Podcast: Have I Told You Lately - II

A piano/ slow rock version of this earlier song:

HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY - II

Lyrics: Firdaus
Music/ Instruments/ Vocals: Ivan Chew

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

This work by Ivan Chew and Firdaus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For permissions beyond the scope of this license , please contact via RamblingLibrarian@gmail.com.

How the song came about
At the last songcraft meetup, before the session started, Jerron played the chords of the song on the piano. It sounded like a slow rock version, so I was inspired to come up with this version II.

The drum, piano, orchestral strings, and bass tracks were MIDI recordings (there are multiple tracks partly because I played the left-hand and right-hand piano pieces separately, since I can’t play the piano that well — also, I had to boost the piano track by duplicating them).

I recorded five separate vocal tracks, with three parts sung in harmony. This was to make up for my poor vocal talents. When combined, the vocals sound much nicer than what I can sing “live”.

I’ve not uploaded the “minus-one” track for this version. If anyone wants a go at it, email me.

Enjoy!

RamblingLibrarian’s Podcasts:

Podcast: Walking On Air 2008 - with Friends from Songcraft

Somehow I’ve forgotten to post this here (I blogged it at Starfish Stories :: The Band, but forgot to feature it here).

It’s a remix of “Walking On Air” composed in 2007.

“Walking On Air 2008, with Friends from Songcraft”

Download/ listen at ARCHIVE.ORG
Music: Ivan Chew
Voices: Betty, Chris, Jerron, Lingfeng, Huiling, Daniel, Ginn, Marcel, the lady next to Marcel Carol, and Jeremy.

Details at the Starfish Stories band blog.

Podcast: Have I Told You Lately (Sweet Dreams)

A rock song, reminiscent of ’80s rock. At least that’s what I’ve tried to achieve here.

HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY (SWEET DREAMS)

Lyrics: Firdaus
Music: Ivan Chew

This work by Ivan Chew and Firdaus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For permissions beyond the scope of this license , please contact via RamblingLibrarian@gmail.com.

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

How this song came about
It started when Firdaus emailed to the Songcrafters a set of lyrics he wrote. A lullaby, titled “Sweet Dreams”. Said he hasn’t got a melody or chords and invited members to make a song out of it.

It so happened that the previous day, I was trying to come up with a song using the chords Am/ C/ Dm. No lyrics yet, other than mumblings of some lines.

When I hummed Firdaus’ lyrics to the chords, they sounded perfect to my ears. I only needed to tweak two or three lines here and there.

As I worked on the song, it sounded like it needed a heavy metal sound. I managed to create that Overdrive/ Distortion effect using a customised guitar effect setting:

The drums, bass and electric guitar lead are MIDI while the rest are “live” instruments.

I revisited my aging Def Leppard collection to get the drum sound I wanted (see if you can hear the double bass sound there).

For the singing part, I recorded my vocals and converted it using the GarageBand “Male to Female vocals” effect. Heh, Firdaus said it sounded like Fann Wong Faye Wong. Who am I to argue?

Anyway, I discovered that for this song, a female voice added that required “mysterious/ ethereal” feel that I wanted. If any ladies out there want to help me sing this song, the Minus One can be downloaded here.

OK, thanks Firdaus, for inspiring me to do this song.

Lyrics here:
[Verse 1] Am/ C/ Dm/ Am
It’s been a long day
Time to put those toys away
I’ll read you a story
Before you sleep tonight

Don’t be scared now
There are no monsters here
I’m here beside you
I will always be near

[Chorus] C/ G/ Em/ F
Have I told you lately
That you’re so beautiful?

You’re a gift from heaven
You’re one in a million

Have I told you lately
That you’re so beautiful?

You’re a gift from heaven
A dream come true

[Verse 2]
Sleep well little darling
I’ll see you in the morning
Adventure awaits
A brand new day!

We will fly in the sky
Fight pirates who have one eye
Sweet dreams…
Sweet dreams…

[Repeat Chorus]

[Outro] Dm/ C/ A/ A d(Em)
So darling close your eyes
Dream of vanilla skies
And as I close the door

[Repeat Chorus]

~ Ivan Chew

RamblingLibrarian’s Podcasts:

Podcast: If You Were A Dance

This is the sung version to these lyrics:

Recorded and mixed with GarageBand.

