When I first heard their megamixes, I
was like, “Holy sh*t! This is amazing!” Hey, you guys. My name is Daniel Kim, and in this video, I’m going to be
answering your questions about Pop Danthology. Alright, let’s get
started. How do you make Pop Danthology? Pop Danthology is basically a huge
puzzle that I put together using a bunch of different puzzle pieces of sounds. And
just like a puzzle, not all pieces fit perfectly together. if your pieces aren’t
in the same tempo, you’re blend will sound rhythmically off, and if your
pieces aren’t in the same key or relative key, you’re blend will sound
harmonically off. That’s why for the perfect fit, you’ll need the tempo and
key of your sounds to be the same. Then voila! You’ve achieved what’s called
“harmonic mixing” and it sounds beautiful! I recommend a software called MIXED IN KEY. With MIXED IN KEY, you can drag and drop a bunch of songs into the software
and it will automatically give you all of that information. What software do you
use to make Pop Danthology? I use Logic Pro and more recently Ableton. Even
though I’ve spent more years working with logic, I find that I prefer
Ableton’s functionality over logics. From time to time I also use Melodyne for
intricate pitch manipulation. I’m not just talking about changing a single
note up and down. I’m talking about going into a polyphonic sound, like a chord
with different notes playing at the same time, and then manipulating individual
notes within that polyphonic sound to create a different chord. I did that in
Pop Danthology 2010s. In order to mix “Clarity” and “That’s What I Like” together,
I had to come up with different chords for “Clarity.” and lastly, I use a bit of
Adobe Audition for when I need to do some noise reduction. How long does it take you
to make Pop Danthology? My Danthologies are huge projects and they
take about 200 hours to complete. This decade one, though, took even longer
because, for the video, my wife and I did a performance which required all this
extra time coming up with the choreography, practicing it, and filming
it. When did you start working
on Pop Danthology 2010s? I started working on this
project back in February of this year. For my past Danthologies, I started
working on them much later in the year, like in September, but back then I was
self-employed. Now I’ve got a full time job and this channel that I’m
focusing on, so to get such a huge project done, I knew I had to start quite
early in the year. Why did you take a break
from Pop Danthology? Okay, so for those of you
who don’t already know, my last Pop Danthology was the two-part
one back in 2015. I stopped making mashups since that one because of two
main reasons. First reason: copyright issues. My videos have gotten blocked
worldwide, taken down and my channel has gotten copyright strikes. That really
sucks especially after putting so many hours into these projects. The second
reason I stopped is because I wanted to start a new YouTube channel creating
content that a much more passionate about, which happens to be this channel
right here, “We The Kims.” Yeah, I’m sorry. Even though many of you guys enjoy the
way that I put different sounds together, for me, it’s just not as fulfilling or
exciting as putting different life lessons together. One of my biggest
passions is teaching and I just wasn’t getting to do that with this time
consuming project. How do you deal with copyright issues? My channel used to be signed
to a multi-channel network and that helped in the past. Now there’s
really nothing that I or an MCN can do. My mashups constantly get hit with
copyright claims. So ads get inserted into my mashups and all the ad revenue
goes to the record companies. Those are just annoyances that I’ve gotten used to.
But what pisses me off is when these record companies abuse this system and
make illegitimate claims for songs that aren’t even in my mashups. Sure, YouTube
says that you can dispute these claims. But from my experience, nothing ever
happens when I try to dispute them. And then the worst is when they choose to
block my videos, take them down, and give my channel a copyright strike. And
there’s nothing that I can do about it. It’s just the way things are on YouTube. What did you do during your
hiatus from Pop Danthology? So it was four years between
my last mash-up and this one. During that time my wife and I got
married, we started this channel together, and we traveled around the world.
Professionally, though, during the first half of those years, I was all over the
place. I’d make sponsored videos, do motivational speeches, I’d DJ, I did
whatever to chase after my next paycheck. That was not sustainable. And the stress
of such unpredictable income really killed my creativity as well. So on the
second half of those four years, I went back to working full-time in marketing.
