At the very least, it's been a great exercise in reading alto and tenor clef, but I have to admit, I still have no idea what I want to do with my own quartet. I just know I don't want the one I wrote right before college to be the only one.

My eyes were playing tricks on me -- I read acro's username as arco.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 1:06 PM on June 19, 2009

Now I want to hear this with French horns.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 3:40 PM on June 14, 2009

Oh, that's tight.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 3:37 PM on June 14, 2009

No, I'm singing "faith", but I lingered too much on the sibilance of the "f" so it sounds like "haith".
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 7:05 AM on June 14, 2009

I used the solo strings of the Reason Orkester library, and they are my drugs of choice. I find them move convincing than some of the dedicated string instrument Refills I bought from Garritan and Sonic State. There's just one serious oversight -- no viola. So I use the Garritan Personal Orchestra Refill for that, and it really sticks out.... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 3:11 PM on June 14, 2009

I don't see this most excellent version with the other tagged covers. Please to add?
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 7:08 AM on June 14, 2009

The right female vocalist being Alison Moyet.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 3:46 PM on June 13, 2009

I keep seeing a lot of Neutral Milk Hotel covers pop up here on Music. How about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?

(I haven't yet posted my acapella cover of "The Fool".)
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 12:28 PM on June 8, 2009

Oh, OK, in that case, I'm done.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 1:12 PM on May 5, 2009

The first few measures of this made me think if I write the name of a person whose face I can visualize in the Death Note, that person will die in 40 seconds. If I don't specify the cause of death, the person will die of a heart attack.

In other words, excellent work.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 1:00 PM on April 30, 2009

Well, hell, now I want to hear it in 8-bit too. (Guess I better learn how ...)
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 7:41 AM on April 19, 2009

I'll give this a shot, but I make no guarantees.

Deiji Deiji
Haitte yutte yo
Boku no kokoro wa
Kimi no yume miru
Sasayaka dakeredo
Yutare de noru (?)
Jintensha ozora
Soyokaze to asobou

I can't really translate, but I can give a gist line by line:

Deiji Deiji -- Daisy, daisy, transliterated into Japanese
Haitte yutte yo --... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 3:02 PM on March 16, 2009

I have Owinski's "Mixing Engineer's Handbook", and I like it a lot. I also bought "Mastering Audio" by Bob Katz this past Christmas, but I haven't quite made my way through it. Owinski also has an "Audio Mastering Handbook", but I saw a lot of the same content from the "Mixing Engineer's Handbook" in it as well.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 8:04 AM on February 26, 2009

You know ... I don't have any Joe Jackson in my collection, and I really ought to have some Joe Jackson in my collection.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 6:53 AM on October 10, 2008

I have every intention of making a vocal version of this song. It's not a cover, but it is in a language I don't speak.

I just couldn't find the time last month ...
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 6:08 AM on October 3, 2008

The title of this song reminds me of Natsume Souseki.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 11:22 AM on August 27, 2008

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

I changed the hi-hat and shifted one of the beats in the kick drum, and that made a world of difference. I also finally invested in some fairly decent compression and EQ plugins, which hopefully addresses issues with trying to get my vocals to sit well in the mix.

One issue I noticed that wasn't mentioned was the muted guitar pulse buried in the background. It was masking the bass rhythm, so I made those two... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 12:23 PM on August 26, 2008

My parents wanted to join the choir and take piano lessons when I was young, but I didn't really get on board till I played with a tiny Casio keyboard. I wanted to play Tears for Fears and Duran Duran. That was their way to get me to take piano lessons, and that was my way to start playing rock music.

I was lucky enough to have a piano teacher during high school who was very, very liberal with our lessons. When I told her I wanted to experiment with... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 12:12 PM on August 21, 2008

Oh my ... the last time I saw Carmen was in the early '90s. Now I'm kicking myself for having missed the Austin Lyric Opera production earlier this year.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 6:30 PM on August 20, 2008

The highest note of the song reaches the very top of my comfortable range, and I usually choose to lock in my high notes. The low B-flat is just skirts outside my comfortable low range.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 12:39 AM on August 12, 2008

I have to say, this recording made me want to experiment with harmonies myself.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 10:47 PM on August 11, 2008

Yeah, I'm still trying to get a handle on how to put vocals in a mix. It's the only live component in my recordings -- everything else is synthesizer.

The drums sound canned because they are, and the guitar drones in the background are a pair of "distorted guitar pad" patches in Reason's NN-XT sampler. I do dig the sound of an ebow, though.

I'm fine with getting all the instruments mixed, but then throw in vocals, and I keep second-guessing myself.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 8:20 AM on August 9, 2008

There's a chord toward the middle -- sounds like a diminished chord -- that really makes this piece for me. It felt like the key was about to dissolve at that point, and I liked that ambiguity.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 9:41 AM on August 8, 2008

Any critique of my voice will most likely be spot-on because I tend to write beyond my already limited singing abilities. Most of that vocal track was from the first take, so there's definitely room for improvement. I do like the idea of harmonies. I hadn't thought of it.

