OcRemix: FFVI Compo

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=39840

Oook, looks like I'll take part in this. So I have to finish up my compo home work AND do a remix of one of the tracks. Gonna be busy :3

Saxophone Log: April 2012

Pretty please with this arrangement, I can't believe it only took today an a bit of yesterday evening. I did spend some time waffling about how to arrange this track, as it's kind of.. iconic? For awhile it was a ballad, then blues, then went to bebop, then back to blues again. Gah. I actually set it up so that some bars from the original were removed in order to fit the 12-bar blues feel.

I started recording once I had the drums, pad and basslines down. After recording, I tweaked the bassline to flow better with the melody, added in some tambourines starting from the 2nd chorus, and added a counter melody on top. I'm quite happy with how the counter melody turned out, as I played the main portion just once, and that's what you hear.

Apart from Addictive Drums, all the instruments used were built into Logic Studio.

It is practice, isn't it?

Due to my holidays, and various illnesses (damn you dry cough) I didn't touch my dear alto till today. And damn, it appears that my embouchure has suffered greatly in these few weeks >.>

Apart from tiring easier, I think my articulation and dynamics took a turn for the worse.

On the flip side, I though my improvisation is now much better - most likely due to the piano practice. More ideas, though really, I need to memorize the scales.

Ah well.

Equator D5s

Thinking of getting monitors, mainly the Yamaha MSP5 Studio. An alternative is the Equator D5.

Piano Pedaling and musings

Had another piano class on Saturday, that went pretty well. I brought in a piece of game music I've been practising on, and evidently I had zero idea on how to work the piano's sustain pedal, short of holding it down. Permanently.

One the CP33, it is now quite obvious that the sustain diminishes quite rapidly, so I don't hear how each bars clash as badly as when I played on an upright or my teacher's grand. Evidently, I needed to disengage/engage the sustain pedal so that the previous notes don't clash with the currently played notes. It is not as simple as I thought as one needs to lift the pedal, versus pushing it down, to disengage it. Kinda non intuitive physical action. Still, I got it for simple chord changes, and I'm working on the pieces.

(As a side note, now that I've got the CP33, it is very obvious the keybed ISN'T even close to my teacher's grand. Weighted it is, but in terms of feel.... no.)

I think this is another example of where a teacher comes in - instantly he told me what I needed to do etc. What's best was when he played the score first time round straight. Man, how many years of experience does one need to do that?!

In other news, during my visit home I brought back two of my Jamie Aebersold books, currently reading one during my break, it's Volume 1: How to play Jazz and Improvize! I found this, and another aebersold book about major/minor scales amidst a bunch of flute books. I'd bring the flute books back to the UK as well but then reminded myself I just do not have the time for it. Plus I've given up the flute anyways. But that's a story for another day.

Going through How To Play Jazz and Improvise NOW, versus 5, 6 years ago when I had ZERO idea of music theory is a big, big difference. I can actually follow along with the text, and when he says Dorian mode, I actually know what it is lol.

I must admit after this holiday jaunt, I'm slightly at a loss of what to do/practice for the musical side of things. I think for the sax, what I'll do is continue doing the improvisation book, and work on this How To Play Jazz and Improvise at the same time. Should keep me busy.

Totally forgot I had a Keystation at home

Many, many years ago, I dabbled in music, and had this idea of learning the piano, so got a Keystation 61es for practice. Back home on hols and totally forgot about it >.>

Dragged it out today, and the semi-weighted keys felt like synth action keys. No matter, this is for practice anyways, and saves me time heading over to Yamaha or Cristofori to rent a piano for an hour.

Plugging it into my mac instantly had it running, though I could not get it to work with Garageband for some reason - had to use Logic. I also have a Roland DP-2 pedal, a cute little thing that works well in cramped areas.

In use, the semi weight keys were actually quite good, it definitely does have a fair amount of weight. As I type this, I'm feeling the workout my fingers got from it. Definitely does not have the weighted feel of the CP33, but in my newbie opinion, this is a pretty good set of keys for the money.

Looks like next time I come home, I need not bring along my Akai LPK25 anymore :)

No sax, still got keys

On hols, no saxophone with me, but there are music places that rent out pianos an hour. Got to practice on an upright for an hour. The particular model of upright I got I definitely did not like the tone, sounds very brittle. Also, it was quite difficult to play softly, and the sustain pedal just went on forever. Not sure if it's because if it's an upright or just the brand (which I have no idea). My CP33 definitely reminds me of my teacher's Yamaha Grand, this one was totally out of my range.

Currently working through self-assigned homework, just finished several pages of background rhythm lines, next up will be smooth voice leading for chords.

Chord Progressions: Putting it all together

Another composition class tonight that went very well, and my teacher got me to finish up a full chord progression after. The above took about 2-ish hours.

Learning Piano Handbook

http://www.pianopractice.org/ Just found this, gotta go through it soon :)

The Wind, The Stars | Redux

For some reason, I didn't use the one "pro" sample library that I have, EWQL Symphonic Orchestra. And one of my friends suggested replacing the synthy choir sounds (his words, not mine :P) with perhaps a bass clarinet.

I gave that a go, and also tried out bassoons, clarinets and other deeper woodwinds, and did find the bass clarinet to be the best fitting.

This is also my first outing with Symphonic Orchestra, and apart from some interface issues with PLAY that I may want to spend time asking forums about, it all went quite smoothly. CPU time went up a bit, as well as ram usage, but on the whole it seemed very tame.