And it’s through gaining some stability in my life that I got back
my creativity and focus. I now have a lot of ideas
for this channel. So why even bother to do a comeback with a decade mashup? Well I made Pop Danthology
2010s as a way to promote this new channel. I felt that it
would be worth the risks and sacrifices if I could grow “We The Kims.” So please
do subscribe to our channel. Will you make future Danthologies? I’m open to the idea of doing
future Danthologies, but I’m definitely not coming back to do
them every year like I used to. Maybe every 10 years? But no promises. Yeah, I’d
be interested in doing an 80’s Danthology. Can I book you as a DJ?
Can you make me a mashup? At this time, no. I just
don’t have time for it while I’ve got a full time job,
a baby on her way, and all these other fun projects I’d rather work on.
But if things change and I go back to being self-employed, and I kind of need
your money, then my answer is, “Okay, let’s talk about it.” Why are some of the biggest
songs of 2010’s missing? There’s two main reasons why I exclude certain
songs. The first big reason is because I’m trying to avoid my video from
getting blocked. When I look at my past mashups, I can see which songs got my
videos blocked. And I don’t want that to happen to my most recent one, so I just
didn’t include them. The second big reason is audio quality. I really care
about having excellent audio quality throughout my entire mashup. I feel like
it’s less distracting to the listener if there’s that kind of consistency. Now,
there’s all kinds of techniques and tricks that I could do to isolate sounds
from a particular song that I want, but sometimes it’s just impossible to get a
clean sound from a particular song. So I just don’t include it. How did you decide which songs
would make it into Pop Danthology 2010s? I thought to myself, “would my
mother-in-law know this song? You see, she’s just a casual listener who doesn’t
fit the target demographic of these pop songs. That’s why I thought she’d be the
perfect reference. I figured that, if she knows the song, then everybody would know
the song. So, a song that she’d definitely know, like she could sing the song on her
own without any kind of hint or cue, I would give that song a solid five points.
On the opposite end, though, if she’d have no idea what that song is, I’d give that
song a zero. So I entered all the top songs from 2010 to 2019 into a
spreadsheet, gave each of the songs a mother-in-law score between 0 and 5, and
then sorted the whole list in descending order. I then just work my way
down that list. Why is Pop Danthology 2010s so short? So according to the song
structure I had in mind, I started building this mashup in the key
of G# major and its relative minor key, F minor. By the time that I had covered
all the different tempos that any song could fit in, I was already at around
five minutes. Now, I had a choice right there: to either finish it off at around
that five minute mark or do a key change. But doing a key change would have
doubled my mashup in length. So I looked at my list of the songs that I would be
able to include if I did the key change and I just wasn’t convinced that it was
worth it. Also, a track that’s ten minutes long isn’t likely to get much radio play.
And, finally, I chose to make it shorter because I was planning on lip-synching
to it and I’m pretty sure that no one wants to watch ten minutes of straight
lip-syncing. Why did you decide to do a lip-sync video instead of editing the original music
videos like you did in the past? As I explained earlier, I made
Pop Danthology 2010s as a way to promote this new channel. But I had to
find a way to connect this mashup, which is very production-focused, to my new
channel, which is very personality-focused. And I felt that the perfect bridge
between the two that my pregnant wife could still get involved in would be a
lip-sync video. Knowing that lip-syncing was going to be a big part of it, that
definitely influenced the way that I arranged the music. So you’ll notice that
there’s a lot of parts that goes back and forth between a girl’s voice and a
guy’s voice. Making a lip-sync video is also another way that I can
differentiate myself from all the other mashup artists around the world. I’m also
hoping that by doing a performance with my mashup, others will be inspired to do
the same. And, lastly, I’m hoping that by not using the original music videos,
perhaps I’ll get to deal with less issues around copyright. Who came up with the choreography
for Pop Danthology 2010s It’s just a simple choreography that I came up with, with a lot of the same
moves from the original music videos. May I use your pop technology
2010’s in my performance? Yes! Go right ahead. I actually love seeing all the different ways that
people express themselves and celebrate life with something that I’ve put
together. What’s some of your favorite performances
that you’ve seen done to your past mashups? I’ve got two favorites so far. One is by the Nanyang Polytechnic
Chinese Orchestra in Singapore. They orchestrated Pop Danthology 2012. My
other favorite is by the HanLim Multi Art
School in South Korea. They did an amazing high production dance cover to
Pop Danthology 2013. Where and how can I download
Pop Danthology 2010s? Just follow the link
in the description of the main video. Do you have an instrumental
track I can download? No, sorry, I don’t. For some of
the songs in Pop Danthology 2010s, I wasn’t able to get my hands on isolated
tracks. So the vocal parts are very much stuck with their instrumental parts. Can you please add your Danthologies to Spotify, Apple music, etc.? At this time,
because of copyright stuff, no, I can’t What was the first mashup you enjoyed? Back in the year 2000, when I was just a 15-year-old 9th grader, while all the
other kids were listening to alternative rock and hip hop music. I, alone, was
listening to an Australian dance music radio station called “Wild FM.”
