__Creating this Refrain__

So the hymn, The Time Is Far Spent was sung in church the other day.  It’s kind of a quirky hymn and not one that is sung very often.  For one, the lyrics have this old English vibe feel.  Examples: “Ere long with the righteous in glory will end?” or “What tho if the favor of Ahman posessing?”.  Secondly, I know of very few hymns that references Ahman, aside from Adam Ondi Ahman.  I don’t know if many church members are familiar with the doctrine of “Ahman”, so I could see why choristers would shy away from picking the hymn.

The melody is very pretty, since it’s an old German folk hymn.  And that’s what got my attention.  Anyway, I spent some of today coming up with a new arrangement.  I think it has promise; it definitely sounds more contemporary.  At this time, I’m unsure if I’d prefer it to be strictly a piano arrangement or if the lyrics should be sung on top.  The lyrics don’t necessarily flow with the way I’m restructuring the flow of the music.  I’ve thought about changing the lyrics a little bit to make it more appropriate to sing.  I’m still undecided.

Since I’m down in San Diego for the weekend, I’m unable to record it.  But when I get to my home studio I’ll do a quick demo of the piano and upload it.

-J

So this is a song that I’ve been working for the last few months.  I’m finally satisfied enough with it.  And as usual, my initial  lyrics bear only slight resemblance to the final product.  The first lyrical sketch was extremely introspective, a sort of existentialist piece about the importance of acting on one’s emotions. It ended up being really wordy, but I did glean a few good lines.  I’ll share the first stanza:

Aah, emo angst.  Anyway, I tried stuffing all those lines into a melody, and it was just a jumble of words.  So I reworked the whole thing.  Instead of writing the song in first person, I decided to use second person narrative.  That had the bonus of making the song a bit more universal and a whole lot more optimistic.  But it still morphed into this biographical song of sorts.  In essence. it’s what I’d tell my fourteen year old self if I could jump back into the past.  I imagine I’d walk up to my short nerdy self at the punch bowl line and hand him the lyrics on a crumpled napkin.  Then I’d transport back into my own time, like Hiro Nakamura.

Anyway here is the mp3, after the lyrics:

Download:  Take_Her_Hand_-_Jared_Ong

As promised in my earlier post, here’s the video that we took during our vocal recording session.  This take is actually the last take of the night.  And now that I think about it, I like this take quite a bit, so I might actually just use the audio from this clip when distributing the mp3 online. Some other things you might pick up out of the video.

• Mr. Ironing Board, the perfect way to lay sheet music flat without any ruffling noises.
• The double keyboard setup (Yamaha Motif ES6 and Casio PX-310).
• My headphones of choice being Sony MDR-V6s.  In my opinion, these are the best sub $80 headphones you can buy on the market.  They just sound great.
• My friend StevO’s microphone that he so kindly let me borrow.

Lastly, I have a confession to make.  My room usually isn’t this clean.

I know this little blog hasn’t been updated in quite a while.  I have been writing music in the interim.  Unfortunately, my stubborn Chinese self keeps insisting that I have projects completed before I do a new post, and so that’s to the blog’s detriment.

So today, I  finished one of the projects in my queue, a remix of Give Said the Little Stream.  I really do love the original version that my friend Stephanie Bennett recorded for me. It captures the innocent and cheerful nature of the song, and her voice is just wonderful.  However, I wanted to attempt to make the recording a bit more full and radio friendly, and that necessitated re-recording the vocals to fix a couple of the EQ problems I ran into during the original recording.

Since Stephanie is now in Utah, I asked a favor from another friend, Jolie to do the vocals.  She definitely has a different texture to her voice, and I had to work with that a bit.  Oh the joys of recording in a home studio.  I’ll have to post a video we did, there’s a standing joke related to ironing boards and such. One thing I noticed when comparing the two versions is that Jolie smoothed out the rhythms and sang them a little bit looser with more legato.  Anyway, in the midst of remixing the vocals I started playing around with some new string patches.  One thing led to another, and I ended doing a string/flute arrangement.  Emotionally, the piece sounds and feels quite different with this type of orchestration. More mature perhaps.

