Engineer By Design
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  • September16th

    On a whim, I decided to practice music arrangement last night. It had been a while since I had practiced it, where my last “serious test” with it was in covering Traverse Town. I decided to make a short of the main theme from the Disneyland’s Main Street Electrical Parade because it’s a perfect example of having different instruments (or tracks) carrying a wide variety of melodies where they all come together in harmony as one very fun and charming song.

    At this point I’m not too sure if I want to call this project complete or not. There’s still much room for improvement in “cleaning” the tracks and that since the full song actually breaks into a series of units (Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella, Peter Pan, etc) I could continue it on to experiment with different vocal styles on my keyboard. Also, I’m playing this at a slower tempo than the original version, yet the tempo that I’m playing at is already 190 beats per minute!

    But for now, this should suffice.

    Song Title: Main Street Electrical Parade (short cover)
    Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
    Original Artist: Bob Jani and Ron Miziker
    Instruments: 80’s Brass (carries 2 melodies), Poly Synth Pad, Tinker Bell, Standard Drum Kit 1
    Style: Learning 4/4
    Listen:

    Right-click to download: Charlene Valerio – Main Street Electrical Parade (short cover)

  • September16th

    I previously posted a question to use the rules of inference to prove that Superman does not exist. To start solving this proof, it’d be convenient to label each of the hypothesis. So:

    1. If Superman were able and willing to prevent evil, he would do so.
    2. If Superman were unable to to prevent evil, he would be impotent.
    3. If he were unwilling to prevent evil, he would be malevolent.
    4. Superman does not prevent evil.
    5. If Superman exists, then he is neither impotent or malevolent.

    Let:

    a = “Superman exists”
    b = “Superman is able to prevent evil”
    c = “Superman is willing to prevent evil”
    d = “Superman would do so”
    e = “Superman is impotent”
    f = “Superman is malevolent”

    Therefore, we can rewrite the hypothesis as follows:

    superman dne premise

    Now we can come up with the conclusion that Superman doesn’t exist (not a)  using the Rules of Inference!

    superman dne 00

    Note that Step #9 states that “If Superman exists, then he is neither impotent (not e) OR malevolent (not f)”. The above simplifies this statement to “If Superman exists, then he is not malevolent (not f)” in Step #10.

    Step #10 can also be simplified by saying “If Superman exists, then he is not impotent (not e)”, and still reach the same conclusion — that he doesn’t exist (not a).

    superman dne 01
  • September13th

    Oh the joys of recording of 1am. This could’ve been much better had I not messed up turning a page on my Aladdin songbook, but this will do for now. After all, I’m trying to practice being not so much of a perfectionist now.

    The recording is not quite a piano instrumental. I ended up playing a “Dual voice” with my keyboard with both a Grand Piano and a String Ensemble, hence the hearing the strings over long notes. I thought it added a nice touch, though it was not something that I intended to do from the start.

    Song Title: Lullaby (improvisation)
    Original Artist: Alan Menken & Time Rice
    Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
    Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
    Listen:

    Right click to download: A Whole New World (Piano Instrumental)

  • September10th

    One of the things that I usually have trouble with in creating music is that for better or for worse, I’m a perfectionist. I usually create a recording on my Yamaha keyboard at least once a month, however it’s only a few times in a whole year that I actually post a piece of music up, and most of the time they’re scraps.

    I’d like to start getting into the habit of recording on a more consistent basis and on top of that, actually “accepting” a recording to myself even if I end up making an error in the piece. The goal is that I would at least have some music that I make to actually listen to and so that I can simply face the fact that like engineering, there is really no “final product” and that there always is room for improvement.

    Also, I’ve been thinking about getting a fake book again. Back in my high school days I had used one, but since I’ve moved out of the nest I haven’t gotten my hands on a fake book recently. I’ve been thinking that it could give me the good practice on developing improvisation on the piano, while also just exposing me to more chords and melodies of popular songs so that if someone asked me to play something, I would have a slightly more decent chance in knowing it.

    I guess I’m being a bit influenced by dueling pianists. It just simply amazes me on the breadth of songs that they know, how they can work a crowd and how they can improvise songs and lyrics if needed be.

    In any case, I’ll start posting up music recordings a bit more frequently now. They won’t be perfect, but they’ll be a continuing work in progress.