And now for something completely different: Worf getting beat up. A lot.
04
Nov
09
The Worf Effect
Explanation of the 52 Weeks Project
Today’s piece of music is:
I’ve Got Rhythm
Pimp Lando is a series made by Casey Wayman, Billy Grant, and myself from 1998 until, well, we’re still going on it (we’re working on the tenth later this month). The seventh installment was made shortly after our respective missions, about four years after the sixth was finished, so we knew we needed to pick up the series with a bang. So we decided to make it a musical! Instead of writing original songs, however, we just rewrote lyrics from songs from famous musicals, particularly The Phantom of the Opera. This particular ditty closes out the show, where the story’s been wrapped up, Lando’s got the girl (who he loses in the epilogue), and everyone joins in a song-and-dance number. It makes a bit more sense after viewing the episode in its entirety, but not much.
I’m working on fixing Pimp Lando 7 in order to upload a video of the whole thing (there are a lot of timing issues to fix), but for now, I’ve at least got a video of this song up:
Coming up next week: Ode to Spot!
(Oddly enough, flickr gave me no response to the search term “Pimp Lando Rhythm” so I just got a screenshot from the episode.)
28
Oct
09
Seeeeecret Theeeeeeme Song!
So here’s something fun for you. Recently I was commissioned by a friend to write a theme song for a video he’s working on. I can’t reveal the name or subject matter of the video, however, so I issue you this challenge, dear blog reader: for what type of show would this theme be written? What would it be called? What would be the subject matter? Who would it star? And would it be on Fox?
Note: the theme goes for only about 17 seconds, and the rest of it is just to fade out whenever (probably after the credits).
Explanation of the 52 Weeks Project
Today’s piece of music, presented in three forms:
“Who is this Stranger?” from Travels!
(For those not familiar with Travels, this may help.)
I’m going to present all Travels songs in these three formats, as the differences can be striking and interesting. For example, with “Who is this Stranger?” the MIDI version has a lot more energy than the CD and live version, due to a faster tempo and a screwed-up keyboard in the other two (it was supposed to be a square wave, but due to some miscommunication it ended up being a Hammond organ, and the two sound nothing alike).
To quote from my Travels memoirs: “This is where the musical style of the show shifts from an old-fashioned musical to a rock opera. The energy level is high as the show gets rockin’. This is heightened in the MIDI file by the Square sound (the techno video-game sound) and on the tape by the slap bass line. Easily one of the songs that lost a bit on the CD, it still is a great entrance into China.”
“Who is this Stranger?” is one of the first songs I completed while orchestrating Travels, and I was really excited about the energy put into it. As time went on during the orchestration and rehearsal process, I discovered that what I put in the MIDI file and what the orchestra was capable of playing were often quite different, both in terms of skill level and just being real instruments, and as a result the CD suffers. The live version is a little more energetic, since the drums and bass were both killed on the CD.
“Who is this Stranger?” was also one of the only songs Nate asked for my lyrical help on. I think after I gave helpful suggestions like “I’ve never seen their kind or like, I kind of like their look, but look, they look just like Al Gore” and Annelise’s favorite, “Who are these strangers, strangers from Granger,” Nate turned elsewhere for lyrical help (although, in my defense, lines like “You will see it all as we push off my favorite pier/You’re gonna push your friend in the water?” stayed in the show).
Finally, the song should have been titled “Who are these Strangers?” since that’s what is actually sung, but oh well, whaddya gonna do?
Coming up next week: “I’ve Got Rhythm” from Pimp Lando 7!
19
Oct
09
52 Weeks – Week 3 – Decision
Explanation of the 52 Weeks Project
Today’s piece of music: Mvmt. 1 of “Mixed Quintet? You Bet!” entitled
Decision!