Tears for Fears meets XTC? I'd have love to hear that in real life!
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 5:13 PM on August 6, 2008

This thread makes me want to ask for a pony.

In our music activity page, could we get a link to our Music posts RSS as well?

I'd like to check all these folks out, but I think the most efficient way would be to subscribe to the individual feeds and let my Winamp podcast directory take care of the downloading.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 8:49 AM on August 5, 2008

Oh, duh, I just noticed the RSS link on the user activity page.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 8:53 AM on August 5, 2008

I mean user activity page. I can't copy and paste today.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 8:59 AM on August 5, 2008

I think this is less a software question than a hardware question.

In order to be able to record and playback at the same time, you need a full-duplex sound card. Most sound cards that come with a computer are half-duplex. If you have the manual of your sound card handy, check the specifications to see if it's half-duplex or full-duplex. But judging from what you describe, you more than likely have a half-duplex sound card.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 11:40 AM on August 4, 2008

Oddly enough, flapjax at midnite says my Japanese is pretty decent.

I should also probably come out of the closet further and say the guitar parts were all provided by Reason with somewhat meticulous programming in Cakewalk SONAR. A guitar solo would work really well toward the end, actually. I would just need to program it.

I know enough guitar to strum the chords I want to hear, but I'm not enough of a player to record an actual guitar track.... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 12:00 PM on August 1, 2008

At some point, I'm going to clean up the vocals I did on a set of songs I wrote inspired by the jazz-pop stylings of Sade, Basia, Swing Out Sister and Hiroshima. And will post some here to Metafilter Music.

There. I said it.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 2:18 PM on July 31, 2008

I have pictures!

I use Cakewalk SONAR, upgraded from an ancient copy of Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 bought a long time ago. I plug my three hardware synthesizers (Korg N364, Kurzweil PC-88, Kawai K4) into a Yamaha 10-track mixer, then the mixer to an M-Audio Delta 44 external sound card.

For software synthesizers, I use mostly Reason but recently I'm incorporating more Ableton Live. I'm not a good enough guitar player to record guitar parts -- I'm... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 1:02 PM on July 3, 2008

Cool! A cover! I should probably post the lyrics then:

When the melody precedes the words
What do you sing?
What do you sing?

When the words precede the storybook
What do you read?
What do you read?

When the storybook precedes events
What do you do?
What do you do?

And when all events precede a thought
What do you... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 9:09 AM on June 20, 2008

I programmed all 53 motifs of the score into Session View. I used Reason's solo string samples to create a string quartet (violins, viola, cello). I then performed the entire piece in Session View by arming each clip individually. After I got through the entire piece, I went back and fixed any clips that were truncated or mistimed.

"In C" is intended to be performed, preferably by 35 musicians according to notes in the score. I did it solo, more to see if it... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 4:20 PM on July 18, 2007

Just a quick note to say I redesigned my web site, and the full version of "In C" is no longer available. Sorry.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 12:22 PM on May 5, 2008

Green Day? Interesting -- never crossed my mind. I really did play up the Heart angle when I reworked it. You can practically sing "What About Love" and "Alone" to the chorus of this song.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 8:00 PM on March 4, 2008

Can't say I'm familiar with Green Day save for the big radio hits from 1994, so the comparison actually intrigues me.

Oh, the original is just awful. I salvaged the chords of the verse and a portion of the chorus, but the bridges, lyrics and melody are new. I wonder if I can get away with calling it "reworked". But it's an interesting exercise to get through that impulse to cringe. It really was more difficult than I expected.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 9:15 PM on March 5, 2008

Zorn's lawyers are gonna be on this like white on rice.

Yeah, I was too lazy to set up my own amp and record myself jiggling the jack back and forth to make my own cackling sound.
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 8:38 AM on November 4, 2007

Damn! I'm totally loving UA's new album, and "Panacea" is a terrific track. I'm jealous! (Did you meet her?)
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 6:17 AM on July 23, 2007

As much of a Duran Duran fanboy I am, I really don't like "Palomino", even though many of my Duranie friends love it. So for an assignment in my composition class back in college, I took the lyrics of the song and wrote a choir piece out of it. I even quoted another Duran Duran song, "Winter Marches On" (which I do like.)

I was inspired by an assignment Oscar Hammerstein gave to a young Stephen Sondheim, telling him to write a musical about a topic... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 7:44 PM on May 11, 2007

... it sounds like MIDI with a fixed velocity for each note.

Actually, it is. I have yet to record this piece live. I actually wrote most of it in the sequencer, so I still have to figure out the fingering of my own piece! This recording is the playback from the sequencer.

I should have probably described it as a challenging piece for a beginning player -- I thought making something completely arranged out of the melody. But... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 10:42 PM on August 22, 2006

I did make a gamble with this song. I experimented with changing the key of the entire song, but I didn't like the way that first diminished chord sounded in other keys -- something about it felt right in that particular key. But the original meldoy (instrumental version here) ended up too low for my range. So I shift the starting point of the melody and adjusted a few notes to accomodate.

That top note is actually clashing with the bass -- Eb in the bass, E in the... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by NemesisVex at 11:17 AM on August 14, 2006