Biography:Tim Blais
Tim Blais | |
|---|---|
| Personal information | |
| Born | Hudson, Quebec, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| YouTube information | |
| Channels | |
| Years active | 2012–present |
| Genre | Educational film, popular science, educational entertainment |
| Subscribers | 334.00 thousand |
| Total views | 26.16 million |
| Updated 9 Jul 2022 | |
Tim Blais is a Canadian science communicator. He explains scientific topics via writing and performing a capella parodies of popular music which he records and posts on his YouTube channel, A Capella Science.
Early life and education
Blais was born in Hudson, Quebec. Blais states that he comes from an "incredibly musical" family.[1] His mother leads a church choir; Blais joined the choir when he was three.[2] He also plays drums, piano, and stringed instruments including guitar.[3] Blais graduated from McGill University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science degree.[4] In 2013, he earned a master's degree in high-energy theoretical physics with honors[3] from McGill.[5]
Career
Blais created his first parody video in 2012, motivated by a desire to help people understand the world around them.[3] He states that creating parody videos with a factual science theme came out of being fascinated by science, music (particularly a capella), and parody.[3] He was inspired by "Weird Al" Yankovic, Bill Nye, Mike Tompkins, and Vi Hart.[6] He was also inspired by the group The Maccabeats, an a cappella group that sings parodies of songs with replacement lyrics about Jewish themes.[3] Blais has had an a cappella singing experience with Vancouver's Acapocalypse group.[7]
In his solo videos, Blais performs all the tracks with his own voice, sometimes beat-boxing and creating brass sound effects.[5] Most videos take a few hundred hours to complete.[4]
Blais' first video parody was "Rolling in the Higgs", based on Adele's "Rolling in the Deep". The video was one of a handful of musical creations that followed the 2012 announcement of the discovery of a boson particle with Higgs-like characteristics. Blais' YouTube video generated over 17,000 hits in its first five days[8] and had almost 800 thousand views as of April 2017.[7] The video took Blais 60 hours to complete.[9] Blais' second video, "Bohemian Gravity," parodied Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" to explain string theory. The video features a sock puppet portraying Albert Einstein.[10] The work attracted the attention of Brian May, Queen's guitarist (who also holds a PhD degree in astrophysics), and May posted the video on his website.[1]
Blais' YouTube channel has covered such topics as entropic time, exoplanets, and the discovery of insulin as a treatment for diabetes. Blais has collaborated with Dianna Cowern and others.[11] Although Blais' career in science includes previous employment at the TRIUMF particle accelerator center in Vancouver, Canada,[6] Blais makes a living from creating his videos,[2] being supported by advertising revenue, sales of mp3s and posters, and contributions from fans via the Patreon website.[12]
Blais also does public talks which include performances of his creations and as well as discussions of science culture and his experiences as a science graduate student and an artist in new media.[7] In 2014, he was an artist-in-residence with the National Music Centre in Alberta,[13] during which he experimented with new sounds and recorded tracks for an album.[14] In 2015, he appeared on Canada's reality television program, Canada's Smartest Person,[2] in which he won his episode but lost in the season finale.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Suen, Fan-Yee (September 28, 2013). "Bohemian Gravity: Canadian grad student uses music to explain string theory". https://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/bohemian-gravity-canadian-grad-student-uses-music-to-explain-string-theory-1.1474648.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Hunter, Colin (March 9, 2016). "Watch this singer's super-catchy explanation of gravitational waves". https://insidetheperimeter.ca/watch-singers-super-catchy-explanation-gravitational-waves/.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Mortillaro, Nicole (September 17, 2013). "Video: Using 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to explain the universe". https://globalnews.ca/news/845322/video-using-bohemian-rhapsody-to-explain-the-universe/.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Palus, Shannon. "Making a living on YouTube". http://mcgillnews.mcgill.ca/s/1762/news/interior.aspx?pgid=575&gid=2.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Physicist Tim Blais pays musical tribute to New Horizons, Pluto". July 13, 2015. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/physicist-tim-blais-pays-musical-180245831.html.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Yang, Ethan (September 17, 2012). "Tim Blais on 'A Capella Science'". https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2012/09/tim-blais-on-a-capella-science/.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "An evening with A Capella Science's Tim Blais". http://dailyhive.com/vancouver/events/3407-an-evening-with-a-capella-science-s-tim-blais.
- ↑ "Physikalische Einheiten im Song" (in German). August 27, 2012. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/student-schreibt-hit-von-saengerin-adele-um-physikalische-einheiten-im-popsong-1.1450040.
- ↑ "Higgs boson-inspired parody provides musical spin". Agence France Presse. August 26, 2012. http://www.arabnews.com/higgs-boson-inspired-parody-provides-musical-spin.
- ↑ Boyle, Alan (November 2, 2015). "Mamma mia! 'Bohemian Gravity' turns string theory into a viral video". https://www.nbcnews.com/science/mamma-mia-bohemian-gravity-turns-string-theory-viral-video-4B11195330.
- ↑ "A Capella Science". https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTev4RNBiu6lqtx8z1e87fQ.
- ↑ Jardin, Lauren (January 21, 2017). "String theory + a capella: A Montrealer's formula for online fame". https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/a-capella-science-tim-blais-youtube-montreal-1.3946191.
- ↑ NMC Artist in Residence, https://nmc.ca/artists/, retrieved November 23, 2018
- ↑ Tim Blais NMC Artist in Residence, https://nmc.ca/tim-blais-nmc-artist-in-residence/, retrieved November 23, 2018
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