YouTube Review: Harriadnie Beau

There's a lot to be learned from putting up a promo video on YouTube. Somehow when you see your work in the same way as potentially millions of others can see it, all the faults and lapses of professionalism leap out at you.

So although we don't spend a lot of time looking at YouTube videos - no, really we don't - we came across this one recently that we thought deserved comment.

The song is The Power of Love, sung by Harriadnie Beau...

What we see here is someone who clearly looks like she could become a successful performer. Her singing is good for someone young in years and will almost certainly be improved considerably with proper coaching and experience.

The videographer has gone to some trouble over this. There is a background, some interesting shots, and hey - there's a wind machine too. Well probably a desk fan.

So what's the problem?

Well the audio is dreadful, there isn't really any other word for it.

Harriadnie seems to be lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track, which we presume to be her own vocal. But everything is very distant and low in level.

Why so distant? She seems to be singing directly into the mic.

But the mic is clearly a Shure SM58 or a similarly-styled model, and it is not a radio mic. It isn't plugged into anything either, so not much hope of getting a signal. And if indeed she is lip-syncing, there isn't a signal to be recorded anyway!

We don't mind Harriadnie lip-syncing or using mic as a prop, both are fair game in the music business, like it or not.

But it would seem that what we are in fact listening to is the playback system picked up on the camera audio, and unfortunately it is far, far, far from adequate.

So seeing as we have an artist here with potential for development, this could be an opportunity for an enterprising recordist to get in on the ground floor with her and help her out. Perhaps she will become successful and you could have a shot at being her producer.

It's pretty easy to sync audio to video these days. Just record a handclap and use this to align the video and audio tracks in your favorite video editing software. Then when you're done just trim this bit out.

With decent audio to go with the video, who knows - Harriadnie might well become a YouTube sensation!

By the way, we don't have any connection with Harriadnie other than we found her video on YouTube.