Music Recordings!

This was my first use of the 12-hole bass-C ocarina, which I had acquired earlier the same month! I was delighted by the instrument the moment I first played it and knew I had to find an excuse to use in my next recording. I have some ideas for tunes I want to record in the future that will place more of a spotlight on this instrument, but it was nice I was able to fit it in for this project.

There was a longer gap before this one because there was a failed project. I realized that one was going to take much longer than I wanted to spend and I wanted to do something for Christmas because I have real bells this time and wasn't about to give up an opportunity to use them. This whole project was completed in just a couple of weeks.

I've always loved the music of Undertale and I really want to record more of it in the future. This was an easy place to start because I've known how to play the melody on ocarina for several years. And Snowdin Town is such a lovely, cozy place. In a game that is known for its high-energy boss battle music, I like to pull out some of the more cozy numbers.

I'm always looking for new things to add to each project. Apparent, the new ocarina and real bells weren't enough this time, because I also decided to make a music video to accompany this one. None of the cinematography or video editing was very challenging, but it's been a while since I've used some of these skills. It was nice to get to use some of them again!

All of the audio was recorded in a dimly-lit sound booth (my bathroom with blankets attached to all the walls). As is typical in the industry, all the video was recorded afterwards. I was even listening to the almost-completed audio (just the bells were missing) while recording all the video parts to try and match my performance as close as possible. If there are awkward cuts in the video, it was because I was working around the bits when I didn't match the performance close enough for my liking.

The piano part switches between several camera angles throughout the video. I was originally going to do this for all the parts, but due to time constraints, I decided not to. The time constraint was partially because I wanted this done before the 25th, but I was also reluctant to devote too much time to a video before I knew if my workflow would even work. I may get more ambitious with the video in future projects, time permitting. I probably won't make videos for all future projects.

I don't own a red dress. I wore the green dress for the BC ocarina and violin parts and then isolated and color-shifted it in post. The effect worked well enough, but you can spot some flaws if you know where to look. The purple dress didn't really fit the Christmas vibe I had going; the reason I wore it was that I wasn't sure I'd be able to recolor the dress to my satisfaction and I wanted to ensure I still had some variety in the outfits even if that failed.

The stuffed deer toy wasn't making those bell sounds. You can see the actual bells in the background of the violin shots. I used the deer in the video just because I thought it would be funny. That was actually the reason I used this project to try making a music video for the first time. When I first tried shaking the toy, its little legs and neck started flopping around disturbingly. I wondered if this was going too far and if I should shelve the idea. But it's a deer, not an elf, and I've never shied away from morbid humor so far, so I shook the bajeebers out of little Rudolph. I did compromise by holding the toy a bit awkwardly with both hands so stop it ragdolling quite as much. There was no light on its nose, so I had to add that in post. I've done automatic point tracks before, but Rudolph was a motion-blurred mess in so many frames that I didn't even consider trying. I just tracked the nose manually for the few seconds it was visible, which still involved some guesses and interpolating reasonable trajectories between those frames where I could actually identify the nose.

Not every project should take almost half a year to finish! The last few I recorded were way too much and I reminded myself that I had completed the Winter Festival project in three days including the time to plan it. The timeline on this one wasn't quite that condenced, but I purposely picked something I knew I could complete quickly. I finished it the same month I started it. I'm rambling about this because I honestly don't have much to say. It's a beautiful piece of music.

Because it's me, I did think about making it longer by adding variations and layering different harmony parts or maybe throw a cool key change in or something. I resisted the urge. I may go back someday and make a bigger version.

This was the same ocarina I used for Winter Festival theme from Stardew Valley. I don't have a professional recording studio, so I make do with what I have. I'm in a new space now that is a lot more echoey. I don't mind the extra reverb for this tune, but I may need to find a way to isolate the sound better in the future.

It was good to return to the valley for this tune! I got ambitious with this one, both in instrument choices and in the arrangement. There are three instruments working together and I also mixed in rain and ambient sound effects to try and capture the mood. What I ended up with wasn't the mood of the original, but I think Abigail would appreciate it!

Abigail is still one of my favorite characters in Stardew Valley. We had more in common back during my first playthrough of Stardew Valley, back when I was also a student.

The first two sections are close to what's in the original soundtrack, but I wanted to keep building beyond that, so I had to get creative. I originally wanted to layer in the Wizard's theme, but I struggled to make it fit properly while still sounding recognizable. It came together when I realized I could put Overture in a minor key and it would work with a few minor changes to fit the chord progression.

