Last night, messing around on , I came across a few videos with songs digitally removed (by ) for copyright infringement! Again, a huge reminder: as I said before, you must include the copyright information in your video to make sure it's not blocked by those guys. Michael Chiu and Justin Chen were the first two guys to get this project done: let's take a look at what they submitted to me:
Below each video, you can see both guys did a great job of writing a little blurb (honestly, more to than to me) to prove it's for class, and then giving the copyright information, and, finally, using the phrasing:
Copyright 2001, Sony Music. Posted on YouTube via Fair Use for educational purposes.
One of the most famous types of poetry during the Middle Ages was the ballad. In a nutshell, ballads are songs that tell stories. In our textbook, "Sir Patrick Spens", "Get up and Bar the Door," "The Twa Corbies," and "Barbara Allen" are all great examples of Medieval ballads. However, the tradition of telling stories through songs has continued through to this day, even regaining its popularity through the works of Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, and, even more recently, Ben Folds, one of my personal favorite musicians. His song, "Fred Jones, Part II," tells a tale of a man whose life seems to be coming to a close while the rest of the world moves on.
I made that video myself, by the way. I picked a song that was a modern-day ballad—a song that tells a story—and I created an audio slideshow that featured my song lyrics with the music synced up behind it. Pretty cool, huh? Well, British Literature students will be doing the same thing for their Ballads Project.
Pick the right song. A ballad is specifically a song that tells a story, so the song you select must have a definitive plot. It's not good enough to say "TEACH-AH, I'M GOING TO PICK BABY BY JUSTIN BIEBER! OMGZ HE'S SOOOO CUTE!" That song is not appropriate because it doesn't tell a story, so picking it will automatically affect your grade negatively.
A surprising number of students get this part of the assignment wrong, so to help you out, I'll be requiring that, on the blog post where you eventually add your video, you provide me details of the song's plot, including:
exposition (Who?, What?, Where?, and When?)
3 instances of rising action
the story's climax
dénouementNot necessary—not included in most songs.
Make the video. To make the video, you have the choice of using your own software (recommended: iMovie for Mac or Windows Movie Maker for PC) on your own computer or you can use the Audio SlideShow software on the school computers. This will require that you obtain MP3 files of the song you pick and bring it (on a Flash Drive) to the computer you're making the file from.
Uploading to YouTube, copyright-friendly. Once you've created the video, you will upload it to and then, ultimately, embed it into your blog. However, when you're uploading it, you'll need to make sure you add the copyright information and a sentence expressing that you're uploading it for educational purposes. For example, the copyright information for mine looked like this:
Copyright 2001, Sony Music. Posted on YouTube via Fair Use for educational purposes.
If you do NOT put this information in, YouTube will block your song, and we won't hear it. If this happens, it will be your responsibility—your grade will suffer, so make sure that this is both your own work and actually listen-able.
Embed the video. Once you've uploaded the video, go to its site and click Share. When the little screen pops down, click Embed and copy the HTML code that appears.
Now go to your blog and create a New Post. The top part of your post should include the 3 elements from Step 1; below here, you'll add in the HTML that you copied from YouTube. Make sure you click on the Edit HTML tab at the top of the post composition body and then paste in the code. It should look something like this:
, I came across a few videos with songs digitally removed (by 
