FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

I’ve got a great idea for a video! Will you make it for me?
Probably not. I have more good ideas than I can make, and I throw out 95% of the ideas I have because I don’t like them enough. This is a creative project for me and the writing and researching is a big part of it, so I’m not really interested in singing someone else’s song. Plus, you should be making your own ideas! My first videos on YouTube were not very polished. You learn by doing. So make your idea! And don’t worry about wasting the “best idea you’ll ever have”.. making it real will make you better at coming up with better ideas. And if you do make it, send it my way!

What kind of equipment do you use to make your videos?
Okay let’s see. First off, don’t read this list and think “that’s what I need to make good videos!” The best equipment is the equipment you know best. My philosophy has always been “never buy a new piece of gear until I’m sure I’ve stopped improving with the old one.” If I did have a single recommendation for how to make your own online videos better, it would be this: Get a condenser mic. You can get pretty high quality USB ones for around $100 (the Blue Yeti is a vlogger favourite) and they sound so much better than your camera or phone mic.

With that out of the way, here’s what I use. All the Amazon links here are affiliate links, so if you do decide to buy something on this list I get a little cut of it from Amazon. Sweet!

Mics: Audio-Technica AT-2020 and AT-3035. These are large-diaphragm condensers, so if you get one you’ll need a pop filter and an audio interface that can supply them with 48V phantom power.

Audio Interfaces: Presonus FireStudio Mobile, but since firewire is outdated I’d recommend their Audiobox or Studio series. Great, rugged little interfaces.

Headphones & Speakers: My headphones are Audio Technica’s M40x studio headphones. They’re a little tinny but they’re good at isolating sound when you’re recording vocals. My main speakers for listening to and mixing my tracks are the JBL 305P MkII studio monitors. I cannot recommend them enough, they’re fantastic.

Other Audio Gear: For the live setup I’m using an Akai MPK-249 as my main keyboard and a Novation Launch Control XL to trigger loops. I’m also running my vocals through the Roland VT3 effects box, which is how I do all the pitch-shifting, reverb and auto-tune effects. I’ve also got some simple Behringer splitters and mixers doing audio routing. Most of my cables are just the cheap Amazon ones and they seem to do fine.

Cameras: My workhorse camera for videos is a Canon t6i DSLR. I’ve also got a t4i lying around; they’re not very different. Both have the flippy screen and record 1080p video, and that’s what I need. On the live setup I’ve got a todo: what camera do I have webcam.

Computer Hardware: My main computer is a custom PC I built off of NewEgg. I also do a lot of work on an ASUS TUF gaming laptop and that’s what processes the live-stream.

Miscellaneous Equipment: The screen-capture on the live-stream is done with a Razer Ripsaw HD capture card. The lights and green screen come from this set, but to be honest for a green screen I’d recommend something more like this and also I’m thinking of replacing the lights; they have the “green skin” problem that Steve Mould highlights in this video.

Audio Software: I'm running Studio One Pro V3 as my main DAW, and using mostly its built-in effects. In terms of plugins, the most important ones are iZotope’s Ozone 7, which I use sometimes for mastering but especially the Exciter portion on vocal tracks. Also indispensable has been the Waves Doubler plugin, which is the easiest way I’ve ever found to get that shiny modern-pop lead vocal sound. Studio One comes with Melodyne so I’m using that for pitch-correction. I also really like todo: what’s that one EQ plugin? for adding air to vocal tracks, but mostly I stick with the stock EQ, compressors and reverbs. For the live show, I heavily rely on the free looping plugin Mobius, which I really like because it has scripting capability. Also, if you want to make music on iOS devices I highly recommend A Tasty Pixel’s Loopy HD and AudioBus apps, which will cost you like 15 dollars.

Video Editing Software: My workhorse is Adobe’s Creative Suite, namely After Effects for animation, compositing and subtitling and Premiere for time-syncing and vlog-cutting. I also used their Character Animator for the nanobot in Nanobot. Recently I’ve been doing a lot in Blender, which is a totally free and open-source 3d animation platform as well as a video editor. I use the very handy Handbrake app to convert footage to more manageable file types (usually DNxHD) so it doesn’t take so much processing.

Will You Come To My School/Business/Conference?
Quite possibly! I do live shows of a few different types and I also speak about science communication to educators! One time I broke down my philosophy on the meaning of life for a bunch of grad students in Oslo, and then got them to sing in harmony. If you’ve got an idea for something for me to come and do, drop me a message in the contact box!

How About Private Live Streams and Other Online Gigs?
Same answer as above. Contact me!