IF YOU WERE A DANCE

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

This is the Minus-One version. Feel free to record your version (creative commons license applies):
IF YOU WERE A DANCE (MINUS ONE)

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

Chords:
C/ Em
D/ C
[chorus: G/ Em/ D/ C]
[Bridge: A/ Em/ C/ Em]

If You Were A Dance
============

I know your face
From the visions in my dreams
I know your smile
From the memories in between

If you were a star
I’d be the fleeting wind

I know your touch
My worries melt away
I know your laugh
They’re clear and bright as day

If you were a stream
I’d be a flowing dream

I’m the silent wall
And through it all
I’ll never let you fall

[Chorus]
If you were a dance
I’d be your song
And we would carry on
Into the dawn

I know your face
From the visions in my dreams
I know your smile
From the memories in between

If you were a star
I’d be the fleeting wind
(I’d be the fleeting wind)

I’m the silent wall
(I would be the silent wall)

And through it all
(I would be a flowing dream)

I’ll never let you fall
(I would never let you fall)

[Repeat chorus]

[Bridge]
We’ll keep on dreaming
We’ll keep on dancing
We’ll keep on loving
We’ll keep in living

[Repeat chorus]

~ Ivan Chew. May 2008.

This work by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For permissions beyond the scope of this license , please contact via RamblingLibrarian@gmail.com.

RamblingLibrarian’s Podcasts:

Podcast: One World (2008)

This shall be my signature song for 2008:

ONE WORLD

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

The cool thing was that my young friend from Songcraft, Firdaus, did a mashup by splicing two versions of “One World” that I posted, and adding his vocals to produce this song:

ONE WORLD (Firdaus on Vocals)

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

Details are at this post, and this one.

Mundo Uno - One World
Originally uploaded by deVos

One World.

Podcast: Summer Days, Winter Nights (musical mashup)

A collaborative piece with Firdaus.

SUMMER DAYS, WINTER NIGHTS 1.2

Listen/ download at ARCHIVE.ORG

When I heard the original (with vocals) that Firdaus posted at his blog, I liked it immediately because it reminded me of what Carlos Santana might play. I commented that his song sounded like “Santana meets Oasis”!

I asked if he could email me a ‘Minus-One’ version, as I wanted to experiment with a rock guitar lead version. He emailed me a MP3 file during the week. I downloaded it and managed to work on it on Friday night.

Thanks for sharing, Firdaus!

Basically I added several “live” guitar leads and two “live” bass tracks. I cut about a minute from the original; I tend to keep my songs to about 3-and-a-half minutes. The most challenging part was keeping time with Firdaus’ original.

There were at least two segments where his guitar strumming didn’t quite keep in time with his drum beats. After a few hours of “close-quarters” editing and experimenting, I decided to replace an entire segment (starting from the 33rd measure) with a GarageBand drum loop. At the 50th measure, I didn’t replace his original segment but lowered the volume of his original track and raised the volume for the drum loops. Luckily, Firdaus used the standard 120 bps setting, so I was able to incorporate the GB drum loops into the song perfectly.

I think I spent about 18 to 20 hours before I was happy with the final version.

I used three custom guitar effects settings:

Bass effects:

This work by Ivan Chew is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For permissions beyond the scope of this license , please contact via RamblingLibrarian@gmail.com.

RamblingLibrarian’s Podcasts:

A new item in my guitar collection

Bought a Bass Guitar today. A Stagg “B300-BK“.

Standard “J” electric bass guitar - Pickups: 2 x JB - Controls: 2 x Volume + 1 x Tone - Body: solid Alder - Pickguard: White (BK/BL/SB) or Tortoiseshell (N/NS) - Neck: Hard Maple, bolt-on, 867 mm, (34.2 in.) - Fingerboard: Rosewood, 20 frets - Bridge: “JB” Classic - Machine heads: Standard “P”, nickel - Colour: Black.

Bought it from Zen Guitarwerks (they’re located at the basement of Peninsula Shopping Complex, at Coleman Street) for $310, including a $20 guitar bag.

Discussed with my wife if I should buy the bass guitar. Did a mental check so that I was sure I’d be using it and not buying it on a whim.

Didn’t really shop around to see if there were better deals. My budget was $500 or less. If the instrument was within my budget AND gave me the right feel, I was prepared to buy it there and then.

So I dropped by Peninsular Shopping Complex (which, in the last decade, has quietly become the guitar player shopping mecca in Singapore).

Zen Guitarwerks was the second shop I went into (the price range of the bass guitars at the first shop were beyond my budget). It’s a relatively tiny shop, and I’d almost missed it had my wife not pointed it out.

Within minutes of my scanning the price tags at the bass guitar section, the young girl manning the shop asked if I needed help. Her demeanor was friendly, and she seemed knowledgeable about the stuff in the shop.

Tried about four bass guitars from different price ranges. The one I bought was the lowest priced in the store, but somehow the feel and tone was nicer than the higher priced ones that I tested.

