Hey you! My name is Thomas “TomSka” Ridgewell and welcome to another instalment of “thanks
days”, a series where I introduce you to the people behind my videos to make sure their
praises don’t go unsung. Speaking of singing, let’s talk about music!
Music is an incredibly important part of my videos and also my life which is why my youtube channel
is named after a genre of music. Ska music, that is. Not Tom music. That sounds very different.
(Tom Music... Yeah)
At the start of my YouTube career I had to make all the music myself and it all kinda sounded the same.
(Destruction Video)
Buy my album!
For my first few years here on YouTube I had no understanding of copyright law and didn’t
realise that you couldn’t just use whatever music you wanted - I didn’t officially stop
doing that until 2010. In fact, here’s a list of all the songs I used without permission!
Please don’t sue me, I was a stupid teenager.
Side note: You can find the list of all the songs I mention in this video with links to
their authors in the description below. I’m only gonna be focussing on the TomSka and
DarkSquidge channels for this because Eddsworld is a whooole other thing… So much copyright infringement.
Now let’s talk about the music I DID have permission to use!
First we have my old friend Matt Brinkworth. We grew up as friends online in the mid 2000s
and he provided a bunch of music for my earlier videos. Background music in Be Cool, Awkward,
Gun, A Student Film, Let The Credits Roll, and also the opening jingle for asdfmovie3
which is mostly just me going “bowwww” into a microphone.
Matt now goes by his DJ handle, Retrospekt and his life looks pretty much like this.
Yeah, that's a lot cooler than mine.
I have a big thank you to give to Alex aka Binärpilot, which I’m sure i'm pronouncing horribly wrong,
I used his music I first used in my terrible second ever terrible vlog and then in the first ever
asdfmovie! I hadn’t really understood the concept of making money on YouTube back in
2008 so when I tried to put ads on the video they were like “yo bruv, you need permission
from the artist to do that” and Alex kindly gave me that permission. It only took like
3 months to actually put ads on the video though. But hey! YouTube!
Next I gotta mention Stephen Grant, the scotsman who made the super catchy asdfmovie2 theme
song which I went on to use at the end of a bunch of other videos. I also worked with
him to create the music for Mr Cat which ended up getting rerecorded but I’ll come back
to that later. He made the music for Standoffish and Rainbows and I used his personal music
in a handful of other projects including asdfmite, my first ever sponsored video, and it wasn’t until that video came out
that I realised you can hear him saying “shit, the mic’s on” in the background. Oops.
I need to shout out Will Ryan or his band “Onyx Colony” because I used about three
of his songs across SO many video. Just… So many.
(Banned Uni Ad 1 Clip)
Ben Konstantinovic or “Ben Kovic” as he’s now going by was a crazy cool guitar guy I
stumbled across at a bar and just decided to film. I ended up making three videos of
him playing on my channel just because I thought it was nice. Deal with it.
Can’t forget Tom Bown who recorded a bunch of cheesy sitcom-esque guitar riffs for the
skits I filmed at university. He also played guitar for a song we made called Let The Credits Roll.
Lots of love to the artist known as Sudanim who created a track called Breakhorn, also One Inch Punch aka “dubstep sunglasses”
song, which I may have used… A few times.
(Dubstep Sunglasses Clip)
Rob Scallon is a stupidly talented multi-instrument musician-man whose music I used at the end
of TomSka’s Day Out 6 and was also seen and heard shredding his heart out in Guitar Warfare.
I’ve also worked with Rob on a few other projects which either haven’t come out yet
or… Maybe never will… Sorry Rob.
My sound designer Dan Pugsley also made the music for a few of my videos, namely Deleted,
Chaos Relay and Party Surprise!
There’s Steve Bingham whose futuristic classical music made it’s way into a handful of my videos.
And then there’s a whole bunch of people I’ve only musically worked with once so
far such as Wolfgun, Pixelsaur, 2gi, Erik Karlsson, Twintapes, Jenny Bingham, Tom Barnes,
JKLOL, Jonti Picking, and Joel Berghult aka Roomie.
Okay! Now while I’m super grateful for all the people I’ve mentioned so far it’s
time to talk about some of the real heroes of music not just on my channel but on YouTube as a whole.
First off we have Todd “LilDeuceDeuce” Bryanton. I came across Todd in 2011 by accident
when I found a rap song he’d done about… Ninja Turtles. I messaged him saying “hey
your stuff is really cool I hope we can work together sometime” and then immediately
followed that with “i changed my mind, i love you so much, please be mine forever.”
I’m almost entirely not exaggerating.
Todd is a full-blown professional composer working in TV and film and for the past few
years has been sharing his talents with not just me but also a whole lot of the YouTube
community. I totally found him though. So, you're welcome!
The business relationship I have with Todd is any music he makes for my channels he has
the full right to sell and I think that’s great because it means he makes more than
I could ever afford to pay him. The alternative would be that I pay him once off fees per
project and then make sweet bank selling his music, which just seems kinda of wrong. So,
every time you download a song he’s made like most of the asdfmovie themes or the music
videos he makes the money he deserves.
But exactly how many videos of mine has Todd made music for? Well...
Yep, and that's not even including Eddsworld.
Todd, you are an irreplaceable part of my life and I think you’re just brilliant and
your music is incredible and you're brilliant and I hope we can work together for a very very long time... Until I die first… Probably.
Another musician who has made my channel a much happier place is Yoav “TheLivingTombstone”
Landau. Yoav was introduced to me by my friend Edd who put on some of his music back in 2012
and I loved it. Then he told me it was about My Little Pony and I was like… Okay...
Yoav has done a bunch of really funky songs for me including the asdfmovie5 theme aka
Tom’s Dog aka The TomSka Song and has also provided almost all the background music for
my vlogs over the past 3 years. Such as....
Yep, and again, that’s not including Eddsworld. Yoav, your skill and speed at creating funky, catchy
tunes is unparalleled. You are just super rad. Yes, people still say rad.
Finally I need to mention the one and only Kevin MacLeod. Maybe you’ve ever heard his
name but you will have definitely heard his music. Kevin makes music and releases it on
his website incompetech.com for free and as long as you credit him you can use it in your
videos again for free. He’s released over 2000 songs so far! You may have heard a few of them, such as these...
Ring a bell?
Kevin’s almost selfless contributions to our entire industry are so incredibly significant into turning YouTube into
both a viable creative platform and a career, and without him it would have take a hell of a lot longer.
And unsurprisingly I’ve also used his music in some of my videos, such as...
Yup, and again that’s not including Eddsworld. I actually recently shot an interview for a documentary
called Royalty Free about him which you can follow at RoyaltyFreeDoc.com. And yeah, thank you Kevin.
On behalf of the YouTube community I just wanna say a huge thank you to Kevin and also
all of the artists who have provided music to people like me because we absolutely would
not be able to do this without them. So once again, thank you so much to all these musicians
and I hope that you, the person watching this, appreciates these people and what they do just a little bit more.
TomSka out!