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Tim Blais

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Tim Blais
Personal information
Born
Hudson, Quebec, Canada
NationalityCanadian
YouTube information
Channel
Years active2012–present
Genre(s)Educational film, popular science, educational entertainment
Subscribers334.00 thousand[1]
Total views26.16 million[1]
Last 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

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Blais was born in Hudson, Quebec. Blais states that he comes from an "incredibly musical" family.[2] His mother leads a church choir; Blais joined the choir when he was three.[3] He also plays drums, piano, and stringed instruments including guitar.[4] Blais graduated from McGill University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Science degree.[5] In 2013, he earned a master's degree in high-energy theoretical physics with honors[4] from McGill.[6]

Career

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Blais created his first parody video in 2012, motivated by a desire to help people understand the world around them.[4] He states that creating parody videos with a factual science theme came out of being fascinated by science, music (particularly a capella), and parody.[4] He was inspired by "Weird Al" Yankovic, Bill Nye, Mike Tompkins, and Vi Hart.[7] He was also inspired by the group The Maccabeats, an a cappella group that sings parodies of songs with replacement lyrics about Jewish themes.[4] Blais has had an a cappella singing experience with Vancouver's Acapocalypse group.[8]

In his solo videos, Blais performs all the tracks with his own voice, sometimes beat-boxing and creating brass sound effects.[6] Most videos take a few hundred hours to complete.[5]

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[9] and had almost 800 thousand views as of April 2017.[8] The video took Blais 60 hours to complete.[10] Blais' second video, "Bohemian Gravity," parodied Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" to explain string theory. The video features a sock puppet portraying Albert Einstein.[11] 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.[2]

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.[12] Although Blais' career in science includes previous employment at the TRIUMF particle accelerator center in Vancouver, Canada,[7] Blais makes a living from creating his videos,[3] being supported by advertising revenue, sales of mp3s and posters, and contributions from fans via the Patreon website.[13]

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.[8] In 2014, he was an artist-in-residence with the National Music Centre in Alberta,[14] during which he experimented with new sounds and recorded tracks for an album.[15] In 2015, he appeared on Canada's reality television program, Canada's Smartest Person,[3] in which he won his episode but lost in the season finale.

