.. Some elementary harmony practice in basic chorale form..

I gathered some unrelated audio bites of other AAU students and forged them into this heart-wrenching ballad. I would have liked to experiment with ‘autotune’ … but I haven’t yet had access to it. A special thanks to all the unsuspecting/horrified vocal talent (Sondra Stilwell, Ryan Houck, Ben Sue, Barbara Gomes, Pat Song, Haley Moon). And God bless Justin Bieber.

Here’s some random pieces from last year. I’ve been spending more time studying than composing lately, so I figured I might as well post something.. The first one is a sonic birthday present from my brother and I to Mom, and the second is a highly unpolished cover of Sondheim’s tune ‘Being Alive.’

(see title)

Somebody said this sounded like “Tokyo Jazz.” I’m not sure what that means, but I tried to pick a style that fit the look and vibe of the (terrible Wachowski disaster of a) film. I experimented with some fast, pulsating, gated synths to amplify the intensity of the high speed skirmish. As far as the original scene went, I found Michael Giacchino’s underscore surprisingly unexciting. Anyways, this one also took about three days..

MUSIC

MUSIC + (very light)SOUND DESIGN

Monsters Inc! Maybe my favorite Pixar film.. I tried to mimic Randy Newman’s style for this one.. Lots of dissonance and disjunct bursts of musical mayhem.. I think it took about three days.. Also, just discovered Blip.TV… Way better than Youtube! You can upload giant vids and it doesn’t destroy the sound quality..

In the spirit of the original, I intentionally tried to keep this one pretty ‘manic’ throughout. The class assignment was to use only ‘tuned percussion.’ I ended up adding vibes, crotales, xylophones, Tibetian bowls, glockenspiel, timpani, tubular bells, caribbean steel drums, celesta, and an unplugged bass. Previously, I didn’t know what to make of themes like those of The Jetsons and The Simpsons, but now I see that they’re simply simple melodies being rapidly modulated as wacky embellishment is thrown into the mix. I’m pretty happy that it only took a few days to start and finish. At the start of the semester, it probably would’ve taken at least a week..

Arranging class midterm: Do a cover of Gershwin’s 1935 song ‘Summertime,’ keeping the same general harmony/melody/rhythm. I messed around with some new instruments like the harpsichord and the Japanese koto. This was a bit hard to mix because of the unusual orchestration. I’m not sure if all the counterlines came out as clear as I’d hoped.. you be the judge.

(WARNING: TASTELESSLY OFFENSIVE) God I hope my Grandma never sees this.. I did the background music for this 60-sec-radio-spot parody. It’s a bit silly … I didn’t write the spoken copy, but I arranged/paced the dialogue to allow for a more rhythmic musical accompaniment. My apologies, gentle reader, if you find this offensive (which you should!!!). It went pretty quickly – maybe an evenings worth of poking around at the keys. I think it’d be fun to try a radio spot with lyrics sometime soon…

The latest assignment for arranging class… We were to cover the chorus of “Lets Call the Whole Thing Off” using any symphonic (virtual) instruments of our choosing. We were also allowed to employ (cinematic) percussion in the arrangement. I think this one came out sounding pretty solid. I composed this primarily by ear (like most of my schtuff), and it took about a week of poking and prodding at the keyboard. The virtual instruments used are the mediocre samples that come pre-packaged with Logic Pro. This craziness closes with a quote from the great Louis Armstrong himself. Disclaimer: This music was not intentionally ‘scored’ to the accompanying video. I came across the video afterward and thought that it fit the music appropriately. Some of the purely coincidental “hits” (spots where the music mirrors the actions onscreen) are really surprising! — FYI, the animation is by the amazing Chris Conforti!

Another ‘arranging class’ assignment! Oh what fun it is! For my ‘Jingle Bells cover’ assignment, I was given a bit more freedom in terms of altering rhythms/harmonies/orchestration etc… but percussion was still OFF limits (though I snuck some in). We were required to compose the first verse using only (5) brass instruments (alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, trumpet, trombone). For the appropriate visuals, I strung together a few clips from the film ‘Elf’ starring Will Ferrell. Hilarity ensues.

Click To Play

This ‘mini-cover’ was a homework assignment for my arranging class. We were to produce an electronic/synthesized version of the first verse of the song “Lets Call the Whole Thing Off” by Louis Armstrong (bizarre assignment, I know). Using Logic Pro, we were limited to a maximum of sixteen synthetic virtual instruments. Percussion was also NOT allowed for the assignment. For the intro, I stuck in a snippet of the original song…as a comparison…and just in case your memory needs jogging.

John Lennon liked to imagine a calm, peaceful, Godless world. I like to imagine one where the Simpsons is still funny and the joint tissue in both my elbows isn’t miserably damaged. Anyways, this is my instrumental cover of a song I’m sure you’ll recognize. I pieced together some footage of the ongoing Afghanistan/Iraq wars for the visual. There’s some mixed messages and conflicting quotes… I wasn’t sure what to glorify/demonize..

(old-school)ViDeO GaMe MuSIC!  This is about a weeks worth of musical doodling..  Maybe you could call it a half-assed tribute to Koji Kondo.  I haven’t taken a stab at “video game” music before – it’s a genre that I(and everybody else out there) have never really paid attention to.  Like most art, I think it’s under-appreciated.  This was pretty fun to work on, and it started to feel like an interesting musical jig-saw puzzle as I was fitting the parts together.  Also, I finally figured out what the f a ‘compressor’ is, and how to use one, so I think I was able to crank out some more volume with this mix.  (Next on my wish list is some Mackie MR5′s so I can keep my roommates up all night). Concerning the images, I slapped together a progression of old-school/new-school titles.  Maybe you’ll recognize some of the games (you shameless geek you).  It’s funny how the mind-bending graphics of 1993 now seem to be almost indiscernible smudges of pixels.  Who knows what games will look a decade from now… or what video game music will sound like.  Maybe I’ll even have a job by then.

