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  • October7th

    Lullaby (an improvisation)

    Posted in: Music

    At the moment, I’m in the middle of writing and arranging two songs:

    1. An attempt in making an In The Groove-type song. (I actually have a really cool and novel idea for this, but I’m not ready to give details just yet.)
    2. A song for my grandmother for her upcoming birthday

    There is also a possible third which may go towards Guild Wars’ Halloween Art Contest where I’m not sure if I’m going to create a song or send in digital art as I did during their last Wintersday contest.

    I don’t feel that songwriting and arranging comes easy to me, and I often find that it takes several days, weeks, and even months for me to get the “right” snippet of music I want. In order to help me with my mental blocks, I’m trying to get into the habit of improvising when I’m on the keyboard, even if it’s just for a tiny moment in the day.

    Here is one piece of improv that came to me. It’s rough and unpolished, but it sings to me like a lullaby.

    Song Title: Lullaby (improvisation)
    Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
    Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
    Listen:

    Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – Lullaby (improvisation)

  • October6th

    As we are liberated from our own fear our presence automatically liberates others.

    Posted in: Introspection

    Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
    Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
    It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
    We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
    Actually, who are you not to be?
    You are a child of God.
    Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
    We were born to make manifest the glory
    of God that is within us.
    It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
    And as we let our own light shine,
    we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
    As we are liberated from our own fear,
    our presence automatically liberates others.

    - Marianne Williamson, from A Return to Love

  • October4th

    Change your Wordpress upload_max_filesize limit with Bluehost in 6 easy steps

    Posted in: Website

    My website is hosted under Bluehost, which so far has been treating me well. I do a lot of uploading since my site also serves as my portfolio for art and music, and there have been times when I would attempt to upload something into Wordpress and it would give me the following error:

    The uploaded file exceeds the upload_max_filesize directive in php.ini.

    I was able to fix the problem, so I figured I’d create a post to help out anyone out there who has this problem as well. This guide assumes:

    This guide is current as of 10/4/2009.
    Read More | Comments

  • October4th

    That’s what brings everaftering so happy

    Posted in: Music

    Enchanted is one of my favorite Disney movies. It’s a parody of Disney’s own work where they explore how it would be if they brought one of their typical “princess” character’s (Giselle) in the real world, and I thought the story pulled off well. In a way, sometimes I wish that I was Giselle too … I mean, wouldn’t it be magical to just sing in Central Park where your song brings other people to sing with you, and suddenly you have a musical? (Heh, I remember when my friends and I first saw the movie, we joked that Giselle was brainwashing people with music. :))

    Here’s a slower piano instrumental I recorded a bit ago from Enchanted called True Love’s Kiss. It was actually recorded a while ago, before I got my audio interface, so there’s a bit of static in the recording.

    Song Title: True Love’s Kiss
    Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
    Original Artist: Steven Schwartz & Alan Menken
    Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
    Listen:

    Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – True Love’s Kiss (Piano Instrumental)

  • October3rd

    Bass, Beats and Melody

    Posted in: Electronica Beat Testing, Music

    One type of music I’d like to produce a full song for is an electronica song of some sort. I still have yet to play around with it more since it doesn’t quite come as intuitive to me, but I started today actually playing with loops and synthesized sounds with my keyboard. This is a first for me since I’ve been mostly producing my music strictly with my keyboard alone in the past.

    This is just a piece of scrap music to get my feet wet with this type of music production. (As such, I also ended up making a folder for myself “Electronica Beat Testing“.) It’s nothing amazing, but it’s a start. It actually starts off much “darker” than I actually intended it to … initially I wanted it to be something bright and happy-like.

    Also, I do end up liking the “frog” beat I figured out how to put in there, despite my distaste for frogs, heh.


    Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – Test 1

  • October1st

    “What do I want with a Master’s degree in Computer Science?”

    Posted in: Graduate School, Introspection

    Sometimes I feel silly going to school.

    Even though I am, by technicality, a “graduate student”, I am still taking undergraduate classes in computer science since I’m in the transitory period between becoming an aerospace engineer to a computer scientist. One of the courses that I’m taking is a software engineering course that seems to be mostly comprised of juniors and seniors, and my professor ties in a lot of real-world work experience in making the material of software engineering come alive. Without a doubt, this class is by far my favorite class since I like a systematic, disciplined approaches to design and also because for each topic, I could relate with my own work experience, even though it may not have been directly related to software.

    My professor talks a lot about different roles and functions people have (requirements analysis, programmers, designers, SQA, etc) and also reminds us to open our mind to what sort of role we, the students, see ourselves in. Whenever I think about, it ends up turning into a higher level thought of, “What do I want with a Master’s degree in Computer Science?”

    I do know that I want to complement my Bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering with this Master’s. From my time working, it’s apparent of the role that computer science plays into engineering (albeit aerospace or not) and I’ve adapted the attitude that to become a good engineer that deals with systems hardware, it would be good to also be able to understand that system’s software. And of course, there are the other factors too such as the fact that the brink of new technologies deals with computers and that this line of study is applicable to a seemingly unlimited number of industries.

    Just, will I ever end up actually working on aerospace and computer science applications?

    Will I end up eventually forgoing my aerospace engineering degree and end up sticking to software, or vice versa?

    I know I have a lot of time to figure out where my specific interests are in computer science. I suppose my fear with taking up two (or more) disciplines is that I would end up becoming a jack-of-all-trades, master of nothing. And that would be kind of amusing and contradictory since I am pursuing a Master’s degree.

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