That’s how I discovered Alex K and Nick Skits and their crazy megamixes. When I first heard their megamixes, I was like, “Holy Sh*t! This is amazing!” And
just like a lot of my fans eagerly wait for my next mashup, I did the same for
their next megamix. If you’re curious about what kind of mashups I enjoyed
back in those days, you should check out Wild FM volume 12 megamix and Skitz Mix 6 megamix. But I wouldn’t say they were reason I started making mashups. I only started to think about the possibilities of harmonically mixing pop
music once I came across this k-pop megamix titled “Adios 2008” by DJ Masa, a
DJ from Brazil. I liked his megamix so much that I even did a dance routine to
it while I was living in Korea. It was while I was in Korea that I wanted to be
a singer-songwriter and I would sing medleys on youtube. I then just
transitioned from doing medleys with my own voice to doing mashups with the
original voices. How would you say you’re
different as a mashup artist? I’ve always made my mashups
in a way that you can easily sing along to them. So, I make sure
to string together a dominant melody line that’s memorable and easy to follow.
That usually means that, compared to the average mashup artist, I let the original
songs play a little longer. For the instrumental, I’ve always leaned more
towards dance music. I sometimes do connect different lyrics together to
create new ones… like… in my 2015 one, I put together the line, “I want
you know soon as you came in the door you stole my heart because you’re beautiful.
I want you to know I ain’t never letting go. So darling hold my
hand. Don’t let me go. Though this kind of lyric mashing is
something that a lot of people get impressed by, I find that the resulting
melody is not as memorable. Because I prioritize the melody above lyrics, I’d
say that I don’t do this as much as most people expect from a mashup artist. Also,
I’m not sure if this is the case for most other mashup artists, but I don’t
come from a DJ background. I come from a songwriting and music production
background, which definitely influences the way I do this work. What’s your favorite Pop Danthology and why? My favorite Pop Danthology I’ve made is
this decade one, for sure. With my past mashups, I packed in so many
songs. With this decade one, I knew it was gonna be impossible to fit everything in.
So, without any attention on the number of featured songs I just focused on
making it the best that I could make it. Another reason why this decade one is my
favorite is because of song structure. With my past mashups, I didn’t really
think about song structure from the beginning of my process. My process was
more spontaneous and the structure just came along as I played around with
putting this piece together with that piece. So, that meant in the past, during
the beginning stages of my process, I could be working on a section and have
no idea whether that was gonna be at the beginning, middle, or end. That was not the
case with this decade one. From the very beginning, I had a song structure in mind,
I wanted to start with low energy and end off with the highest amount of
energy, I wanted the beginning to be in a major key so that it would be more
inviting to the listener and more delicately nostalgic. Then in the middle
I wanted it to be all in minor key. And then, finally, to finish off, I wanted to
end off in a major key to bring in a sense of resolution and positivity. I
didn’t think about any of that in my past mashups. But if I have to choose a
favorite one out of my past mashups I guess it would be the 2012 one. How do you deal with people disliking your mashups? I just accept it as a very
normal thing. I don’t pay attention to the dislikes or the likes. I place my
identity in whose I am rather than what I do, which I talk about more in this
video. And I focus my attention back on the purpose in life that I’ve chosen to
live for, which I talk more about in this video. So those are my
answers for those questions about Pop Danthology. If you have any more, feel free
to leave them in the comments below. And don’t forget to subscribe to our channel.
Thanks!