Yes, I know, I haven’t posted anything here in a while. I’ve been active on Thoughts on Oku Hanako, and I’ve been working on The Penguin Plays and *nix Windows.
To be fair, content on this blog takes much more thought and time to write than content on Thoughts on Oku Hanako, so I have unpublished drafts waiting to be finished and published. Don’t worry, I’ll get to them eventually.
So, what have I been working on?
In my anniversary post, I hinted at moving the Compositions list into a spin-off blog, and I’ve started work on it.
It’s called The Penguin Plays ♫♪ and it’s in public beta right now. (thanks to DR34DNOUGHT for suggesting the title!)
The Penguin Plays ♫♪
It’ll be in public beta until I make my first post, at which point I’ll announce its official release here on `The Penguin’ says… .
In the meantime, head on over, have a look around, and leave me some feedback in the comments for this post.
*sigh*
I was going to post something about Linux Libertine this week, but I’m currently experiencing some technical issues which prevent me from doing so (probably into next week, too). Oh well, I’ll leave you with another one of my compositions.
Trying to Sleep: the title describes more or less how I felt when I composed the piece. I had some trouble sleeping one night because I had an idea for a composition and I just had to get it down. I think I might have spent the whole night just playing around on my keyboard, getting everything just right and writing it down on paper so I wouldn’t forget. Yes, this was back when I drew staves on paper and wrote notes on it by hand.
A tip for drawing staves on lined paper: I find using two lines split in half to be just the right size. The rule between the two lines will be your middle line, the top rule is your top line, and the bottom rule is your bottom line. To complete the five lines on a staff, add a rule in the middle of each line (I know it sounds confusing, but if you follow it carefully, it should make sense. I’ll upload an illustration when I get the chance). Use ink for your staff and pencil for your notes for easy erasing without the need to redraw your lines.
I can consider this my first serious piano piece. Have a listen and see what you think of it:
View the score on MuseScore.com and listen to the audio on SoundCloud.
“Trying to Sleep” was originally released on February 7, 2013. It was created with MuseScore and rendered with Finale’s synthgms.sf2 SoundFont.
Just something quick for the weekend: my latest composition.
From the description:
Another ensemble piece! This is my first time playing around with the MuseScore mixer panel, so the audio should be more interesting to listen to.
One of my influences for this piece may be all the snow we’ve been getting in my area recently, and we haven’t gotten much snow in the past few years. We got the gift of snow this year, and this is my gift to you. Enjoy!
This piece was created with MuseScore and rendered with the FluidR3_GM SoundFont.
Listen to it on SoundCloud and view the score on MuseScore.com.
It’s time to finally officially introduce a new list to `The Penguin’ says… : my compositions. Yes, I know I’ve already posted one before, but that was because it was mutual post of sorts.
About two years ago, someone asked me to make a simple arrangement of a song of my choice for his high school music class to play. For the fun of it, I decided to arrange Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up“.
A “thank you” goes to everyone involved in the original song, to Ben Landis for the sheet music, and the MuseScore team for making the great software I used to make my score.
View the score on MuseScore.com.
This was my first serious work. For my level, I’d say it wasn’t too bad, although looking back on it, I can see many things that I could have done to make it better. In the spirit of showing improvement, I’ve decided to leave it alone.
For the impatient, you can listen to my other pieces on SoundCloud. Links to their respective MuseScore.com pages are in the descriptions.
Sorry for the late post. I had an idea for a new composition and I just had to write it down.
I wasn’t planning to post any of my compositions here until I posted a certain one and had introduced MuseScore, but I’ll have to forgo that.
If you’ve taken a look at my About page and have actually read it, you’d know that “I like to compose every now and then” and “I post my works on MuseScore.com.”
Recently, Pekky of Sincerely Pekky gave me some lyrics that she wrote and asked me to put it to music. I accepted the challenge.
I finished a week later. I really like how it turned out.
The song is called “I Don’t Know”. Take a listen:
Download the audio (MP3, 4.18MB; FLAC, 16.7MB) and the score (PDF, 95.67KB)
As with all my compositions, this was made using the open-source scorewriter MuseScore.
This work holds a few firsts for me: first collaboration, first original song (as opposed to just a plain composition or an arrangement of an existing song), and first arrangement with strings.
Normally, I’d license my works under the CC-BY-SA, as this blog is, but Pekky wanted something a little more restrictive.
So, “I Don’t Know” is licensed under the CreativeCommons-Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported licence (CC-BY-NC-ND). This licence basically gives you the freedom to use the work however you want and distribute it freely provided that you credit us as the authors and that you don’t change it in any way make money off it. Please respect the copyright.
View the score on MuseScore.com and read about the song, complete with lyrics, on Sincerely Pekky!
`The Penguin' says... 