The whole five-part quintet thing was composed as part of my Music 288 class (Composition 2) back in 2001, when I was still a music composition pre-major before I decided to jump ship and move to the media music department. Each assignment that semester was to write a piece for the same group of five instruments: flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and randomly, euphonium. Then we had what was termed a “real studio experience” where we’d go to Studio Y on campus and give our music to the players, where they would sight-read it and it would get recorded. We weren’t allowed to talk to them about performance notes or anything; we had to stay sequestered in the booth, so the performance was based strictly on whatever we had written on the score and parts.
This particular assignment was the first of five, and sadly, it was also the only one that I can’t remember now what the exact assignment was. It sounds ternary with repeating motives, so the assignment probably had something to do with that. Sadly, on this recording, the flute player didn’t show up for some reason, so the guy playing the flute was just one of the students in the composition class who played flute for a year or so in junior high, which is why the last note is kind of strained and stuff. Still, it’s kind of fun, and it’s one of the few pieces I have a live recording of, so that makes it special.
Coming up next week: “Who is this Stranger?” from Travels!
13
Oct
09
52 Weeks – Week 2 – Crystal
Explanation of the 52 Weeks Project
Today’s piece of music is…
Crystal!
This short MP3 is less a song and more an awakening of possibility. It was made when I was experimenting with sounds while I was trying to write some music for a Rescue Ranger RPG that an online friend was making. I did several songs for it, even though it never got made. This particular one was made when I was trying to make some sort of ambient sounds, and for some reason it spoke to me, so I decided to save it. It’s short, peaceful, and you can do a very quick Tai Chi move to it or something. It’s called “Crystal” because that was the image I got when I wrote it. That’s about all I got on this one.
Coming up next week: Mvmt. 1 of “Mixed Quintet? You Bet!” entitled “Decision”!
Longtime blogketeers may remember my old 52 Weeks of Music project that fizzled out after about week four or so. Well, I’m going to try to do a similar project again. This time, however, instead of doing 52 weeks of new music, every week I’m going to highlight a piece of music I’ve written (or orchestrated). I’m throwing basically everything I have on my hard drive into a playlist, and once a week I will randomly pick one and write a bit of background info about it, how I feel about it, and provide a link to listen to it. A lot of the music may already be featured on my music page, but I’ve written a lot that I haven’t uploaded there, so you will find some new stuff cropping up as well (such as other songs from Travels or what have you).
I also invite anyone reading to offer comments. I know nearly all of my past requests for comments on my music have fallen on deaf ears (no pun intended), but I hope that maybe if I do this every week I can get some feedback eventually. I don’t need detailed critiques; even simple comments from untrained people would be nice!
And, just for fun, I will also put the name of the song into flickr and whatever the first picture that comes up is, that will be the pic in the post!
So, with no further ado, let’s load up the ol’ random playlist and see what we come up with!
Today’s piece of music is. . .
Presidential Clown!
The year was 1996. My brother Ben had just formed his first band, then known as Fried Green Friends of the Llama, which later changed names to Giardia. It was just him and his friend from Granite Youth, who was also a bass player, but they still needed some music to play. So Ben approached my thirteen-year-old self with a request: write us a rock song! Up to this point I had never written any sort of rock song, so it was a whole new thing for me. I started with bass, lead guitar, and vocal parts, and plunked something out, quite unaware that my guitar part didn’t in any way match how a real guitar would play, but whatever. Also, I knew nothing about how to write drum parts, so I just used the default “rock drums” setting on the Roland keyboard we had and put it in. Then Ben wrote lyrics to it that don’t make too much sense. He was just about to turn sixteen and I guess wanted to write some sort of “socially relevant” thing, but include references to two things he obsessed over in ninth grade for some reason: SPAM and the Beatles (“the kings” in the song), even though neither had to do with the subject matter.
The song never got performed by Giardia, as that band never really got past the “wouldn’t it be cool if we had a band” stage. It was a seminal work of mine, though, laying the groundwork for a lot of the work I’d later do in SaXon Geat and even into this decade. This recording was made almost twelve years later, in preparation for my junior recital, with added brass and flute parts, as well as a redone guitar part that actually sounded like a guitar. For anyone curious, the original sounded like this.
