It's vacation time here in China so, as usual, I stay at home avoiding the billion-strong crowds in any location worth visiting, waiting for a weekend, or something to travel instead.

Since my current job involves daily guitar classes, I decided to invest in a new guitar, as my $100 guitar had a really high action (the large gap between strings and the fretboard) and it was starting to annoy me. So I went for a $300 guitar instead.

This is still the kind of tacky, low-end price range, but in China, it'll do. I'm not willing to invest in much more for something I may inevitably abandon.

Anyway, it inspired me to make some music, after looking at it in context with all the other instruments I'm slowly trying to learn.

I went with this. Enjoy!

Details

So I'll add some extra narration you wouldn't find anywhere else.

If you don't know the song, it's from a 1982 Childhood Christmas movie The Snowman, typically sung by some kind of choirboy. I'm no choirboy, so I had to mask my inadequate singing proficiency with harmonies and thick musical textures. This has the added benefit of being fun to do either way.

Although most of this consists of recordings of myself, not all is as it seems.

Kalimba

The Kalimba (40 seconds in) is an instrument of Zimbabwe origin and consists of the scale notes of C major. There are no sharps or flats, or 'black keys' on the piano. This created a problem because the song is in D minor, which has one flat. Basically, the song has one note the kalimba lacks (even more later in the song).

The solution was simple thanks to technology, however. I simply played the melody including the one dud note, then tuned that one note down (played just a single time) using Melodyne. Nobody will ever know!! Mwahaha

_{The arrow indicates the note which I lowered a semi-tone. I couldn't put any caption here without sounding patronizing, sorry}

Vocals

The lowest note in the bass section of the vocals I sung was a low D2. A typical bass singer - the lowest group - will only reach the E - one step higher than that, and often I am no exception. In the original recording, I actually sang a higher D3, and then used Melodyne again to shift it down a whole octave (a large interval). Thankfully, I woke up this morning and noticed my voice was nice and low again and could easily reach that D2, so I grabbed my mic and updated it with an all-natural D2 before I ate or drank anything and ruined my chances.

This is not a huge deal really, in the context of the whole mix most people probably wouldn't notice, but it's just that bit fresher when you remove any unnecessary artificial modifications. Check out the lowest note at 1:26. Pretty sweet.

Symphonic Strings

I have in the past used the Viola to create large soundscapes, a weak mimicry of a whole string section including Violins, Cellos and even double bass. It never sounds like the real deal, especially since I'm a beginner, but with enough layers (3-4 recordings of each line, 4-6 lines), it can sound alright. This time, it sounded pretty lame.

So, although I did record the parts myself, I muted them and replaced them instead with the 'Symphonic Strings' sample library from Spitfire Audio, which kicks in around 1 minute in. I didn't process them much to add any dynamic nuance like a real professional recording might, but it still sounds quite lush straight out the box.

Shakuhachi

From the ancient temples of Japan comes this old bamboo flute, which I've just recently picked up and learnt. during my time learning, I learned that it too is missing some notes from this D minor key. However, even though this flute only has 5 holes, making a 5-note pentatonic scale, it's actually an incredibly diverse and flexible instrument with a ton of tone control, pitch control, and so on, and with certain fingering techniques i haven't even begun to master, one can get every note under the sun you might need, over 3 octaves.

Unfortunately, I can barely get more than the standard 5 notes without accidentally skipping an octave, so this was far and away the most infuriating, suicide-inducing part of the entire track. I am not exaggerating when I say I must have pressed that record button over 75 times, as I constantly, rapidly failed to play this low-level, basic melody correctly.

In the end, I gave up with the best recording I could get, and you can probably tell it's the worst part of the track even so. More practice needed!

Daf

Over to Iran now, we have our Daf drum, or Persian drum if you like. I never 'learnt' to play this, but I am somewhat versed in drums and rhythm generally. The problem was not the performance here, but the mixing. It's a simple drum but it has a surprisingly awkward sound. It's particularly low but also resonant, with a fairly long sustain.

I could have referred to a cheat sheet for the best sound here, but this was demonstrably never meant to be some high-level professional recording, so I just let it be. So, depending on what you're listening to it with, you might get a pretty cool booming experience, or an awkward snap when the compression takes over and the drum overwhelms everything else for a brief moment each time it's struck. Oh well.

Other instruments

The other instruments - Viola & Guitar - I got nothing much to say other than how cool they are. Actually, I messed up some guitar but I don't think you can hear it. And some parts, a string was out of tune so i simply deleted that moment and hoped nobody would notice it cut out. Lolz. But yeah, all good.

Hope you like it! Now I have some video software that actually works on my deeply cursed laptop, I might start doing these more often, given the time.

'til next time!