The flute does remind me of how a real flute reacts (from my limited flute experience) - cutting through the mix in the higher registers, and more mellow in the lower registers.

In the context of the song above though, I'm not convinced the flute works that well - in the higher register portion of the song, it feels very thin, while the lower notes do sound big, nice and fat.

Also fooled around with limiting, but decided to bypass it in the end as the mix sounded very forced.


Will do better next time!

Mastering

Booo!
Just finished listening to the podcast at http://simplyrecordingpodcast.com/self-mastering/ about mastering, and learned a lot more about the tools I got in Logic. Tools that I should have used but have no idea about.

Bwa.

For example, the Limiter. Never touched it, and I applied it to The Wind, The Stars. Seems to bring up the softer bits and increased the gain so that it's near 0dB.

More to learn, more to learn.

The Wind, The Stars

:3 This is my very first original composition. Supposed to be just practice, but ended up humming a melody line, recording it, then improvising on the keyboard. After that, I fitted in the bass line, then worked in the harmony and added in a 4th part.

Woo!

Saxophone Log: March 2012

Hmmm not much to say here, this is my first and only take, not really into the song. Did practice a few times before though. I did spend about two hours on the mixing, ensuring that the basslines came through. Mmmm...

So, Yamaha CP33?

Quite worn out today thanks to work, so decided to check out the Yamaha CP33 instead of working on harmony/theory during lunch. I'd tried it before, and I'm wondering why I did not like it then, because today I was like "DANG I WANT THIS PIANO!"

Only tested it via headphones, and I loved the Grand Piano 2 sound (GP1 sounds very distant). With the damper pedal down. Oh my god. The FF crystal theme sounded damned amazing.


Tried against the YDP-161, and CP50 (I think). Again, it's really odd, all of them use the same keybed supposedly, but I did not like the YDP161's - velocity curve felt odd - but someone could have messed around with those settings and I couldn't reset it. C50, felt much lighter.

Mmmmm.

Piano Practice

http://www.hanon-online.com/ mmmmm gonna take the theory side of things slower for awhile, gonna get up to speed on the piano side of things.

Finally finished a book

After more than 3 months, its complete! Now to move on to my next text, Alexander Publishing's APH101. This is a great text, and I would highly recommend it.

Arrangement done, next record.

Working on the monthly sax ballad's backing track, it's done, and need the sax line to be recorded prior to mixing.

The actual song sung by Lionel Richie is just so beautiful, playing an instrumental version of it pales in comparison.

For the instruments, I'm keeping it very simple, Logic's built in piano+string samples form the chords as well as the bass line. Addictive drums is used as well... and that's about it. For now I'm keeping it simple, and focusing on the harmony component. The only thing new I'm trying this time is experimenting with shifting the last chorus up a semitone, so it's main melody -> chorus -> chorus at +1 semitones.

More piano try-outs.

Ok first, I'll tell you which is the best piano I tried today. The Yamaha Arius C71 (If I am not mistaken on the model). Felt really, really damned good, but sadly, it is priced way above my budget, and I simply have no space for a keyboard that size.

Frankly, I was quite amazed at how it felt, so similar to the grand at my teacher's place (I just had a piano lesson shortly before the piano tryouts). Interestingly, I tried the Yamaha P155, which supposedly used the same keyboard (Yamaha GH keys) and it didn't like the feel at all. How odd.

Comparing it to the P95 once again, the differences were very obvious. As is the price ;-)

Similarly, the stage pianos I tried (CP33, CP3, CP50) didn't have the feel of the Arius. Which is very surprising, as they use the same GH keybed.

I also tried out several Casio keyboards at Music Room, The CDP100, PX3 and PX330. These felt good, but there was just something "off" about them I could not describe.

Heading over to the next store (Rose Morris), I tried out Kawai, Korg and Roland. The Korg SP170S was unexpectedly good. Perhaps not as good as the Arius (different store), but the sounds were lush, and the touch sensitivity very good. Another one I really liked is the SP250, somewhat above my budget, and it also felt really good.

The one roland I did try, a Roland FP-4 had amazing feeling keys. Didn't play with it too long (£1k+ price tag - no point) but dang, that felt good.

So once again, more thinking to do.

More chord progressions!

Spent the good part of the evening figuring out interesting chord progressions for the monthly sax forum song. Although I'd already done this once, the last few days figuring out bass lines and just playing with chord progression on the keyboard has given me lots of new ideas.

The score on Wikifonia only provided a few chord changes, so it's good practice figuring out the secondary dominants, as well as figuring out that I actually like the vii - I progression alot :3

Next time I approach this, would be from an arrangement viewpoint. Sax as lead of course, but which other virtual instruments this time round? Mmmmm.... :3

EDIT: F7 in the image above is actually Adim. 
Edit 2: F7 is F7 :P

More bassline practice

Not particularly trilled with this guy. I used this exercise for several things, first, to get more practice about chord progressions and basslines. Also, I wanted to try it in a new key, F.

Sadly, this particular exercise didn't go as well as I hoped (bass line seemed to be alright) but the cadences seemed to be all over the place, and it just doesn't seem to end wrongly.

Contrasting to what I posted yesterday, I thought that was fairly well done. I started in C, went to 4 bars in G, then back to C again, with some fairly simple progressions. Melody sounded better as well.

Ah well more practice.