Thursday, November 30, 2006

Nobuo Uematsu - To Zanarkand

A few months ago, I still visited a forum of a mmorpg that I had played a few years earlier. On that forum I posted the link to the first video that I made (La Dispute). One guy responded with something like: "I liked your video, but you will be my hero if you play To Zanarkand from Final Fantasy". I never played Final Fantasy and I hadn't heard the music either. Coincidentally, I had acces to the music a month or so later and I fell in love with the song at once. It didn't sound to complicated to learn, but it turned out to be harder than I thought. I'm not really experienced on the piano yet; learning new songs is a hard and difficult process. I think it took me about 4 weeks to learn the song; I learn all the songs I play out of my head, because I can't watch the sheet music and my hands at the same time...Furthermore, I'm not experienced in reading the notes from the basscleff, because I started out on clarinet and I'm thus experienced in reading the G-cleff. Despite all the hardships, I loved learning this song and I still enjoy playing it.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Gary Jules - Mad World

The story behind the making of this video is as follows: While I was at my work one day I heard this song on the radio and I realised again how beautiful it is. I remember this song from when it was in the charts and I also saw it performed on tv quite a few times (Top of the Pops). I love this song because it is so simple. It only uses 4 chords! The lyrics really make me sad, but there is some truth in them.
I have a weak spot for minimalist music: Yann Tiersen and Erik Satie are 2 composers that I enjoy a lot; they both compose music that also consists of a few chords only. So, after I heard this song on the radio again I decided to download it to listen to it at home. While I was downloading it, I accidentally got on a site which displayed the chords of the song. I wrote them down and ran downstairs to my piano. The melody wasn't hard to figure out and after 15 minutes I could play the song. I went back upstairs, this time to write down the lyrics of the song. I couldn't print them, since it was already midnight and everyone else in my house was sleeping soundly and I didn't want to wake them up. Once I wrote all the stuff down, while listening to the song all the way, I went back downstairs again and practised the song again; this time with singing. The next morning I recorded it with the digital camera and put it on YouTube. So far I've received very nice comments from people who watched the video; that really warms my heart. I don't really like my own voice, but others seem to enjoy my singing so that is good!