Inked.beats introduction
Hi guys, so one of my hobbies is pentapping. And my main 'outlet' for it was basically through an instagram account called https://www.instagram.com/inked.beats/.
In this post I will be going over my story of how I started inked.beats, how it's going, and my future plans with it. I mentioned the account briefly in some random posts before, but I've never made a post about this account and I definitely feel like it deserves one.
Past
So here we go. I started really developing pentapping and learning it starting freshmen year, to summarize. I pretty much like tapped it in cool rhythms during math class, I remember so vividly, vedanth showed me a cool beat or something, and I just spammed it. But like, the beat wasn't even that good and it was literally just a rhythm, not even a beat, so I just found videos on youtube and learned how to pentap and WOW man I thought these beats sounded so cool and ever since then I've just been practicing and getting better. It's kinda crazy how good I am now. I go more in-depth in the https://cavs4tw.blogspot.com/search/label/pentapping pentapping label on my blog so you can see that.
But anyway, fast forward to 2022 Summer, around August. At this point I'm pretty solid at pentapping, I've performed at a school band concert, and I have a lot of beats in my bag and pretty solid improvisation. I also have a lot of videos recorded and posted on like my spam instagram to my friends, and like there were lots of times where people told me I could go viral or I should just start like an account or something. I remember during physics I was pentapping here during a fun sound lab or something lmao and like the guy who was slamming the ruler in the video, abhi, was like telling me I should post them.
So that's when I'm at this summer camp in UPenn, Philadelphia, called ESAP in August during the summer, and I'm like kinda bored and I remember I was pentapping in the dorm and recording and I was just like "F*** it, i wanna start it now." And obviously like I wanna start it at home cuz like I'm home but like I already have so many videos pre-recorded and in the vault I just didn't wanna wait, so I just started an instagram account called "inked.beats" and I remember visualizing this account to be all these pentapping reels.
I still remember sitting in my dorm room and creating the account. I literally didnt' know what to call it, I tried like "pentapping_beats" or something but like I wanted it to be unique and I just converted pen to ink and I was like, "I'm doing beats with pens, so its like some 'inked up beats' so like inked beats" and then I tired inked.beats and the username wasn't taken. That's how I came up with the name essentially lmao. A year later, it's a pretty solid name. One requirement was that I didn't want any numbers at the end or anything.
And so I posted my first vid and advertised it and went on some following sprees lmao with that account to start it off. It's pretty annoying when u start off a new account and u just have to spam follow everyone and some people don't follow u back.
But yeah, everything went smooth sailing ig, I had a lot of vids in the vault so I actually posted once every 2 days for a while which is pretty crazy. After a while, when I got back home, I realized i had to slow down the pace and I started posting once a week. Then like once every two weeks. Then there was a phase in like spring of 2023 where I posted once every week for a while, but now I'm at the point where I'm posting once a month.
Present
And yeah, 33 reels/videos later, I'm alright with the performance of the videos. I was boutta type out "I'm fairly satisfied with the performance," but deep down I'm not really satisfied with the performance. I feel like they deserve more views. My videos are genuinely so good and unique, I really feel that way.
I average like 800 or something views per vid, idk, anything below 1,000 doesnt rly make a difference among each other. I'm not too invested in the numbers. There was a really nice streak of success where I had like 6k, then 5k, then 20 THOUSAND VIEWS on back to back to back videos or something.
Dude I remember my first video that like started reaching audiences was my "POP!" by Nayeon or something cover. I had a rly fire intro in the beat drop and it was my first vid where I did a pen toss to a cup. Literally like 10 minutes after posting the vid, it started getting like 1 like every like 5 seconds which was CRAZY. CONSISTENTLY. Bro this was the first time this happened man, I rememnber every time I refreshed every minute, it would gain like 200 views. THat was CRAZY. It felt like I MADE IT LMAO. It is really impressive tho man. I remember showing my sister and she thought it was super cool. Literally everytime I refreshed it it literally gained so many views. And like so many random people and strangers were liking it. It started slowing down at like 5.5k views, and yeah it was super motivating.
Then there was that vid of https://www.instagram.com/p/CjyfcwZjc1H/ Shake it off by taylor swift. It has 18.8k views and 2,700 likes which is a CRAAAAZY RATIO. It's my top performing video on my account, and I'm happy that I have it. That video was so linear. Like, I'm not even capping, for a straight month after posting that video, it would get like 20 likes every day. It was so consistent and the lifespan is crazy. Even like on the second month after posting it, it still would get like 3 likes every day or something. But yeah, that could be an indication of something, idk, but that was cool to see. The growth cooled down now, sadly lol.
Future
From the start of inked.beats to where I am now, I've had so many improvements, not only in my pentapping skills, but my video editing and creativity. I just gradually started incorporating new elements and formats. My first one was the fanta can that added a metallic sound to the beat, then were the pen launches that are so visually satisfying. It's so cool hitting a snare with the pens while launching a pen. Then I added the pen toss trickshot like I mentioned. Then there were just a bunch of random stuff. Like using a necklace to grapple objects to the frame, or using a power bank for a new array of sounds, or knuckle taps on objects to project the sound, or RUBIKS CUBE SOLVES during the videos. Or getting a second fanta can to add a secondary metallic sound, or metallic snares or bringing in a mini-drumset to create cymbal sounds. You know, to sidetrack, I tried so hard to find like a household object or any object that could replicate a drumset cymbal sound. And I just straight up couldn't. I tried so many different pots or pans in my kitchen and like thinking about it a lot, but yeah I'm lucky I have that drumset cuz it works pretty nice.
I've also added many like cool video editing effects like backdrops, camera pans, zooms, transitions, animations, etc. I also started using these sound lights that I got a while back and it's pretty fire. Even SOUND MIXING was improved because I used to mostly record myself pentapping to a bluetooth speaker in the background and it was just bad and I had so minimal control over the mixing. Now I have earbuds in so I can control it. Many times I fade the music out if the drums in it are drowning out the pentapping. Sometimes lmao, I make mistakes in my pentapping like playing snares when I'm not supposed to or missing a snare, and I can easily just manually place the audio snippets in, and like it's really hard to notice because it's like a split second sound bite in the video that doesn't line up.
But yeah lmao enough of my improvements, what am I going to do in the future with college like a week away? I could see some sort of busking or more open mics lmao, but I'm hoping to maintain some sort of once a month or once every 2 months type of upload schedule. It genuinely is fun to make these videos and edit them, and when the vids are fire... theYRE SO FIRE BRUH. But yeah it won't be like a priority because of academics, but I want to maintain it, and get better with each video I post. Because I believe that within any one of my videos I post, I can get lucky. And when I get lucky, I know that in the grand scheme of things...
...I really wasn't lucky.
Lyric(s) of the Post:
"
Hey, hey, heyJust think, while you've been gettin' down and out about the liarsAnd the dirty, dirty cheats of the worldYou could've been gettin' down to this sick beat
"
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