Well, that does it for week 1 of 52 weeks! Coming up next week…”Crystal”!
06
Oct
09
Musical insight?!?
So I took an hour during lunch last week to write a new piece of music, just to see what I could do in an hour, much like I’ve done before, but this time using the better BYU equipment, and this is what I came up with. I also thought I’d describe the process, which I’ve used on a lot of the stuff I’ve written. The approach is mostly organic and less planned than one may expect, and I’ve learned to write stuff with more of a structure to begin, but this is still fun to do on occasion.
As I sat down I had some song with an accordion running through my head (I don’t remember what song now, but it was most likely a They Might Be Giants affair), so I decided to start with an accordion and do an Old World-type melody. To make it even more Old World-like, I put it into 3/4 time and played a 16-bar melody. Normally when I’ve done this in the past it meanders all over the place, but since I’ve received some training the first and the last phrase are similar. Then, on a separate accordion track I laid down the chords. These are also just played out as I go, which means that, although mostly they line up, sometimes the harmonies between the chords are quite jarring, and, indeed, a lot of the work I do on pieces is cleaning up the dissonances after I’ve recorded the lines.
So after I clean up the accordion chords, I repeat (read: copy and paste) the last two phrases to give it a sort of rounded binary feel (aababa, although it was really more abcaca). To change it up, I create a flute track doubling the melody to add a bit of color, and although it’s barely noticeable on the track, it is there. The rounded binary form gets me thinking about my Baroque music classes, and how most often the keyboard music from the Baroque was harpsichord-based and I’d never really written for harpsichord before, so I copied the main 16-bar melody into a harpsichord part to have something to work with. Normally I probably would have rerecorded the melody so it would have some ornamental differences, but I only had an hour. Then I recorded some arpeggiated chords into the left hand of the harpsichord and cleaned them up. Since I played them in without planning them out, some of the chord progression turned out differently with the harpsichord than it had previously with the accordion. (You can tell most easily at the beginning: where the accordion starts on the submediant (F major), the harpsichord starts straight on the tonic (A minor)).
At this point the whole thing has a very nice, old-fashioned feel to it. Now, while sometimes I program in my own drums, more often I take a pre-existing loop and edit it to fit my needs. And since I only had an hour, I decided to find a nice, 3/4, waltzy sort of percussion track to accompany what I already had down. Oddly, searching the library that came on the computer, however, didn’t turn up any waltz beats. In fact, most of the 3/4 stuff was actually rock/jazz beats. So, instead of taking the time to write my own waltz track, which I might have done given more time, I just dropped in the “Alternative 3/4 Beat” into a drum track. This, of course, changed the entire tenor of the piece and gave it a funk it didn’t have previously. And of course, a funky drum beat needed a funky bassline, so I added a fingered electric bass part, playing whole notes during the accordion section and a faster, funkier line during the harpsichord section. This was done because I wanted to emphasize the melody still during the accordion part, but since there was nothing new melodically during the harpsichord part the bass could take some more of the focus. In fact, a little later I decided to add the drums only after the entire 16-bar melody had played once, to both draw more attention to the melody and add a bit of a fun surprise when the incongruous drum track came in, a surprise emphasized by the funky bassline that plays during the second part.
So now I wanted to add some more texture to the second section, during the last 12 bars. Since I had added drums and a bass, the next logical step was to add a guitar. This I spent nearly fifteen to twenty precious minutes on, but it never quite gelled. It just seemed too busy with a guitar playing chords, especially since it was the same register as the harpsichord arpeggios. Conversely, a guitar playing a contrapuntal line diddn’t work with such a funky bassline; however Baroque that might be, it was just too much to have three completely separate moving lines. SO in the end the guitar part got axed.
