Charles Cornell, 26, is a Denver-based jazz pianist who will soon put out a new album, Tales. But that's not why we're writing about him! In case you haven't noticed, we don't do many posts about jazz instrumentalists on BuzzFeed.
No, we're writing about Charles because of a series of hilarious videos he's uploaded of himself seamlessly accompanying celebrities talking.
View this photo on Instagram
This one of Cardi B — WHICH YOU'LL WANT TO HIT PLAY ON — was the first to blow up. After making a splash on TikTok, it was tweeted by @snapbxtch and racked up more than 110,000 retweets — including one from Cardi B herself.
Also worth checking out: This incredible remix video by multi-instrumentalist Mono Neon, who has also been making videos adding music to Cardi B and others speaking.
Since then Charles has hilariously found the music in James Charles' apology video...
...this clip of Danielle Bregoli (the "Cash me outside, how 'bout dat?" girl) spouting off on Dr. Phil...
...and DJ Khaled bragging on himself.
Charles — who only had around 250 Instagram followers a couple weeks ago — told BuzzFeed how he was inspired to make these videos: "I came across a video that I thought was particularly funny, and remembered the concept of transcribing the notes of spoken word and putting them to music."
View this photo on Instagram
Charles added, "It’s a concept that's been around since the '60s, although the first time I heard such a thing was a few years ago in a couple YouTube videos by a drummer named Dan Weiss and a guitarist named Publio Delgado. I decided to give the concept a try and made a few, including the Cardi B one."
Since then Charles has added music to all kinds of viral videos, like this Vine you might remember.
Charles says that some of these are easier to make than others. "Cardi B, for example, works so well because she speaks in a sing-song, rhythmic manner. This creates natural cadences in her voice that make my job much easier!"
View this photo on Instagram
"The opposite end would be somebody who speaks very quickly and with less inflection, or more monotone. That makes my job extremely difficult."
Want a more in-depth explanation of how Charles makes these videos? He explains below:
View this photo on Instagram
"The first step is to figure out what the actual notes of the spoken words are. This usually entails slowing the video digitally and going over it and over it until I work out the 'melody' of the voice. Then, I add harmony. I try to get my videos to have a chord progression that you might expect to hear in the real world.
Without getting too in depth, any one note can be applied to virtually any chord. The note might just function differently depending on how you’re using it in a harmonic context. This gives me a lot of freedom in how I apply the melody to a harmonic progression and makes it so I can usually spit out something in the end that almost sounds like a complete song.
The hardest part is executing it all once I’ve gotten it worked out, since people tend to speak much faster than one would typically sing."
Charles says the response has been "incredible," adding, "This is all still so new and insane to me! It feels so surreal to put out a piece of content and have thousands of people see it and enjoy it."
View this photo on Instagram
"I just hope I'll be able to continue making people laugh and adding positivity to the world."
