I ask, because all people can tell me is that my videos are boring and unintuitive. How can I do better?
I honestly don’t know…
Sometimes I do it right and people enjoy my videos a lot, but some of them just doesn’t fly.
What I do know is this: synth people are only really interested in the latest trend. You can’t make a video get seen quickly with older equipment.
Some stuff that are appreciated:
- good video quality
- good audio quality
- good editing with something like iMovie
- latest synth available in the market
- doing musical stuff and not only noises
- coupling synthesizers
- cover of famous electronic music
Wow, I had really no idea. I still haven’t taken this step of making vids. I fell it will take me some of the time/energy I already lack for making music…
copy this.. http://youtu.be/DYzsz2U7RM0, everything thing about it… camera action, lighting, text, etc… use heavy lighting. it clears the image.. Perhaps talk a little as well. 
I appreciate your vids though…
synthesis4all, I have seen that video. Sadly, I lack a lot of lighting. I’m just glad I have an HD camera with decent microphone.
get creative with some house lamps.. In your last video you have the window open so that lets in light, but its overall light, and it saturates the image. The sub37 is dark so it makes the camera confused as far as clarity of it, and what it should be seeing and or focusing on. A lamp behind the sub37 or a focused light pointing somewhere on the wall might help sharpen the image… Also that blank wall behind it would be cool to have chroma keying going on while you played, some space images or anything cool there, check the frame of the shot as well. If the shot were framed a little more to the left and down it would have been an overall better viewing environment. What kind of camera are you using? is it dv tape? I have a HD camera that uses dv tape and I’m starting to think its time to go digital.. Also try an external shotgun mic or record the audio separately.. Program the camera as much as possible, don’t use auto..
watch Jexus…
Yeah Jexus is God!
I demoed the Sub Phatty…used my iPad for recording the pictures and video pieces and cut and glued everything inside iMovie on the iPad. I recorded the song with Ableton Live and imported it later into iMovie on the iPad.
Try to be creative, do crazy stuff if you like, feel free to do whatever you like and give a shit what the internet says. The internet is an asshole.
Haven’t used a DV tape in forever. No, instead I have a high speed SD card. As for lighting effects, I’m thinking my home made light projector and the mini laser light show I bought for $30. All fantastic ideas I will keep in mind for next week’s video. 
Hi Voltor, glad you asked.
I was looking at your latest vid yesterday and realized i missed direct audio the most. Your otherwise nice demo was let down by background noise and the sound of you banging the keys, in my opinion.
Additionally what for me elevates videos over plain audio demos is the fact you can see what certain tweaks do to the sound, so a closeup view of the front panel would be cool.
Thanks for your efforts thus far and good luck!
Banging the keys? I can’t hear banging keys in my Sub 37 vids…Little Phatty vids, yeah. I’ll have to play around with the tripod to see if I can get a good shot of the panel. I still have no idea how to do direct audio…
Yeah banging was a bit overstated but i can hear the keys being pressed for sure.
As for direct audio i just mean recording it into an audio track into your daw and laying that under the video instead of the audio recorded by the video, in my opinion more useful than the laser show you mentioned 
Hey Voltor… coming back to exaplain a little better what I’ve posted before.
Recording direct audio:
This is something that really makes a big difference. Recording the audio with a track on a DAW or something is much better than using expensive microphones, and the overall sound quality of doing it is simply better than anything else when considering synthesizers. You can do it by either using an audio interface or connecting the Sub 37 directly to the camera (the first option is better though). You’ll just have to sync everything using your video editing tool.
Choosing musicality over tweaking:
Making music with synthesizers always gives better visiting and provides a better feedback. My videos using the keyboard and simply tweaking it are the less visited ones. Showing how a synthesizer sounds with music is the best way.
Covers:
Doing some cover of your favorite synth music may also be a good way to gather some visits. Choose a famous artist and do a proper cover of it, record some scenes, and put them together with something like iMovie.
3 of my most viewed videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgeRDSr_Fgg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0qM3n9UiYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bibkWDO9Bmo
I don’t do covers for one reason…I can’t. I can do soundscapes…it’s why I bought my first synths. My greatest influence has been Animusic.
Wearing a shirt helps
I tend to say … stay consistent. put out videos often and stay somewhat in the same topic realm. if you like to noodle, then noodle away, if you like to talk tech specs and get nerdy … do that but do it often. bottom line is there is an audience for everything out there. when I do videos I just try to keep my lighting as good as I can, ALWAYS use direct audio and make the video offer something that no one else’s videos are offering. try to get video quality as high as possible.
here is an example of one of my videos. this is an older one with what I consider the bare minimum in video quality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lykUxkrUuGY
When my S37 arrives I wont get dressed either … but no vid of that.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
Great tips offered so far!
A lot of my videos don’t have much of an audience retention rate, even if they get hundreds of views pretty quick courtesy of Synth TV, matrixsynth or wherever else. The factor that plays the highest in views is usually rare equipment or combinations of rare equipment. "Fender Rhodes and Ring Modulator is one of my most viewed videos and the audio to video ratio is so-so on that one.
- Make your videos short.
- Put some effort into the production via editing, title screen, etc, but don’t go overboard. A catchy title coupled with good tag words goes a long way.
The picture to audio ratio is flexible. If the audio is great, you can still achieve what you want with lesser video. If audio isn’t important then the video must be excellent quality.
Try to get as good a picture as possible and strive for the best audio.
I use a peavey 14 usb as my audio interface. So the gear goes to logic, and there is some type of audio that goes to the camera’s onboard mic via speakers or direct. Import it to imovie, line up the audio from both the hi-fi and the camera’s mic, then mute the camera’s mic. Viola.
The problem comes when you have different A/D conversion rates between the board and the camera. After several minutes there will be some latency, but if you keep your videos short this will be minimal. Most consumer grade cameras don’t have a way to adjust or view the audio levels, so I always split the signal.
Start your video first, then start the audio. You can remove video but you can’t really remove audio without some severe editing.
Rehearse what you want to say a few times. Don’t move the camera around a lot. Try for slow steady pans and don’t use the zoom a lot if at all.
You can also get a camera with a mic input. Take your synth’s audio out to a mult, send one to the camera and the other to the interface and still mute the camera’s audio. I recommend this if there’s no monitors for the mic to pick up.
You will figure it out the more that you do and there’s no magic tricks. Cinematography is a totally different discipline though and it takes some creative thinking and some planning.
But then some stupid video of some stupid teenager blowing milk out of her nose will get a million views overnight.
With synth videos, you can expect maybe 100-300 or so views in the first few days. But put tags on there. Moog Mooger Fooger Ringmod MF-102 Modular Dotcom Synthesizers.com Synth Analog Analogue hotchcks game of thrones (just kidding).
hotchcks game of thrones
Now THAT is a GREAT tip! I have to try with my channel. Hooters, baby! 