This also was good practice for me to try and get the strings to sound as realistic as possible.  I originally started with some string sounds from Omnisphere, a virtual instrument, which was what got my muse going initially.  Although it sounded great, I had the problem of trying to bring out specific melody lines, and the patch sounded too homogenous for that.  Then, I had the idea of also adding other string sounds from Kontakt (a sampler), but that still didn’t sound quite right.  So, I decided to stop being lazy and ended up splitting all the chords into separate parts: Violins, Violas, and Cello/Bass.  Then each part was tweaked by drawing volumes and velocities to simulate string motion.  The last step was to pan and add reverb (Altiverb) to each part to simulate the string section.  The sound isn’t perfect, but its miles better than what I was able to do in college.  Of course I have much better tools now, so that helps.

The flute was added some time in the middle of my work on the string stuff and was the easiest to emulate.  I just stuck some nice reverb on it, panned, and did some quick editing.  Originally in some earlier mixes the flute was quite prominent, but I’ve ended up pulling it back into the mix to kind of meld it with the string sounds. I like it when its more subtle.

Anyway, I haven’t heard any LDS pieces written in this style (a hybrid of Classical, New Age, perhaps?) so I’ll be interested to hear everyone’s comments.   I plan on submitting this to a couple places too, so we’ll see if people connect with this style of arrangment.  Here’s hoping !

-J

Give Said the Little Stream, Jared and Jolie

My siblings and I used to play this cute little game on the NES.  My parents highly disapproved of the violent Double Dragon that we received for Christmas, and so my brother and I ended up trading that game with our neighborhood friend for the more innocuous Bubble Bobble.  What parent could get mad at watching squat dinosaurs (er..wikipedia says dragons) blow and pop bubbles to dispatch evil robot enemies?

The game was memorable for a few reasons.  The famous Bubble Bobble music that plays as you jump around popping bobbles.  The number of levels (99 was an insane number to playthrough as a kid).  Oh, and that big scary boss that, even when you beat it, gave you a SAD ENDING?  First time we beat the game, and saw that we needed to try for a happy ending, we were so mad.  Eventually, my sister and I figured out that we needed to save one life and then hit  start -> select -> start to add the second player into game as soon as the big boss was surrounded.  That netted us the Happy Ending!  There was even a “true ending” that was referenced in the credits, but we never played through the game a second time to get it.

After finishing my City Corner Lullaby arrangement, I went looking for another video game piece to arrange.  I didn’t think I wanted to tackle any of the music in Bubble Bobble until I hearkened back to that very first “sad ending” experience (geez, I must have been pretty traumatized).  The music that played over the credit was catchy, but I distinctly remember thinking that the prettiness of the melody was masked by the limitations of the NES’ sound capabilities and that annoying drone like bass. After previewing the original source material on Youtube, I decided to see if I couldn’t come up with a remix to do the music justice. I truly believe that video games should have a good payoff with memorable end game music.

This piece has ambient, new age, and dance influences.  One of the major changes I’ve introduced is an extended “chorus section.”  The original piece of music had a chorus section that seemed to end a bit abruptly. To remedy that,  I use a deceptive cadence (i.e. V -> VI) in order to extend the passage for a few more measures.  I think this makes the melody flow better.  I also organized the music in a pop-friendly format: intro, verse, verse, chorus, interlude, verse, chorus, outro.

I really enjoyed playing with different patches within my soft synths (Omnisphere and Stylus) to recreate that Bubble Bobble experience. There’s crystal like sounds as well a waterdrop arpeggio during the interlude. The end product is a little bit of cheer-you-up new age/dance, my very own take on what a happy ending should be.  I hope you enjoy.

