I just realized that I have well over a thousand recordings of my improvisations (mostly as midi files from my electric piano) as I tend to record about 30 - 50 a month. I should really produce another album but the truth is I haven't had the time to search through the mountain of recordings for good candidates. I guess I'm a little picky too. If I'm going to order another batch of CDs I want to put my best stuff on it. Another thing that is holding me back is the cover. I have a really good idea but my artistic abilities don't quite meet my vision.
Anyway, I've decided to post an improvisation every week. I hate to see all those pieces of music gathering dust on my hard drive and hopefully this will help me pick out the best on a weekly basis which is a little more manageable.
This improvisation I have named Sunset Through Autumn Leaves for that is the beautiful sight I beheld earlier this evening before making the recording.
An exciting moment! I made my first sampled instrument. A violin no less (never seen a free one of those out on the net)!
I had a friend play each legato note on the violin first quite, medium then loud and compiled the recorded notes into a program (Kontakt) and can now play those sounds on my electric keyboard. It is a rough experiment but it only took like 30 minutes and I am sure if I spent a little more time I could get something usable. What is amazing is that barely anybody knows how easy it is to make your own sample library. People spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on instrument sample libraries. (Some of the best are $10,000 dollars!) This whole endeavor was actually inspired by Hans Zimmer who said in an interview that it was easy to make your sample library and he was surprised more people didn't do it.
It just occurred to me that since you have to buy the Kontakt sample library in order to be able to make your own samples, then most people don't bother making their own having already bought a high quality, professional instrument library. I used to be one of those people scrounging the internet for free, homemade instruments. There wasn't much out there but maybe I can change that...
I am into the 4th week of my online college course with Berklee, Music Composition for Film and TV. It is cool to see how far I've progressed in such a short time.
The first week we were learning some general stuff about film scoring, watching film clips, analyzing the underlying emotion, figuring out where there should be music or just silence. Our assignment was to score the trailer to the movie Troy.
The second week was focused on romantic and positive ballads. We learned about the orchestration, melody and harmony specific to that kind of scene. Our assignment was to score a romantic scene from Sense and Sensibility. Oh! I must warn you that the music starts after 24 seconds of silence (that is when the music was supposed to start in the scene.) I'll try to fix that later.
Third week we worked on sad ballads which are very similar to romantic ballads (as far as orchestration goes) but tend to hang out in minor keys. Assignment was to score a scene from Ahkeela and the Bee.
I was worried I wasn't going to come up with anything for this score, having started from scratch three times. But on the day the assignment was due I started with a blank slate once again and in a few hours of inspiration I ended up with my best orchestration yet.
This week we are working on action scenes which includes a lot of rhythm and dissonance study. Our assignment is to score a clip from Iron Man. It looks like a fun one!