But what to do now? The second section still needed some more texture, and I only had about ten minutes or less left before I had to leave the lab and go to work, so what could I do? Well, the answer came in the form of a quick-and-dirty solution: take the accordion chords from the last 12 bars of the melody, and put them into a string part, one octave higher. The slow-moving chords would provide some nice color and a contrast to the fast-moving bassline. At the last second before I bounced the song to an MP3, I decided it needed even a bit more and ended up doubling the bass in a piano part, also an octave up. Sadly, I couldn’t fix the dissonances between the bass/harpsichord and the string part, which is why it sounds a bit jarring on a few beats in the second section.
Had I more time I would have fixed those, and probably done more with the piano part, probably changing the pitches to be more harmonious as opposed to just straight copies of the bass notes, albeit with the same rhythms to avoid the busy-ness problems I was having with the axed guitar part. Since the piece had already a nice AA beginning in the large-form arena, I would probably have gone on to write a contrasting B section, and then brought back the A at the end, giving it an AABA song form, Or maybe I would have gone more complicated; who knows?
In any case, this is what I could do in an hour of composing time, starting from scratch. I hope this provides some insight on how I write music.
08
Sep
09
Ron and Jacob have a dance-off!
In the upcoming Poison Ivy Mysteries show, Twilit: The Full-Blooded Princess, the characters of Ron from Harry Potter and Jacob from Twilight have a dance-off for some reason. It’s the only piece of music I’m writing for the show, as Nate Drew is doing all the rest. Jacob is dancing to some sort of tribal-sounding theme, while Ron’s all about the white hip hop. This is only a first draft; it will hopefully be much better in terms of samples, mixing, and dynamics when it’s all done (at which point I’ll also post it to my music page), but let me know what you think!
24
Aug
09
Unnecessary notification
I don’t know exactly why, but I found this one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while when I logged on to Facebook today:
Thanks, random Facebook application, for demonstrating your complete inability to do anything useful and then telling me about it!
19
Aug
09
Music Page now operational!
After who knows how long, I have finally updated the music page on this blog, and wow, is it an update! I’ve got several songs from every year basically since I started writing songs up to the present; overall, around 75 songs are listed there now. Please go check them out, and give feedback!
16
Aug
09
Myers-Briggs Personality Test
Took two different versions of this test, with two interesting outcomes. One said I was ISTP (Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perception), while the other said I was ISFP (the same, but Feeling instead of Thinking), but only with a slight preference for Feeling and a moderate preference for the other traits. According to the Myers-Briggs website, the two types go down like this:
ISTP
Tolerant and flexible, quiet observers until a problem appears, then act quickly to find workable solutions. Analyze what makes things work and readily get through large amounts of data to isolate the core of practical problems. Interested in cause and effect, organize facts using logical principles, value efficiency.
Famous ISTP:
Michael Jordan
ISFP
Quiet, friendly, sensitive, and kind. Enjoy the present moment, what’s going on around them. Like to have their own space and to work within their own time frame. Loyal and committed to their values and to people who are important to them. Dislike disagreements and conflicts, do not force their opinions or values on others.
Famous ISFP:
Frederic Chopin
And hey, I’m actually both of these, depending on the situation and what mood I’m in. I’d analyze this further, but right now I’m in more of an ISFP mood, and don’t want to force my opinions or values on others. Maybe later I’ll be in an ISTP mood and will analyze what makes this work and readily get through large amounts of data to isolate the core of the practical problem. You know, I’ll be interested in cause and effect, yadda yadda yadda. Also, I want to go to bed.
EDIT: According to another website, an ISTP is known as “The Mechanic,” while the ISFP is known as “The Artist.” Fitting since my strengths lie in tech theatre and computer-assisted music composition. One thing’s for sure: I’m definitely an introvert, as evidenced by all these blog posts trying to figure out who I am and what my role is in life.
(I originally wrote this post for the Poison Ivy Mysteries blog, but I wanted to post it here, too. Also, I edited the earlier SONAR post so the music is working again, too, since the two later examples I use in this post are indeed those songs.)