-J

Bubble Bobble – Waterfall Ending -arr by Jared Ong

A lot has happened in the past month, and I’ve just been too busy to post anything.  I’ve procrastinated writing this blog entry because I wanted to post my new piece at the same time,  but now that’s it been almost two weeks of tweaking, I figure I better just send it into the Internet void.

So what’s been happening recently?

I was asked a couple of weeks ago to play a musical number for a fireside.  This gave me the opportunity to flesh out Did You Think To Pray as a piano arrangement.  Unfortunately, on the day of the fireside I found out that the number was canceled because of lack of time.   Bummer.  This ended up being a blessing in disguise, as I was asked by my former branch president to collaborate with a vocalist and do a musical number for his son’s missionary farewell.  I met with Kevin O. this week and we ended up deciding on using DYTTP.  Kevin’s an extremely talented singer/performer, having performed on Broadway and conducted various related workshops.

The final touches of the arrangement came as we worked to layer the vocals on top of the original chordal harmonies.   Kevin has a great tenor voice, so we quickly transposed it into the key of G, which made it more singable than the Eb key signature of the original hymn.  He also gave some great ideas in how we could build emotion into the the third verse and meld the intro and outros motifs with the rest of the music.  We did a quick rehearsal before the meeting, and everything came together this morning during the service.  The third verse was just powerful. I think we really captured the essence of the hymn by the way the music and vocals developed through out the arrangement.   I’m going have to spend some time in Sibelius putting the thing down to music notation, but look for the sheet music sometime in the future.  I also need to do a piano/vocal audio recording.

Oh, remember the arrangement of the Final Fantasy piece I posted a while back in this blog post?  OCRemix finally posted a decision on their website.   It ended up getting accepted by which was a nice little pick-me up.  I didn’t realize how high the bar was until after I submitted the entry.   Since I was submitting a piano solo, I debated whether the judges would understand the method of interpretation, that the arrangment was trying to evoke the nostalgia of wandering a town that’s just a shade of its former glory. Well, the judges got it.  You can find the piece on the OCRemix Site here, under my artist profile Jennerstein.  Comments have been favorable enough that I feel I’ve caught the remixing bug.  If anything, it’s a fun exercise down memory lane for me.  There’s something challenging about trying to capture both the experience of the game and the experience of playing the game.  I’m thinking my next project will be a new ageish/dance remix of Bubble Bobble.

Although I’ve had experience writing New Age piano pieces, I haven’t really tried mixing New Age and trance together.  So, this past month I’ve been experimenting in writing/producing within this new style.  There’s shades of piano rock, trance, and ambient, with New Age serving as inspiration.  I guess you could even say there’s a little bit of Robert Miles too.  Anyway, I played it in the car for my friend, Tony, and he immediately had visions of Neverending Story.  Which I guess isn’t a bad thing.  You can find the piece below:

Walking With Angel

As this is all experimental stuff (at least for me anyway), comments are more than welcome.

Here’s a little something for Sunday.  This is a quick two minute demo piece that I put together to practice my mockup abilities.  The arrangement is based on some ideas that I had while playing prelude music about a month ago.  I’m looking at getting some killer string and orchestra sounds, but for now these will have to do.

Did You Think To Pray Demo

Every so often during one of my piano jams, I’ll start playing songs from my childhood.  Ducktales, Who are the People in Your Neighborhood, Gummi Bears.  It’s one those things that really gives endless pleasure.  There’s nothing better than revisiting favorite music from the past with about 10 year’s of musician’s perspective.  There’s this interplay between recreating a favorite melody, and seeing what else you can do with it now that you’re not just stuck with trying to plunk out the notes.