What Educational Background Do You Have?
I’ve got a Master’s degree from Mcgill University in high-energy theoretical physics. That’s physics fancy talk for physics that nobody can test because it’s out of the range of all known experiments. I studied string theory, fluid-gravity dualities and 2+1-dimensional canonical quantum gravity. Here’s my thesis if you wanna read it!

Is This Like, Your Job?
Yep! I started this project while I was a grad student, but when I graduated in 2013 I decided to devote my full time to creative stuff. I’ve been doing this ever since! I pay the bills with private gigs, mp3 and merch sales, Spotify plays, YouTube ads (which, trust me, do not make much money), in-video sponsorships (which I’ve now stopped because honestly, I really don’t like them) and especially donations via my Patreon and PayPal, which are usually more than half my total income. Thanks patrons!

How’d You Get Into Science?
My journey to this career started at the age of 4 when a fellow preschooler introduced me to Bill Nye The Science Guy. From there I read a lot of the old (and brilliant) hands-on Klutz science books (my sister and I wrote a couple knock-offs ourselves!) and, as I got older, the Horrible Science series. Then popularizations like Hawking’s Illustrated Brief History of Time. Math came really naturally to me so when I went to school for the first time in grade 10 (having been home-schooled up until that point) I took all the science classes and pursued science in college. From there I came really close to doing microbiology, because the molecular mechanisms of living cells are crazy cool. But ultimately I wanted to understand the fundamental layers of reality, so I chose physics as my major. I’m interested in everything though; I wanna understand it all!

How’d You Learn Music?
Just a whole life, I guess. My dad is a very intuitive musician and piano improviser. My mom put me in the children’s church choir she still runs when I was 3. I picked up piano at 4, guitar at 8, drums at 12 and hammered dulcimer at 28. We sang constantly. As a kid I was addicted to Disney’s Fantasia and the Classical Kids series of audio stories, and later on my older brother led my musical exploration into rock, metal and punk, and also into creatively writing and recording music. We made our first of several home-made albums when I was 9, starting with a terrible tape recorder and ending with me having developed a pretty good grasp of audio mixing software. Did a bit of musical theatre as a preteen, joined an a capella group when I spent a summer in Vancouver, BC working at UBC’s cyclotron particle accelerator.

How’d You Learn Video Editing?
Trial and error my friends, trial and error. Between Cabin 9 and A Capella Science, pretty much the entire timeline of my video-making trajectory is laid bare on the public interwebs. Feel free to explore, and please forgive the errors of my youth.

Can You Explain This Video? I Don’t Get It!
During the COVID lockdown I did a whole series of in-depth reaction/explainers of my old videos, which you can now find in a playlist on ACS2. If the video you’re asking about is not yet there, send me a contact form and remind me to do that.

Do You Have Any Other Creative Projects?
Yes! Here is a list: todo: list

How Can I Learn To Do What You Do?
By doing it. That’s really the only way; to get good at making creative things you have to make lots of them, be obsessed with making them good, and systematically solve the issues that stand in the face of that as they arise. That said, here’s a list of online resources I’ve found really helpful for learning the various skills that go into my work:

When’s The Next Video? Are You Dead?
I’m probably not dead, but feel free to check the headlines. These videos are huge undertakings and right now I’m working alone, so sometimes one video will be in production for multiple years. I’m sorry that it takes so long to make videos, but A) I’m really bad at staying focused on one project and B) there is no B) that’s really the main thing. Maybe someday if I have enough money, I’ll get a team together. You can help with that by donation plug!

I’d Like To Meet Other A Capella Science Fans
Do I have the place for you! The ACS Discord is precisely what you’re looking for. They’re a little weird but very sweet, and I promise the interface is simple to navigate. Come say hi!

Why Didn’t You Answer My Message?
It depends! It could be that something you said made me uncomfortable and I decided against replying. I’ve had some disturbing fan interactions and I have a pretty sensitive filter now. But more likely, I either didn't see it or I did see it and said “I will respond to that”, and then I didn’t respond to it but misremembered that I had already responded because I thought about responding.

Why Are You Always On Twitter?
I’m working on it, okay?

Who Are Some Of Your Favourite YouTubers?
Bill Wurtz, Jacob Collier, Vi Hart, 3Blue1Brown, Contrapoints, Adam Neely, 12Tone, How To ADHD, MinutePhysics, A. Hughman, Pannenkoek2012, TierZoo, Tom Scott, Genetically Modified Skeptic, Jreg, Sam Robson, BriTANicK, NewJazz, Secular Talk, Ze Frank, Draw Curiosity, Stated Clearly, cyriak, Ben Willingdorf, Claire Wineland, Dude Perfect, Scishow Psych, The House Of Kush, Jacksfilms, Elevated Jam Tracks, Chubbyemu, Hello Future Me, The Brain Scoop, Robert Miles