Babies On Board [Video]

If you’re unfamiliar with the trend of “multi-track” a capella, allow me to explain. A number of YouTubers have been uploading videos of themselves singing all four parts of a barbershop quartet, recording one part, then recording a second part and so on, mixing them all together in on video.

This can get downright ridiculous, for example, François Macré created sixty four tracks to cover Michael Jackson’s Thriller in a capella.

There’s a very talented multi-track artist by the name of Julien Neel, also known as Trudbol on YouTube and Reddit. A number of his videos have been featured on Reddit’s front page recently, and between his renditions of “Everybody wants to be a cat” and “Let me call you sweetheart,” I was very impressed.

One song which has been covered by many a capella groups – as well as Julien Neel – is the song from the Simpsons, “Baby on Board”

Not only was this covered by Julien Neel, but also by another multi-track artist on YouTube, a woman whose online handle is “gwenatav.”

After hearing the two versions of the song, I thought to myself: Certainly if they can synchronize themselves, I could synchronize them to each other!

As it turned out, it wasn’t quite so easy. There were slight differences in timing and tempo which meant I had to alter Gwenatav’s part slightly, cutting out moments of silence so the two would sync up. Since choppy video would be unacceptable, I had to do my best to match up what I could – compounded by the fact that Gwen’s video was recorded in 25fps and Julien’s at 30fps. That said, I’m happy with the results, which you can play here:

You can also view Julien’s original video here and Gwenatav’s here.