Bill Sr. can recall a time back in ‘73 when he proudly played the Marines Hymn he had just learned on the harmonica for his brother Steve; then later as they were listening to Johnny Cash on the 8-Track Steve asked to use the harmonica and began playing along with the song.
“So, I told him to just keep the damn thing.”

B had written the lyrics to Fallen first, added the melody later, then he and his friend Joey Davis recorded the finished song at Joey’s home studio with some additional dubbing done later. The video is a collage of photos of Steve and I just love the lyrics and the soft rhythmic guitar.

B’s Dad Bill says, “I may be prejudiced but, I think he’s pretty good… and he has a lot more lyrics to put to music.” I agree with Bill and if B’s got more, I for one, want to hear more. Lots more. B has an incredible talent and deserves to get more airplay.

Steve’s son Bryant says, “My dad had a deep love and appreciation for all music.
Some of his biggest influences were Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Don Williams, John Prine, Woody Guthrie, Chet Atkins, Neil Young, Keith Whitley, and so many more.
He could play any instrument you put in front of him. He just had a natural talent for music and singing. He was capable of so much. It’s a crying shame we lost him at such an early age.”

More of Steve’s music can be found at: www.myspace.com/stevebartok

I figure if ya can’t beat ‘em; join ‘em. There’s a slight irregularity though…I haven’t any content to upload at the moment and won’t have anything worth the bandwidth until I complete the Nova Gospel Ensemble project. This is where the playlist comes into play on a grander scale. The channel promotes small, independent “Original” artists.

Most of the collection is comprised of folks who’ve uploaded their creative craft with limited number of views. Mind you there are some unsigned artists out there with huge followings like Les Québécois David Michaud & Jon Lajoie who have been to the top of the ratings for Canada. (This translates into millions of views & hundreds of thousands of subscribers-not too shabby for not being backed by a major label).

The AMPwerxMedia channel’s “Original Songs of Artists Around the World” Playlist is more focussed on smaller, less known artists that deserve to get the views and the subscriptions they deserve for the talent they possess. These artists range between 1 subscriber with a few dozen views to a few hundred subscribers up to a few thousand views.

Drop by the new Original Artists on www.YouTube.com page (link in the sidebar) to find out a bit more about how the Playlist project is developing. Sub-pages -like Musicians- will be added as short reviews are completed to get a glimpse behind the videos; a look into the artist’s influences, inspiration and style.

Hop on over to the AMPwerxMedia Channel to check out the layout and I must say, I am truly impressed with the amount of e-mails, comments and subscription that have been submitted in the few days the channel has been around. Wow!

Then of course you have to check out the “Original Songs of Artists Around the World” Playlist. itself. If you’re working away and you want to hear some unique tunes as you putter along just hit the “Play All” link and cruise along with some great tunes.

Mind you, there is a lot of that on there, but if you look hard enough you’ll find some really valuable information and find some very talented indiviuals offering great musical talent or some really good self-help tutorials for jsut about anything you need.

For example, I do a bit of video editing for different organizations and I needed some information on how to change the background while the foreground maintained the original video (called chromokey).  Chroma Keying is what you would likely see the most often when you watch the nightly news and the weatherpreson is pointing to different areas on a map showing the weather conditions.

This person is standing in front of something known as a “green screen” or “blue screen” it is just a solid colour screen and the graphics are added later. In most cases there is a monitor off-camera that shows what we, as the audience, is seeing. This assists the one doing the forecast on where to point. (This must take a lot of proctice.)

Anyhoo, back to YouTube… as I searched for more info about ChromaKey I found a great reasource on YouTube with a fellow named Mark Apsolon who gave some very valuable pointers on the best way to get good results using proper lighting, the right materials and a whole lot more.

This has change my opinion about YouTube and I now use it as a primary resource for finding other valuable information.