It's Friday morning (at least here in my timezone) and I've just published the second track of my first album on YouTube! I was deeply touched by all of the kind comments and encouragement I received on the first, and I hope the second (and beyond) live up to everyone's expectations.
The second track on Neon Tides is "Chasing Horizons". This about my own feelings and life, expressed through the analogy of my OC in her early days as a runner, training to get faster, and stronger, and go farther. She tells herself that she's trying to outrun her competition, but she knows she's really trying to break free of an unhappy situation by putting everything behind her, and who she's really trying to overcome is the one opponent she can never leave behind- her own self-doubt and inner turmoil that follow her as stubbornly as her own shadow. Competing with others is hard, and life is harder still, but overcoming oneself is the hardest thing of all... and can feel as hopeless as chasing the infinite horizon, which in the end is never any closer then when you started.
I learned a lot trying to get the first release ready in time for the deadline I'd set myself last week. Mainly that YouTube is not easy to work with like Civit is. The banner image for your profile does not SCALE to fit different screens, like any sensible website, it CROPS, and you have to somehow create an image where everything important fits into a tiny center perfectly while still looking good when seen in full as well. The reason the first video has a square image is that I wanted to use the album's mp3 art I'd made for the YouTube videos, so they matched, but when the video was square YouTube automatically assumed the song was a SHORT and wouldn't let me change it! Needless to say, it wasn't as smooth an experience as I'd hoped, but everyone here has been so kind and made me feel much better about it. From now on I will just do a different image for each video, since it can't perfectly match the mp3 art anyway. The upside is that it gives me a ready to go article banner to post here! ^u^
This ended up being about my experiences so far, and maybe something to be aware of for anyone looking to go down the same route dealing with YouTube for the first time, next time I will focus a little on the character and world of my popstar OC like a fun lore article in the style of others... For now, thanks for reading, sincerely, and if you liked the second track please feel free to comment here! I'm still leaving comments off on YouTube because I only have so much free time to check pages sometimes and the amazing community here is my main interest ^u^