Music Video Experiments
Little Birdie - Vince Guaraldi
This was my first (kind of ambitious) attempt at making one of these videos. The leaves were falling and I was spending time listening to the soundtrack from A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and walking the Katy Trail, near a popular bird-watching area. I was inspired to arrange and record track 5, “Little Birdie,” for saxophones and layer it over footage around the trail. Bass, percussion, and keyboard sounds were arranged in Logic Pro and video editing was done in Final Cut Pro.
This album was created for the 1973 TV special by American jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. Original recordings were discovered in 2019 during the pandemic, and it was subsequently released on vinyl and for streaming in 2023. Guaraldi himself provides the vocals on “Little Birdie,” which underscores the characters Snoopy and Woodstock playing basketball and table tennis and struggling with a lawn chair.
Party 4 u - Charli xcx
After “Little Birdie,” this was a much simpler video to make, but I think it turned out better! I guess effort is not always proportional to success. You can hear audio distortion as this video progresses, and I’ve been successful in mitigating this (something especially difficult for recording saxophone) by using better audio recording equipment and techniques.
British singer and producer Charli xcx first released “Party 4 u” in 2020 on her fourth studio album How I'm Feeling Now. It was re-released as a single in 2025 due to its popularity on TikTok and to help promote Charli’s album Brat, which shares many musical characteristics with “Party 4 u.”
Shorts/Reels
These are short experimental videos, usually with one-day arranging, shooting, and editing timelines. The first one I made was a silly arrangement of “Fireflies” by Owl City, which was a favorite of mine—and a least favorite of my sister’s—when we were children.