This is my third time trying to make a coherent blog post on this subject. I find that the qualities I most enjoy in music and the qualities that most people I associate with enjoy in music are often not only different, but quite at odds. For example, let’s take this remix of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit. This was created using the same hardware that powers the sound system of the Atari 8-bit line of computers (comparable to the sound of the original Nintendo Entertainment System). I would imagine that even those people who kind of like the sound of this remix would consider it obviously inferior to the song as performed by Nirvana. Why?
Some people would say because it was the original, and therefore remixes aren’t as original. Fine. If Nirvana or some other well-known band remixed this piece (an original tune using the same hardware), however, I would venture that most people would prefer the band version over the Atari version. So that’s it, then? Other things being equal, live instruments always beat synthesized sounds, right?
Not for me.
Quite frankly, I really enjoy that original Atari piece, and any attempt to recreate it wouldn’t be able to capture the essence that makes it what it is, just like that 8-bit remix of Smells Like Teen Spirit fails to capture the spirit (no pun intended) of the original. Now, I admit, I may be influenced by the fact that I grew up with and spent a lot of time on our old Atari, and I have a certain affinity for the sound. Your mileage may vary if not affected by the nostalgia I feel.
I think the problem many composers have with not being able to enjoy many forms of synthesized music is this: they make the mistake of trying to compare it to previous kinds of music, or components of music, as a reference point. Therefore composers may try to make their synth music sound as close to live music as possible, creating an uncanny valley sort of effect where people know it’s supposed to sound like a violin but it doesn’t quite get there. Consider this, which is a song that my brother wrote a while back in high school. It was supposed to be performed by an actual band but never was, and as a result the song itself sounds cheesy and synthetic, in all the wrong ways. People listening would say, “Hey, I know what a trumpet sounds like, and that ain’t no trumpet. Therefore, it’s crap.” Now, consider this. Same exact song. The only things I have changed are the sounds. Instead of sounding like a trumpet, that same part is its own unique sound (a processed square wave with built-in delay, for anyone keeping score). Is it better? I would venture that most people would say that it is. Would it be better than a live band playing the same song? I would still venture that it would be.
But wait. Didn’t we decide earlier with the Teen Spirit and Atari song examples that, other things being equal, live instruments trump synth? Is music played by, or simulating, live instruments, the only good “real” music? For some people, that answer will always be yes, it does, but I don’t believe it to be the case.
What’s better, a Beatles song, or an orchestra playing a suite of Beatles songs? A child singing a hymn quietly to him or herself, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing it, backed up by the Utah Symphony? A Bach piece played by a rock band, or a rock song played on the organ? On a broader note, who are we to define what good music is and isn’t? Who are we to tell people that the music they like or they music they don’t is inferior or superior to any other kind? What defines “real music?” I read once that the definition of noise is “unwanted sound.” Well, I would venture to define music as “wanted sound.” It’s all subjective. No music is more real than any other kind. And in this day and age, with globalization and the Internet, there will be a market for nearly any type of music, whether it be live, synth, singing, non-singing, produced with millions of dollars of equipment or with a guy playing a guitar in his garage into a mic.
I do think I have one thing that may globally separate good music from bad, and that is simply this: how much heart did the composer/performer put into it? And, more importantly, how much heart is the listener willing to put into it? I’ve redone this blog post three times now and I still don’t think I’ve put across the message I want as clearly as I want to, but I guess it comes down to urging people to step out of their comfort zones when it comes to music. Listen to thing you never thought you’d like. You may be surprised that the qualities you thought defined good music for you were, in fact, off-base, and you may grow to love something you never thought you’d touch with a ten-foot pole. That’s all I’m trying to say.
(All Atari songs came from the Atari SAP Music Archive)
06
Aug
09
Nixon and Travels
Well, this is the result of a few hours of free time, a search for a vocoder, and a dash of insanity.
Richard Nixon’s resignation, vocoded through the finale of Travels.
I actually thought it fit kind of well with the mood. Interestingly, the NBC reporter is Steve Porter.
29
Jul
09
And now for some nightmare fuel
It’s always looking at you.
23
Jul
09
Whose Line Sketch
And now, possibly the funniest Whose Line Is It Anyway sketch:
Any other top contenders?
