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  • August12th

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    It's enough to make kings and vagabonds believe the very best

    Posted in: Music

    I’ve been meaning to do another song cover, preferably before I start graduate school next week. After idly playing songs on my keyboard, I happened to reach for my songbook which I haven’t touched in a while – Jim Brickman, The Disney Songbook.

    I’m a big fan of Jim Brickman ever since I first heard his song Angel Eyes during high school. His music and interpretation on songs are all so very lovely, and it’s somewhat the sort of style I tend to play whenever I find myself with a fake book of some sort.

    I’d like to get back to learning one of his medleys (Marry Poppins or Colors of the Wind/A Whole New World) but in the meantime I found myself playing around with Can You Feel the Love Tonight by overlapping the piano and saxophone voices together and finding itself in my little scraps pile:

    Scraps: Jim Brickman – Can You Feel The Love Tonight (2009)

  • February28th

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    A month of FAWM

    Posted in: Music

    I decided to participate in February Album Writing Month (FAWM) this year! FAWM.ORG challenges people to write fourteen songs within the twenty-eight days of February, which is essentially writing a song every two days. I was first told about it by a co-worker of mine, who is a very, very talented muscian. I was skeptical coming into it since I was already busy coming into it, but I thought it would be good to have something to motivate my musical-side. In the end, I had two goals:

    • Jot down scraps of lyrics
    • Discover new chord progressions

    I wasn’t able to produce those fourteen songs, but I was at least able to make three. Granted, they aren’t of any good notable quality, but it was fun. But I am definitely going to meet the challenge FAWM 2010.

    My FAWM Profile

  • January29th

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    Sound device fail

    Posted in: Music

    Defying Gravity (very, very, very short)

    This really is a product of countless testing on trying to get my USB mic to work. I tested by doing a wide variety of things to amuse myself instead of going “Testing. 1, 2, 3.” I ended up having a whole *.wav compilation of wacky voices, melodies of Mochi’s “theme song” that goes with the tune of Macho Man, and playing instrumentals of songs and attempting, I dare say, to sing.

    After several tries with the USB mic, I ended up using my gaming headset which DOES work, and is what I normally use with my Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead escapades. By Audacifying the raw recording with reverbs and noise reduction because Mochi (the cat) was in the background. I can’t really describe how irritated I was at this point with trying to get my sound devices to work, but it “worked”.

    But, I have to say that even though the recording quality is low with it coming from a gaming headset, by adding two reverbs and a small noise filter in Audacity I’m okay with the following test. The only thing I could imagine that needs correction is my weak vocal cords. (But hey, I don’t think of myself as a singer but rather a musician.)

    I want my money back from the “real” mic I bought. It fails.

  • October15th

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    Their stern lines are groaning a lullaby air

    Posted in: Music

    I was introduced to a song by a friend of mine called Away From The Roll of the Sea by Allister MacGillivray. I’ve been obsessing over it, and yesterday that friend gave me a copy of the sheet music to it.

    I recorded the basic piano melody, and I’ve been experimenting here and there with different types of instruments I could put in. I’d love to put a drum beat, but I already hit the 5 track maximum I could record into on my keyboard. This song is still very much in the arrangement stages, but it is a good thing to do together with the Jarhead Update to keep a variety in my own personal projects.

    As always, this was recorded with Audacity. (I need to find a better way of reducing noise from my cheap USB to instrument cable.)

    Practice (#3): Away From The Roll Of The Sea (2008)

  • July25th

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    Traverse Town (2008)

    Posted in: Music, Portfolio

    Song title: Traverse Town
    Arranged by: Charlene Valerio
    Original artist: Yoko Shimomura
    Instruments: Live! Grand Piano, Sweet! Soprano Saxophone, Acoustic Bass, and Drum Kit: Standard Kit 1
    Listen:

    Right-click to download:Charlene Valerio – Traverse Town (Cover)

    This is originally a song from the game, Kingdom Hearts, that I really enjoy listening to especially when I’m relaxing, so I decided to cover the song as a basis for learning how to mix and arrange instruments on my keyboard that were beyond just the Live! Grand Piano.

    I’m not particularly too fond of the piano and bass combination, but somehow that got resolved with some recording issues Audacity had. For some reason, Audacity was having some issues recording the bass track into my laptop, and even when it did, the bass came out a bit faint. Increasing the gain or amplifying it didn’t help too much either. So you don’t hear it very much compared to the recording on the keyboard, but it’s still there.

    I kind of tapped out the cymbal on the keyboard very much like how one would tap out DDR/ITG steps idly. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but as I was recording I was visualizing red, blue, and purple arrows. Specifically, right arrows for some unknown reason.

    I think it came out pretty well considering that I’ve done it from scratch. I’ve kind of been doing this on the side in-between class. It’s not as exact to the original as I would have liked it to be, but it’s okay.

  • July25th

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    The Sad Song of Work (2008)

    Posted in: Music, Portfolio

    Song title: Improv 2008-04-16 — The Sad Song of Work
    Composed/Arranged by: Charlene Valerio
    Instruments: Live! Grand Piano, Acoustic Bass, Sweet Heaven
    Drum Style: Piano Ballad
    Listen:

    Right click to download: Charlene Valerio – The Sad Song of Work (Improv)

    I came home from school really tired and upset one day, mostly from the fact that I was at school nearly all day and besides going to class, I didn’t get much work done.

    At all.

    To take a break, I plopped on the keyboard. I was trying to play perk me up songs like Belle, or even some sort of song from Pirates of the Caribbean that’s invigorating to play, but nothing was really helping my mood. So, I ended up messing around with random keys I don’t normally play much, which is pretty much anything other than C!

    I don’t really know how it happened, but I ended up with something I just had to record. I guess the minor tones are in part based on how I was feeling this whole day. It conveys my sadness of work. :P

    Of course, this doesn’t help that I have other more important things to do, but somehow I was able to put this all together, including recording it onto my laptop, in less than 30 minutes(?!) which was also pretty surprising.

    Since I did this all so quickly, I didn’t really spend much time in enhancing it with Audacity. That means, there’s still a bit of noise because I didn’t perform a noise removal and I didn’t record the instruments to separate tracks and just recorded it all in one. Oh well.

  • July25th

    1 Comment

    Still Alive (2008) (piano cover, short)

    Posted in: Music, Portfolio

    Song title: Still Alive (piano cover, short)
    Arranged by: Charlene Valerio
    Original artist: Jonathan Coulton
    Instruments: Live! Grand Piano
    Listen:

    Right-click to download: Charlene Valerio – Still Alive (piano cover, short)

    After I was able to figure out the melody and chords for Still Alive, I recorded it so that I could reference it for later when I would actually go back and redo the song using similar instruments that were used in the original song. I didn’t want to notate it because I remember doing this during a busy schoolweek, so I recorded it playing it slowly and “stretching” the chords out into arpeggios in the beginning so that it’d be easy for me to remember how to play it if I did end up forgetting.

    The other version of Still Alive with the guitar, drums, and other instrumentals is set on the back burner for now where it’s “done” but not yet “done-done”, if that makes any sense.

    This is a song that was made famous after the release of Valve’s Portal. I would recommend the as its concept is simple, though it leads itself into some complex puzzles. Though, there is a little bit of a storyline to it, so I wouldn’t recommend listening to the actual version of the song because its lyrics give away a little bit of spoilers.

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