

The Arrr should be hearty, piratical, AND hopeful. I defer to @Colleenky, or whoever records first, on the other two things. JoCo Day could work, if we make it clear from other video snippets that it's a day you're going to a JoCo concert. We could also have 'concert day' in some parts of the song and 'JoCo Day' in others, or go 'hooray, concert day, hooray JoCo day' both times, or even have harmonies of some sort so both are sung at once, if that can be clearly heard.

It's easier if I have video files in a format iMovie can handle, or that I can easily convert into such a thing. From previous experience, this means basically anything but wmv. If you can only shoot videos in wmv format, try to convert it to something else. Otherwise, I'm sure someone else will.

Don't worry if:

Your camera is low-resolution. This is an international collaboration and a rush-job, and a thing that needs to be transmitted around the internet, so we'll go with whatever people can do.

You don't manage to get a perfect take (video-wise) of the entire song or the entire whatever you're doing. Other people will supply video too, so we can use that in whichever parts that yours is not perfect.

Note to self: actually record something instead of just telling other people what to do.

Also, I'm going to record a rain stick track, because I have a rain stick, but I don't know exactly when it should be shaken and how, so if somebody musical could give me a hint on what to do, that'd be nice. Otherwise I can just send @skyen some assorted noises and he can mix/loop it in however he likes.

Colleenky

@Angelastic Generally, a rain stick is just tipped from end to end, creating the "rain" effect. Experiment with slope/velocity.

ETA: I like the "concert day/JoCo Day" compromise. What do folks think? Is that too weird? Should it really be one or the other? Hello? Beuller?

EATA: Unless @BrettGlass is able to get a full version of the instrumental up today, I'll end up recording a vocal guide track against JC's original.

skyen

I vote for JoCo Day - I think it works better. And I think it should be the same across the board - mix it up and I think it might not work so well.

Colleenky

We can use this folder for the collaboration, if folks like, to save @skyen's poor email account. (We've used my Box account for JoCo projects for the last few years.) To join as a collaborator, it looks like you just click the button on the right. You have to set up a Box account to do so, but at least there's a free option.

I've set up a new folder in there for JoCo Day 2012 and uploaded a vocal guide track for folks to sing along with (using the original song). Warning: the backing track is very soft, so that I could sing over the original words. If you turn it way up at the beginning, you might hurt your ears once my vocals kick in.

@skyen I'm gonna re-record that vocal track. There's a pop in the first and third "JoCo Day"s, where I edited it from "concert day."

skyen

All right, excellent

BrettGlass

@Colleenky The backing track was sorta ready two weeks ago and was completely finished a week ago (on the 17th). I just wasn't sure to whom I needed to send it for mixing, etc.

I have done an MP3 encoding of the track and e-mailed it to @skyen as requested. To make sure everyone can sing with it I have also uploaded it to my Web server:

http://www.brettglass.com/pizzaday.mp3

I have an uncompressed 34 MB WAV file if anyone would like the really high fidelity version. Or I can generate one WAV per instrument if there's some reason to remix.

The backing track is in the same key as the original, and the rhythm (exactly 92 beats/minute) is a perfect match. So, any vocals which are recorded using JoCo's track should also work.

kate

I have recorded my video, and will pull the audio out and upload them both to the box.com account later.