One of the things I’ve been returning to more and more recently is the Super Mario Bros 3 level 1-4 theme.  I remember being frustrated and captivated with that level.  It was the first one where the screen scrolled automatically and you were forced to jump ahead to avoid getting squished or pushed off the ledge.  The first time the screen warped little mario into the platform and the first dissonant pitches started playing through the TV,  I was like “Oh my gosh, what the heck!” (I had yet to add swear words to my vocabulary).  It was heartracing.  After we beat that level, my brother and I somehow got a hold of a Nintendo Power Guide and started trying to get the White Toadhouse to appear.  It required you to run through the level with near perfection, capturing almost all of the coins in the level.  The first time that little whitehouse appeared somewhere near the Hammer Brothers I think we did a little dance.  It was a pretty wild celebration, I don’t quite remember what happened.

With that spirit, I thought I’d record a little jam session.  Aside from a few takes, what you’re hearing is a completely unedited version of me trying to jam on my MotifES6.  You’ll hear mistakes all over the place, that’s what I get for trying to play a fairly fast piano piece on a keyboard with no hammer action.  The Motif’s keys are like playing the organ, so I don’t have the resistance of a real piano keyboard to prevent me from accidentally nicking the note right next to the I’m actually meaning to play.   But that’s what makes it fun and a more realistic jam session.

I’ll probably eventually rerecord this with a digital piano (with real graded hammer action) or touch up the MIDI.  So laugh at my fat fingers now before I upload a new version, haha!

Mario Nostalgia by Jared Ong

p.s.  I’m using a new software synth, Pianoteq 3, I’ll write my comments about the software in a future blog post.

So for the past year or so I’ve been the unofficial branch pianist.  Unofficial because I have another calling, and I’m the default pianist in the branch.  Not the only one, but the most convenient one for the branch because I just show up and play.  They just called a new pianist last week, and I am a little sad to no longer be playing prelude and postlude music.  That’s usually where I experiment and try add some twists to the hymns.

Occasionally, I’ll try and spice up the hymns a little bit during the congregational singing portions of sacrament meeting.  Called to Serve is a fun one, that hymn is meant to be a rousing call to service and should be played as such.  But generally, I try and stay true to the reverence of the hymn.  Every so often I’m tempted to bust out, but I try to be a good little pianist.

However, a couple of weeks ago, we were singing O My Father, and the song ended up being this internal tug of war emotionally and musically between what’s right and what’s wrung*.  I was happily playing the hymn in 3/4 time.  Tri-pl-et, Quarter Quarter, tri-pl-et, quarter quarter, tri-pl-et, quarter quarter.  You get the picture.

Unfortunately, the rest of the congregation was singing the song as if the whole thing was 6/8.  I went through one complete verse of the hymn before I succumbed to rhythmic peer pressure and ended up playing the poor song at full lilt.  The whole time, I kept thinking “This is all wrung, dang it! Should I force 3/4? I should force 3/4.  Come on people, read the music.”  But finally, I was just too tired of fighting against years, nay, centuries, of tradition.  Ok, only one century, but still!

*Wrung: When something is sung completely wrong.  Example: W. Hung sings “Mary had a little ram, little ram, little ram.”

So about a month ago, a good friend of mine sent me an interesting text, “Can you call me, I have a music question.”  Turns out he had a request for rates for a 30 spot.

We’ve gone through a different versions.  In the future, I’m going to be more of a stickler for a final (or close to final) video cut.  Most of the time, the producers request different “hits” at specific spots within the commercial.  Without a final version of what you’re scoring, it’s a bit more difficult to determine where the right instrument hits should be, or even the musical direction that should be taken.

My first version I sent out is drastically different from the last version.  And that’s to be expected.  But where things really came together was once I had the final cut, complete with animatic effects.  That version of the video gave me a better understanding of what the producer and director were shooting for.  The commercial itself reflects a mood change or two, but it was only with the effects that I knew how dark or light I needed to score each section.

Scoring films, on the other hand, is a bit different.  I think an early copy of the film is important in other to sketch out ideas and come up with general themes.  The earlier, the better.  But realistically, in that industry, you’re probably always going to running up to deadlines and madly racing to get things finished in time.

I’ll see if I can get permission to upload a copy of the music in a later post.