16
Jul
09
Testin’ the mic
For the new Poison Ivy Mysteries murder mystery ‘Til Death Do Us Part, I’ve written a techno song where an Australian is testing the mic and it gets out of hand. Now, I can’t post the full version here ’cause we’re going to be selling the soundtrack online once the show opens in August, but I can post a demo of it. Since the site went down where I was hosting my music I’ve put it on my Soundclick page (which desperately needs an update) for now.
What do you think, guys? If you like it, buy it and the rest of the album when it comes out in August! Stay tuned here or at the Poison Ivy Mysteries site for more details! Shill!
Also, randomly, a bunch of my stuff online has been disappearing without a trace. First I comment on a post on Dave Omer’s webcomic Animal Ward, and it completely disappears (the post and the comment!) Then I post a few posts over on the Poison Ivy Mysteries blog and within half an hour the entire blog is gone! If I somehow disappear without a trace, know that I went out doing what I love doing best: killing tiny spiders that wander across my monitor. Seriously, I’ve killed like five of them in the past three days!
EDIT: OK, the Animal Ward comment is still there, but the posts on the PIM blog are still missing. Wha’ happened, Nate?
11
Jul
09
Disney Shakespeare & Stoppard
While most of the Disney sequels of the late ’90’s and early, uh, whatever this decade is, felt like uninspired cheap knock-offs designed to leech off the original movie’s popularity without creating an interesting movie on their own (I’m looking at you, Return of Jafar!), The Lion King 1 1/2 was actually a pretty good movie in its own right (and better than The Lion King 2). Then it occurred to me. One of the reasons The Lion King works so well is that it’s basically Hamlet with lions. And one of the reasons The Lion King 1 1/2 works so well is that it’s just Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with a meerkat and a warthog, at least conceptually speaking. This may seem obvious in hindsight, but I thought it an interesting comparison when I came up with it. I wonder if it was intentional.
I’ve posted a lot of music on this blog, but the site I was using to do so (which also happened to be the website for Pimp Lando) has been deleted, so now a lot of my music links won’t work. I’ll fix them when I get a server on which to host them, but for now you may have to do without. Sorry, all you out there who really really wanted to listen to that SONAR piece I wrote about in the last post. Next time you’ll grab it when you can! It apparently was a limited-time offer!
On an entirely different topic, a long time ago Casey and I made a character for Baldur’s Gate II named “Stalingrad T. Stalker” who was a human stalker (a type of ranger), and for some reason was Russian. About a year ago I decided to flesh him out and make him a full-blown joinable NPC, with dialogue, interjections, and even a quest. While I never finished the quest (all I’ve done so far is add Alexander Romanov to the inn, where he tells Stalingrad to go hunt a jewel called the Red October), I did add a lot of random interjections to already-existing dialogue. Most of it I had forgotten when I went back and played the game earlier this month, so it was like discovering it again for myself. Here is my favorite bit I’ve run across so far, after a short parody of Cyrano de Bergerac, with a guy named Garrick being the Christian character (click to enlarge):
Stalingrad’s line is at the bottom. If you don’t find it funny, chances are you probably never will, but I about hit the floor laughing when I read it. And as a side note, yes, my main character appears to be Mr. T, and yes, it’s absolutely hilarious, and yes, I’m one of those people who can’t take fantasy role-playing seriously and always introduces anachronisms because I think they’re funny.
20
Apr
09
SONAR Home Studio…What?
Next in our fine list of programs I can use after I graduate: SONAR Home Studio 7 XL! I actually bought this as an upgrade to my old Cakewalk Home Studio and got a discount. Let’s compare two versions of an old SaXon Geat song that was actually mostly written by Ben (the filename is “What” but the song itself is unnamed, although Casey may recognize it as the MIDI file I used when we played Lode Runner):
Old version – created many years ago using the old Cakewalk.
New version – created tonight using SONAR.
Which is better? Are either professional quality? Feedback, please!