I had to relearn violin for this piece. I hadn't played it in over a year. By accident, the violin part ended up being the most complicated by far. The piano just playes the same thing repeatedly in the upper voice with one simpler variation that is used when less business is needed. The lower voice for the piano is the same bass notes, just filling in the rhythm as the tune progresses. The ocarina is the simplest part, just repeating the same simple melody except for in the one part when it playes the B theme from Overture. Once the violin joins in, it becomes the main thing differenciating each variation, which would have been fine if I was better at playing violin. It turned out alright in the end. My bowing technique needed some more work, but I hit most of the notes reasonably well except for one note, which I put a thunder rumble over so it doesn't stand out too much.

The ambient sound effects are pulled from the game. The rain ended up being difficult. I wanted it to start out off in the distance and then seem to draw nearer as the tune progressed. I could simply adjust the volume, but that wouldn't sound right. Rain is a complex sound, but it has a lot of power across a wide spectrum of pitches. Lower frequency pitches travel further, so that creates a natural low-pass filter for rain (and other things) heard at a distance. Applying a low-pass filter is easy, but I still wanted a smooth transition to the close rain. Cross-fading between a few depths of low-pass filters probably would have been good enough, but I was stubbern and ended up coding a custom filter for Audacity to let me apply a filter that sweeps smoothly up the scale over time.

Super Mario 64 has some beautiful music in it and I've learned several of them on both violin and ocarina over the years. But I never tried Dire, Dire Docks because I didn't believe I could give it a good enough arrangement with only one voice. Now that I'm doing recordings mixing multiple voices, I realized I finally needed to learn this one. It was well worth the wait!

It took a while to finish this one. But there was a lot going on I was having to deal with, so music's priority went down for a while. It also got delayed several times when trying to record the piano part. I had a problem with my recording setup that I didn't realize until after spending an afternoon on takes. I fixed that but then injured one of my fingers. I got it done eventually!

There was a temptation to break the tune down and record each section separately, combining multiple takes of each voice instead of waiting until I could get a single take without errors. I did that when I recorded Winter Festival, but in that case it was necessary to finish it on the tight deadline I had given myself. For this one, I didn't have a deadline, so my live performance background kicked in. There is a certain pride in doing single-takes, even if it doesn't matter as much for recordings like this.

The final mix uses five takes. The ocarina part was done in a single take. The piano required two takes, but I added the higher register part late in the process which required playing it with three hands, so I wasn't going to manage that in a single take. There were two drum parts, each requiring one take. Basically, each voice was a single take.

For many years, I had focused on learning solos and doing live performances, but I had thought about moving into over-dubbing multiple parts to make more complex recordings. My opportunities for live performance had mostly dried up by this point, so I was really itching to give something else a try. I had the inspiration to finally try doing it on December 22nd while I was at work. I was probably listening to vgm playlists while shelving and noticed this one would be a good fit for ocarina and piano, but I don't honestly remember.

I did the arranging when I got home that evening. I learned and recorded the ocarina part on the 23rd. I had work on the 24th, so I recorded the piano part and did all the mixing on that evening.

I wanted to get it done before Christmas, so that created a tight deadline. The quality of the playing suffered because of that, but honestly, it's nice to sometimes give myself a solid excuse to ignore my perfectionist side and just get something done. This might never have happened without that.

I really didn't want to use synthesized sleigh bells. I originally was wondering if I could acquire some bells before Christmas, but quickly decided I was not under any circumstances going to a store so close to Christmas. I was going to just do the tune without the bells, but it really wasn't working so in the end I decided to compromise. The bells are pulled from the Strawdew Valley soundtrack, so they're the same bells that play when this tune plays in the game.

I never learned any of Chopin's less known works, but this one was one of my favorite piano solos, so I couldn't just not learn it. I started working on learning it shortly after I stopped taking piano lessons. I had started out as a self-taught piano player, so I was comfortable with learning tunes on my own, although this was the most technically demanding tune I learned on my own and I was glad to be able to apply the tools I had learned from my instructor.

I will admit that one of my motivations was that I was unsatisfied with the interpretations I had heard other pianists perform. The fingerwork in the faster sections of this recording isn't as precise as I'd like, but the interpretation of the slower section is pretty close to what I intended.

As far as I remember, I stopped playing piano regularly shortly after this recording. I still dream of going back to piano and relearning these old tunes (or learning new ones!), but it hasn't happened yet.

Unlike with Chopin, I did learn many of Scott Joplin's tunes that many people wouldn't recognize. This one is a collaboration between him and Scott Hayden, who I know nothing about. Upon doing a little (very little) research, it seems most of the tune was primerily written by Hayden, so perhaps I have another composer to study if I ever start playing piano seriously again.

I didn't only learn obscure Scott Joplin tunes. I did learn The Entertainer and the Maple Leaf Rag. Sadly, I only have a recording of the Maple Leaf Rag.

It's the one everyone knows, but it's certainly not undeserved. I'd love to go back someday and learn some of Chopin's other nocturns, but I'm not sad I learned this one.