Final test was to tune the bass guitar, check the action for buzzing (none that I could tell), last intuitive feel of the weight and fret play.

I’ve reached a point where the sound generated from MIDI just isn’t good enough. Plus, I’m interested in learning more instruments. Admittedly, I was also encouraged after watching videos like these (now how’s that as an example of YouTube indirectly influencing a purchase decision?).

Technical skills-wise, I’m still going to focus on the guitar. But I decided to buy a bass guitar to try out some musical ideas I have in mind. I don’t expect it to drastically change my compositions but will see how it goes.

Will check out some online resources and books from the public libraries.

Nice to be trying out something new.

Music Mashup: Chris Ismael’s “We Are”

A few hours ago, I listened to this recording of Chris performing “live” at the recent songcraft session.

Chris’ performance was near flawless that evening. The “live” recording was excellent, considering that Jeremy just plonked his MP3 recorder on the ground.

But my guitar lead still sucked, weak as it was in the background.

Then on a whim, I decided to download the MP3 file, imported it into GarageBand and recorded a guitar track. There was hope for my playing yet! After five hours, I was happy with the recording and sound engineering:

*
“We Are”

Listen/Download at ARCHIVE.ORG
Composer: Chris Ismael.
Performed “live” by Chris Ismael. “Live” recording by Jeremy Yew.
Additional guitar lead/ bass by Ivan Chew.
*

For comparison, here’s the original “live” version, without my additional guitar and bass:

*

While mixing this version, I reminded myself the guitar lead should serve to highlight the song, and not be the centerpiece. I tried my best to bring Chris’ vocals up, and was careful to keep the accompanying guitar in the background.

I’ve played the lead for this song (all impromptu) four times at various Songcraft sessions. Each time I walked away feeling that I’ve not done justice to his song.

Since the songcraft mini-concert, I’ve been pestering Chris for ages to do a proper recording of “We Are”, so that I can attempt to play a decent lead. He said OK but didn’t have time to do a proper recording.

Well Chris, I hope you like this lead. Not fantastic but better than my impromptu leads that you’ve been putting up with so far!

Thanks Dude, for the song.

Changing to higher gauged strings & adjusting a floating guitar bridge

I’ve always used a set of 0.09mm electric guitar strings. Found them easier to play and bend. But lately, I found the lighter strings sounding too thin. Plus, I’ve stop harbouring any pretenses that lighter gauge strings would make me the guitar-shredder virtuoso, LOL.

I have a floating bridge, and changing to a set of higher gauge strings isn’t as straight-forward. You need to perform additional adjustments to the springs that connect to the floating bridge.

Apparently it’ll cost about $180 to $200 to have a professional change it (and a friend told me horror stories of how some “professionals” turned out to be amateurs).

I figured I might as well try learning how to do it. I had some idea how to do it. Besides, I wasn’t aiming for that good a sound and I might learn something in the process.

First, I removed the old strings and gave the guitar a wipe down and polish.

Next was to remove the access cover, to get to the springs that controlled the tension of the floating bridge.

Then I put on the new set of strings (this was a higher gauge; 0.10mm for the first string). The floating bridge no longer “floats”, since the strings have no tension.

After I tightened the strings (standard E tuning), it was clear that the tension is way too high. The bridge is raised to a level that far too high to play the guitar properly.

After this point, it was just pure “learn as I go”; a process of adjustments and experimenting. After twiddling for a bit, I realised I had to increase the tension of the floating bridge springs, so that it will bring down the bridge.

True enough, the bridge was lowered.

I continued to make adjustments to the bridge springs, and the string tension. The tricky bit about tuning a floating bridge is that any adjustment to a string tension affects the rest of the strings. So it was a process of repeatedly adjusting the tension, checking the tuning, re-adjusting and re-checking the tuning… eventually, you’ll get there.

Right now, there’s a slight buzz when I play the sixth string at the 12th fret. I was told I’d have to adjust the truss rod (a metal bar that reinforces the guitar neck) but I wasn’t brave enough to try that yet. I’ll let it go, until the buzz irritates me to further action!

OK, my guitar is still in one piece. And it’s playable. And the bridge works fine.

Total time taken to change the strings and adjust the bridge: Two hours.

Saved myself $100 plus dollars.

Not bad for a first attempt.

And the higher gauge strings sound real sweet.

Podcast: Here And Now

A rock guitar instrumental.

HERE AND NOW (200

Download/ listen at ARCHIVE.ORG

Chords: Em/ D/ A + C/ G
Tempo: 90 bps

Details at Starfish Stories.