This is the first clip I tried to write music for(Dec 2009).. It was for an audio production class where I was first acquainted with Logic Pro and the phenomenon that is ‘midi.’ It’s pretty simplistic -mainly slow moving strings- I tried to keep it as subtle underscore.. The middle section with the fighting originally had music in addition to the dialogue, so I had to cut out the audio and re-add the sfx myself before inserting my own music. Some parts are still a bit clunky(drums, underdeveloped middle section), and the sound quality was totally ravaged at some point during the final stages- i’ll definitely have to re-upload this one. But anyways, see what you think.

Damn kids these days and their gangster rap! Anything with ‘electric lead guitar’ gets lazily, ignorantly, and condescendingly labeled “TOP GUN.” I’ve had this happen in four separate incidents, by four different people, on more than one piece of music! I don’t even particularly like that damn soundtrack! I’m a huge Satriani/Petrucci/Hammett/Vai/Slash/Gates/Halen/Gilmour/Lane/Hetfield/Darrell/Young fan, and, for better or worse, I would love to be compared to any of them… but kids these days haven’t heard of Satriani, Petrucci, Hammett, Vai, Slash, Gates, Halen, Gilmour, Lane, Hetfield, Darrell, or Young. They’ve heard of Lil’ Wayne, and they’ve heard of TOP GUN. It’s clear the times are changing and you’re either a ‘homey-g’ or a ‘hair-metal-hokey.’ I’ve chosen my side. The following music was inspired by motocross, and the clips were cut to fit the song. (the drums/bass and the mix could still use work)

This is a mix of some music I did over the semester… It’s basically a video montage I edited to fit my music montage. There’s a mix of electric guitar/bass and virtual instruments.

This one was fun.. It’s probably the most ‘organic’ clip I’ve done so far. At first, watching the audio-less clip, I had to play it back and forth a bunch of times to get a feel for the tempo/pacing of the scenes. I wanted the music to go along with the cooky/creepy/sub-real presentation and atmosphere. Again, this was composed by ear, so it took longer than it should have. In the middle section, I was aiming for creepy sounding “elevator music.” I wanted the ‘dub sax’ lead to be awkward and dissonant. The class instructor wanted it to be more diatonic, but I think it works. The second half of the vid was basically ‘mickey-mousing.’ It took some adjusting, but I’m happy with how it turned out. (oh, and apparently if you upload a video of the format “H.262, 32-bit Float” to Youtube, it turns the sound quality to shit. I have no idea what the fuck any of that means, but hopefully I can avoid that issue in the future.)

I ran into some mixing issues with this one… I didn’t realize how many things there were to consider in terms of utilizing the “ideal mixing environment.” I was reminded how easy it is to sell yourself a misleading mix by working in a misleading mixing environment. On my home setup, this mix and its 40+ virtual instruments sounded clean, clear, and EQ’d just right. A lot of those sounds were drowned out a bit after the video upload… It may sound drastically different to you, depending on exactly ‘what’ you listen to it through. Mixing is another battlefield that’s new to me, and it’s an issue I need to tackle for future projects. As for the music in this vid, I tried to apply a bit of theory while making the bass part(chord leading). Then I filled in chords over the bass changes, and assigned notes from those chords to other instruments to make up melodies/harmonies/counter melodies. I like that composing process, but I still don’t want to imply that I know exactly what I’m doing. The first few leads are brassy, and I tweaked a ‘bubbly’ sounding synth lead to use in the underwater scene.

Here’s another short one… A 3D student showcasing his computer chops. I pulled the melody from a rock song I’d written back in high school and redid it using virtual instruments in Logic Pro.

I actually wrote most of this song before I saw the student animation that it’s currently synced to. Still soggy at music theory, I composed the piano part by doodling out(by ear) about 20 different bits and pieces(the guitarist in me wants to call them riffs) and then transposing/arranging the pieces to fit together. From there I added some other instruments and textures of beef up the production values. The sound effects were just for comic effect, and would probably anger the animator/director if he had seen them. What was eerie though, was how well(for the most part, in my opinion) the unaltered song happened to sync with the video. (also, somewhere during the exhausting process of moving the project from PC to Mac, from Mac to PC, from Tracktion 3 to Logic Pro, from midi files to wav files, from ‘sound card A’ to ‘sound card B,’ from Adobe Premiere to Final Cut, from “.avi” to “.mov,” and from desktop to Youtube, the sound quality became diminished. That’s why it seems critical to own all the necessary software and have it all located on one computer.)

First post! I scored about 10 minutes of different footage for a final project this semester(May 2010). I also have about 7 minutes of material from last semester which I’ll post after I can tweak the mix a touch. This first video was sent to me by an AAU film student. It’s strange to watch a post-production video clip where the music and dialogue have yet to be added. At first, you don’t even know what to make of it. Something intended to be scary can seem comical. Something intended to be lighthearted can seem morose. It shows how easy/unfair it is to take underscore and sound design for granted. Music can completely alter the effect of any given scene, but it rarely gets the credit. Anyways, I composed/produced this tune with Reason 4, SampleTank, and Tracktion 3. The tone struck me as ‘light and fluffy with a splash of comedy.’ It came out sounding a bit mainstream/predictable, but I think that’s just what was called for. The director wanted something ‘darker’ and more ‘ominous.’ I had a hard time picturing his musical vision, but they say only the musical chameleons survive in this business! (the finished version of this would have narration)