Many people around campus can be found browsing the popular video-sharing website YouTube—but while their peers are content to consume videos, some students produce them.

Lines of sheet music scroll across the computer screen as a video made by Annabelle Perng (10) plays. She transcribes the original soundtracks, or OSTs, of popular anime to piano sheet music. She then mixes in the actual audio and posts the tutorial in video form to YouTube under a pseudonym.

Annabelle started to upload videos in November 2016. Since then, her YouTube channel has grown to more than 200 subscribers.

“When I posted stuff on other accounts, usually it doesn’t get popular, but since the anime that I transcribe for is trending at the moment, then it got popular,” Annabelle said. “I don’t think it’s that much about the quality. It’s more what’s really big.”

Each video is typically less than two minutes long but can take as long as four hours to produce, from sound mixing, to accurately conveying the song’s dynamics, to synchronizing the music with the video itself.

“Since I transcribe OSTs, it depends on the length of the OST, but it takes an hour or two to write down the sheets by themselves,” Annabelle said. “Then I have to mix the audio, which is putting dynamics and stuff, which takes another additional hour or two.”

While Annabelle and Amy post their music on YouTube, Chris Leafstrand (10) shares his passion for mountain biking and video equipment on his channel, ChrisGoPro.

Using a variety of gadgets, including drones, GoPros and a Canon t31 camera along with Final Cut Pro X, Chris films and edits his own videos, each featuring a unique adventure from the big city to the great outdoors.

“Usually I come up with an idea for a video, like a drone video in a city or a mountain bike edit at a certain trail,” Chris said. “I got interested in making videos after I got my first GoPro; it was a lot of fun to take short videos with and edit. As I got more advanced, I have started to use more advanced settings and more fancy equipment, which keeps it interesting, but what really keeps me interested is being able to share my passions through media for everyone to see.”

Dressed in a light blue jacket and standing against a plain white background, Amy Jin (11) gazes down at her violin as the opening notes of the song “How Far I’ll Go” from the movie “Moana” begin to play.

Amy posts live covers of popular songs to YouTube. She uses violin to capture the melody of each song and plays along with a backing track.

“My most recent cover was ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ The one before that that I did was ‘How Far I’ll Go’ from ‘Moana’, the movie,” Amy said. “That cover has over 40,000 views, which surprised me a lot. I thought it was going to get 200 or something.”

Amy’s videos can take up to six hours in total to produce because she arranges her music by ear, even though she doesn’t have absolute pitch.

“If I want to make a backing track by myself as well, that would take longer for me to arrange it, but if I don’t have that much time to spend, then I just take a backing track from the album, for example, and just arrange or just figure out the melody on the violin,” she said. “Figuring it out, practicing [and] memorizing takes probably three hours, I’d say, and then recording would take another half an hour to an hour, and then editing the video would take probably an hour.”

Amy started to upload videos last January, under her real name. Since then, she has gained over 350 subscribers, an increase that she credits to her cover of “How Far I’ll Go.”

“I did try out mixing piano and violin together because I play both piano and violin, but that wasn’t as successful,” she said. “The response has been actually pretty positive. I just enjoy the entire process of making covers and arranging music, which I do by ear, and I think that mostly people have left really supportive and encouraging comments.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on January 24, 2017.