So.

You’ve seen some viral lyric videos made by one of the veterans of the LC, and
wondered how to make them. Maybe, like me, you were hooked on them for months,
struggling to find videos, until you found the LC discord. After chatting with some of the
members, you decide you want to try and make some lyrics. But wait! There’s literally no
tutorials on making lyrics! Well, this isn’t exactly a full tutorial (I wrote this in a free period I
had on a laptop from 2011, I couldn’t exactly record anything), but it should give you a few
pointers in making some lyrics for the first time. So, here goes.

Starting out
Install Sony Vegas (SV) or After Effects (AE). After Effects is better in my opinion because it
is much more powerful and stable (some people disagree with this but this is just speaking
from experience), but it doesn’t allow multiple videos in the same track. It can be a bit harder
to learn, however, so I recommend starting out with Vegas.

Go to this link and download either SV or AE and all of the effects listed for them. I will not
teach easing for After Effects in this tutorial, so I recommend you use SV. (But eventually, I’d
recommend at least trying to learn AE after you’ve done a bit in SV)

Choose a song with very clear and separated sounds. Good starting songs include Chime -
Darknet (one of my first), Excision x Wooli - Lockdown, wake up. kill. repeat. -
Code:Pandorum x Kid Booki. Here is a good tip: don’t try and animate the whole song. You
will likely get frustrated and bored very quickly. For your first lyrics choose maybe a 10
second part, I recommend the beginning of a drop. Lyricing actual vocals is a little harder,
because it requires more animation skill than dubstep lyrics, so I don’t really recommend
doing that until you’re semi-comfortable with making lyrics.

With this tutorial, I expect that you understand at least the basics of video editing in Vegas. If
you don’t, please go and watch a tutorial, because I am lazy and cannot be bothered to
teach you how to use Vegas. Watch Ivan’s video on how to ease in text for your first noise.
What’s ease in, you ask? Ease in is a type of easing. Easing is the process of making things
move at a changing velocity, making movement more natural and smooth. You get the hang
of it with time, but for now, just stick to Ivan’s way of easing. Here’s a good video on easing
to explain it better.

Repeat this for all of your text. Just screw around, maybe have some fun with rotation and
timing. If you’re feeling confident, maybe put several words together into one area.

Effects
Now that you’re done with all of that, you’re probably wondering about effects. The way I
discovered most of the effects I use is through either seeing something I like in a lyric video
and asking the creator how they did it in the LC Discord, or simply screwing around trying to
find cool effects.

Well, to save you some of the trouble, here’s a list of common effects that I use for lyrics.
You can mix and match these as you like, and create some really unique looks.

Stylizing Text
- S_Gradient - Good for making text look a little bit more interesting. Erick loves this
one.
- [Link] - Similar to S_Gradient except it gives more control over your text, you can
create really nice metallic looks with this effect. Angelolz uses this effect in Every.
Single. Video. (and it looks amazing, seriously)

Glows
- BCC Fast Film Glow - Great for making subtle, pretty glows to make your text more
interesting
- S_GlowEdges - Great for adding a little more emphasis to certain areas of text.
- [Link] - Just... Try it. Great for making things look amazingly intense. Just please,
don’t overuse it.
- S_Glint - A more obvious glow, good for emphasising soft notes
- Deep Glow (AE only) - Ever seen one of my videos? You’ll probably see it on 90% of
my layers. Same goes for Rebby. This is the best glow effect I’ve found to this date,
and while it can sometimes be buggy it is still my number one most used effect.

Warping Text
- BCC Turbulence - I generally use this effect on intense growls (remember to animate
speed). Crunches up the text and allows for weird distortions if used right.
- BCC Wave - Similar to BCC Turbulence except less random, good for use on piano
notes combined with some sort of glow
- BCC Twirl - Very fun and easy to use, twists the text up making it more intense and
interesting.
- BCC WarpBubble - Once again, good for intense growls. Crunches up the text,
making it more distorted.
- BCC Bulge - Bulges out an area, good for, well, everything. I like to use it for faster
notes that require emphasis. Combine with Twirl for some cool, weird things

Other Stylising Effects

- S_DigitalDamage - Makes text very glitchy and interesting, good for glitchy or
hardcore sounds
- BCC Video Glitch - Erick uses this one a lot. Makes text kinda glitchy, but a different
effect from S_DigitalDamage. Use it as you see fit.
- S_TVDamage - Practically your universal tool for making text interesting whenever
there is white noise. Everyone (except for Angelolz) overuses the fuck out of this one.
- S_WarpChroma - Good for weird, airy notes.
- [Link] Abberation - Adds exactly what is says it does. Can really make your
lyrics pop.
 - S_PsykoBlobs - Creates “blobs” of colour. Looks pretty bad on it’s own, but
combined with a glow (Deep Glow is what I normally use), it looks really pretty.
Particles
- Trapcode Particular (AE only) - a very powerful industry-standard tool for making all
kinds of particle systems. Not all effects play nicely with this one, you may need to
precomp it and add other effects there
- BCC Particle Illusion - If I’m being honest, I have no idea how to use this effect. I just
use Particular all the time because it’s so much more flexible and intuitive. Don’t
worry though, because you can still do some amazing things with this effect. Just
look at any one of Erick’s videos.

And of course, S_Shake :)

Kind of self-explanatory lol. Set the frequency to around 20-30 for best effect, and make sure
to turn on motion blur.

But what about backgrounds??

Backgrounds are… a little harder. It takes experience and skill to make them, and it’s even
harder to make them look good. I still struggle with making backgrounds, but nonetheless,
here is what I normally do.

Flashing Lights
Just use a black and white solid, swapping in between them at the speed you want (use
Control-C and Control-B to copy things multiple times in SV). Make sure they are no shorter
than two frames, however, as YouTube may serve the video to your viewers at 30FPS,
60FPS flashes won’t show up.

Creating colourful, trippy backgrounds

Use any Kaleido effect (animate a few properties on it as well), along with any texture or
shape that looks cool. If you are out of ideas, try duplicating the main text and putting
Kaleido on that, along with some distortion effect like BCC Turbulence. Maybe change the
colours around a bit, make them flash or change for some more epilepsy inducing stuff. Hell,
use multiple Kaleidos. Nobody’s stopping you.

Questions?
Hopefully, that helps. Any questions, just mention me in the LC (steph!#7734) and I’ll be
happy to help. Hell, if you really want, message me and organise a time to jump in a call and
share your screen and I’d be happy to help for an hour or two.