Engineer By Design » Music

A Piano Peek

Charlene — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:44:12 +0000

This is a little bit overdue, but here’s a little piano peek at something I plan on basing a next song over.

Song Title: Charlene (piano peek)
Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
Listen:
Download audio file (Charlene-piano-peek.mp3)

Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – Charlene (Piano Peek)

Lullaby (an improvisation)

Charlene — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:19:50 +0000

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

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.)
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:
Download audio file (Improv-2009-10-13.mp3)

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

That’s what brings everaftering so happy

Charlene — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:09:49 +0000

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:
Download audio file (Charlene-Valerio-True-Loves-Kiss.mp3)

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

Bass, Beats and Melody

Charlene — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:39:09 +0000

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.

Download audio file (Charlene%20Valerio%20-%20Test%201.mp3)

Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – Test 1

Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold beneath the clouds

Charlene — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:55:02 +0000

This happened to be one of those nights before an exam where I should be studying, but ended up being called to the keyboard. I’ve had the Neverending Story theme stuck in my head most of all today, so I guess this was a way to appease the madness.

Unfortunately, this was hastily put together since I really, really do need to be studying so this certainly goes into scraps. The arrangement could be put together, and actually having a bass line that I don’t mess up.

Song Title: Neverending Story (Instrumental, Short)
Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
Original Artist: Limahl
Instruments: Fantasia (appropriately enough, heh), acoustic bass, grand piano
Listen:
Download audio file (Neverending-Story-Theme-short.mp3)

Right-click to download: Charlene Valerio – Neverending Story Theme (short)

Lu Lu Lu I’ve Got Some Apples!

Charlene — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:38:15 +0000

My favorite character in South Park is, hands down, Butters. He also has the cutest little “Lu Lu Lu” song, too.

I wanted to play it on my keyboard, so I did. It’s not exact, but it’s fun to sing to in the car.

Song Title: Butter’s Lu Lu Lu
Arranged By: Charlene Valerio
Original Artist: South Park
Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
Listen:
Download audio file (Charlene-Valerio-Butters-Lu-Lu-Lu.mp3)

Right-click to download: Charlene Valerio – Butter’s Lu Lu Lu

The Music Studio: Before & After

Charlene — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:15:09 +0000

My “music studio” is pretty basic. My typical setup simply consisted of my keyboard, my computer, and LightSnake USB instrument cable.

Though I’ve been recording here and there over the past years, I’ve always had two problems:

I’ve been recording “deaf”
Recording quality

Recording Deaf
When my keyboard (a Yamaha YPG-625) is connected to my computer, I couldn’t hear my keyboard’s sound coming through my speakers. The only way I could was to capture it through recording the audio, where it wouldn’t even play through the speakers while doing so. I would only be able to hear it after playing back the recorded audio.

This has been a rather problematic issue since it prevents me from recording music efficiently. I’ve been wanting to use some audio creation software that I’ve purchased before, such as Sony ACID Music Studio 7, for making loops though I never felt I could actually do it if I couldn’t actually hear anything of what I was recording real-time. I had been resorting to compiling tracks on the keyboard itself where it’s limited to 5 tracks and 1 accompaniment. And recording those tracks would be a pain, too — it was a one shot chance to record right and if I messed up I’d have to start all over again. And again. And again.

Recording Quality
The recording quality was another issue, though it was something that I just learned to deal with. My keyboard and computer were linked together using a LightSnake USB instrument cable, and when just recording an empty signal from the keyboard, it would still capture static noise.

The static would of course persist over the duration of the audio recording. Though Audacity has the option “Noise Removal”, it always went at the expense of the audio recording quality. In more recent music I’ve made, I just ended up not using the Noise Removal to the audio altogether.

The Solution
Every single time I’ve been recording, I couldn’t help but think about re-evaluate my setup. Of and on I would ask the all-knowing Google as well as talking about my recording problems with other fellow musicians, the answer seemed to be pointing to getting an audio interface or mixer of some sort. Upon taking a trip to the local Guitar Center with some friends yesterday, I saw that they had a whole section on recording studios, and after going through different types of interfaces, I ended up purchasing an M-AUDIO Fast Track Pro.

The price tag was a little high where I bought it at the Guitar Center for $200. I was deliberating between the Fast Track Pro, M-AUDIO Fast Track ($99) and the M-AUDIO MobilePre USB ($150). I chose to go with the Fast Track Pro because the Fast Track used USB 1.1 instead of 2.0 and that the MobilePre USB could only record in mono, where the Pro could record in stereo. (The MobilePre had a stereo output, though).

It took a little bit for me to set everything up correctly and figure out what the knobs and dials correspond to. But now my setup looks something like this:

I was a little skeptical about it solving my recording woes, and after playing around with it a bit yesterday I’m impressed. But now I can actually hear what I’m recording while I’m recording, which is a very big thing to me.

Also, I was pleasantly surprised to see the difference in capturing audio now too!

Before:

After:

You see that flat line before and after recording? It’s beautiful, beautiful, no noise goodness.

Here’s to making better quality music in the future. Especially now, since it’ll be MUCH easier for me to make full, 3 minute music arrangements rather than just 30 second shorts.

Our spectacular festival pageant of night time magic and imagination

Charlene — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:33:53 +0000

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:
Download audio file (Main-Street-Electrical-Parade-short.mp3)

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

When did you last let your heart decide?

Charlene — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:48:11 +0000

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:
Download audio file (Charlene%20Valerio%20-%20A%20Whole%20New%20World%20(Piano%20Instrumental).mp3)

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

A Continuing Work-In-Progress: Music Recording & Improvising

Charlene — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:07:25 +0000

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.