Discography

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S.no Song name Parody of: Key Idea(s) Date of Upload to YouTube Duration of Music Video Notes
1. "Rolling in the Higgs" "Rolling in the Deep" - Adele Higgs boson 21 August, 2012 3:53 First Video on the 'acapellascience' channel
2. "Bye Bye Song" N/A (Cover) N/A 31 August, 2012 0:13 N/A
3. "Bohemian Gravity" "Bohemian Rhapsody" - Queen String Theory 16 September, 2013 6:04 N/A
4. "Massless" N/A Massless Particles 27 November, 2013 8:19 N/A
5. "Eminemium (Choose Yourself)" "Lose Yourself" - Eminem Ethical and societal implications of scientific discovery 15 July, 2014 4:51 N/A
6. "All About That Base (No Acid)" "All About That Bass" - Meghan Trainor Acid-Base Chemistry 7 November, 2014 3:40 First video on 'acapellascience2' channel
7. "Take Exams" "Shake it off" - Taylor Swift Struggles of Exam preparation 12 December, 2014 4:46 Uploaded to 'acapellascience2'
8. "The Surface Of Light" "Circle of Life" - The Lion King (1994) CMB Radiation 2 March, 2015 6:12 N/A
9. "The Blankle of Space Life (YoungTay Remix)" Experimental fusion of "Circle of Life" - The Lion King (1994) and "Blank Space" - Taylor Swift N/A 25 March, 2015 3:58 Uploaded to 'acapellascience2'
10. "Puffed Up Cores!" "Pumped up Kicks" - Foster The People Black Holes and Stars 9 June, 2015 4:02 N/A
11. "PLUTO MARS: Outbound Probe " "Uptown Funk" - Bruno Mars Planetary Exploration 13 July, 2015 3:36 N/A
12. "Hotline Tutoring" "Hotline Bling" - Drake 'Nerdy' Love song 13 November, 2015 5:25 Uploaded to 'acapellascience2'
13. "NERDS: A Manifesto" N/A Nerd Rap/ Anthem 1 December, 2015 3:08 N/A
14. "Animalia Chorus!" Chorus:"Hallelujah" - George Frideric Handel Description of Kingdom Animalia 25 December, 2015 3:45 N/A
15. "The Science of Love" "Somebody to Love" - Queen Biochemical Description of Falling in Love 9 February 2016 5:10 N/A
16. "LIGO Feel That Space" "Can't Feel My Face" - The Weeknd Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) 10 March, 2016 3:46 N/A
17. "Defining Gravity (ft. Physics Girl & MALINDA)" "Defying Gravity" - composed by Stephen Schwartz, Recorded by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth Heated Debate between Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein 5 April, 2016 5:03 N/A
18. "For Good (feat. Puppet Einstein & Puppet Newton)" N/A Wholesome Conversation between Newton and Einstein 5 April, 2016 5:59 Uploaded to 'acapellascience2'
19. "Entropic Time" "The Longest Time" - Billy Joel Arrow of time (Second Law of Thermodynamics) 7 May, 2016 4:09 Tim used his ability to sing songs backward to record this song, and flipped it digitally, all to demonstrate the idea which forms the basis of this song.
20. "William Rowan Hamilton" "Alexander Hamilton" - from “Hamilton: An American Musical” Life of William Rowan Hamilton 28 July, 2016 4:14 This is a Collaborative work of various Science Youtubers: Veritasium, Science with Tom, Coma Niddy, Hood Skalas, Tom Zalatnai, Hellen Arney, Simonoxfphys, Hank Green, and Baba Brinkman.
21. "CRISPR-Cas9" "Mr. Sandman" - Vaughn Monroe CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool 8 October, 2016 4:48 N/A
22. "Work From Home (Physics Version)" "Work from Home" - Fifth Harmony ft. Ty Dolla $ign Mechanical Advantages of Simple Machines 8 December, 2016 3:03 Features Nate Perl
23. "Whole New Worlds: An Aladdin History of Exoplanets" "Aladdin" (1992) Soundtrack Exoplanets 2 March 2017 8:06 Features Trudbol, SamRobson, and Gia Mora
24. "More Than Birds" "More Than Words" - Extreme Evolutionary Relationship between Birds and Dinosaurs 3 May 2017 4:48 N/A
25. "The Molecular Shape of You" "Shape of You" - Ed Sheeran Quantum Mechanics, Chemical bonding, and Molecular Biology. 9 June 2017 3:59 The Most Popular Music Video of the channel (9M views as of 05.01.2025)
26. "Evo Devo" "Despacito" - Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee Evolutionary Developmental Biology 24 September 2017 3:52 N/A
27. "A Scientific Sea Shanty: Banting's Imparted Years" "Barrett's Privateers" - Stan Rogers Life, before and after Discovery of Insulin by Frederick Banting. 17 January 2018 4:07 N/A
28. "Nanobot" "Havana" - Camila Cabello Nanotechnology 25 August 2018 3:20 N/A
29. "Started From A Bottom Quark" "Started From the Bottom" - Drake Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 19 February, 2019 3:03 N/A
30. "Quarantine (Hide and Seek)" N/A COVID-19 Pandemic 23 May 2020 4:26 N/A
31. "Vaccine Wellerman" "Wellerman" - Nathan Evans COVID-19 Vaccine 18 January 2021 1:00 N/A
32. "the next phase" "Aud Lang Syne" - Trad. Human Immune system 5 January 2023 1:31 Embedded within the music video is an announcement of a new series - "A Capella Science: Immunology"
33. "Leukocyte" "Dynamite" - BTS Mechanisms of the WBC 28 January, 2023 3:34 First installment of "A Capella Science: Immunology"
34. "Sargasso" "Espresso" - Sabrina Carpenter Life Cycle and Reproduction of the European Eel 1 November, 2024 4:37 N/A
35. "Seven Science Carols"
  1. "Silent Night" - Trad.
  2. "Winter Wonderland" - Bing Crosby
  3. "The First Noel" - Trad.
  4. "Jingle Bells" - Trad.
  5. "Angels we have Heard on High" - trad.
  6. "O Holy Night" - Trad.
  7. "Sleigh Ride" - Leroy Anderson
 Seven Christmas Carols modified to parodies about Scientific topics like The Scientific Method, Evolution, The Nobel Prize, The VSEPR Theory, Black Holes, Molecular Biology, and Scientific Integrity. 25 December, 2024 7:16 Each of the songs was (Except the Parody of "Sleigh Ride") teased through Short Form videos on the channel throughout the Month of December.

References

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  1. ^ a b "About acapellascience". YouTube.
  2. ^ a b Suen, Fan-Yee (September 28, 2013). "Bohemian Gravity: Canadian grad student uses music to explain string theory". ctvnews.ca. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  3. ^ a b c Hunter, Colin (March 9, 2016). "Watch this singer's super-catchy explanation of gravitational waves". insidetheperimeter.ca. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  4. ^ a b c d e Mortillaro, Nicole (September 17, 2013). "Video: Using 'Bohemian Rhapsody' to explain the universe". globalnews.ca. Retrieved November 24, 2018.
  5. ^ a b Palus, Shannon. "Making a living on YouTube". McGillnews.mcgill.ca. Retrieved November 24, 2018.
  6. ^ a b "Physicist Tim Blais pays musical tribute to New Horizons, Pluto". ca.news.yahoo.com. July 13, 2015. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  7. ^ a b Yang, Ethan (September 17, 2012). "Tim Blais on 'A Capella Science'". McGilldaily.com. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  8. ^ a b c "An evening with A Capella Science's Tim Blais". dailyhive.com. Retrieved November 23, 2018.[permanent dead link‍]
  9. ^ "Physikalische Einheiten im Song". Sueddeutsche.de (in German). August 27, 2012. Retrieved November 27, 2018.
  10. ^ "Higgs boson-inspired parody provides musical spin". arabnews.com. Agence France Presse. August 26, 2012. Retrieved November 23, 2018.
  11. ^ Boyle, Alan (November 2, 2015). "Mamma mia! 'Bohemian Gravity' turns string theory into a viral video". nbcnews.com. Retrieved November 24, 2018.
  12. ^ "A Capella Science". youtube.com. Retrieved November 25, 2018.
  13. ^ Jardin, Lauren (January 21, 2017). "String theory + a capella: A Montrealer's formula for online fame". cbc.ca. Retrieved November 24, 2018.
  14. ^ "NMC Artist in Residence", nmc.ca, retrieved November 23, 2018
  15. ^ "Tim Blais NMC Artist in Residence", nmc.ca, retrieved November 23, 2018[permanent dead link‍]
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