Piano Cover: Partner for Life

So it's been one of those semesters. Maybe it's senioritis; maybe it's the feeling of impending doom associated with graduating from college and moving on with life; maybe it's the realization that my time remaining with my Duke friends is limited, but my experience so far this semester has been kind of difficult to describe. I've been doing a lot of reflecting on my college career as it steadily draws to a close, and of course, you can't reflect without thinking about where it all began: my freshman year.

If I could define my freshman year of college through music, a major part would definitely include a small collection of Korean songs that my roommate looped through his iTunes playlist, including such hits as BIGBANG's Lies, Epik High's Love Love Love, and a number of arrangements of Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, among other gems. One such song (which, gasp, is the one I'm posting about today) was a ballad by Korean group SG Wannabe, called Partner For Life (내사람, or "Nae Saram," in Korean). Although it didn't catch my attention immediately (the other pieces were somewhat catchier), I eventually heard an beautiful a capella rendition of the piece at the 2008 Lunar New Year festival. Immediately thereafter, I became enamored with the piece, looked forward to the times it appeared on my roommate's playlist (by then, I had the order essentially memorized), and eventually began to figure it out on piano. :)

내사람 (Partner For Life): Piano Cover



Artist: SG Wannabe
Date Completed: 2010-10-21
Number of Takes: 4
Software: Audacity
Instrumentation: Piano

This arrangement is a little more straightforward than my other ones; it's more of a transcription than much of an arrangement. Still, what makes SG Wannabe so appealing to me is their fantastic choice of harmony, rife with modulations and secondary chords; it's rather different than the three-to-four-chord pop songs that have nearly saturated the music world. Good stuff.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it! Perhaps one day in the distant (or not-so-distant) future, my former roomie will stumble across this blog post and relive some old memories. This one's for you, buddy.

Take care,

xds

VGMusic Submission: Epilogue

Just a quick update to showcase another piece I've recently uploaded to VGMusic.Com. Interestingly enough, this one was actually arranged for my music theory class. Our teaching assistant (who might in fact be one of the most awesome people I've ever met) gave us an assignment that I was more than happy to complete: arrange any piece of music of our choice. Naturally, I was all over that #$%@.

The source material for the MIDI this time around is a game for the Super Nintendo called Chrono Trigger (perhaps you've heard of it? :P). Like NiGHTS into Dreams, Chrono Trigger was another game that I have actually never played, but nevertheless fell in love with the soundtrack. I was first exposed to the soundtrack at Video Games Live Indy, where a Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross medley was performed as the final act of the show (see a recording I was able to take here). Soon thereafter, I tracked down the soundtrack and found that the remainder of the tracks were just as great as the excerpts from the performance. I chose to arrange the track "Epilogue: To Good Friends" for this music theory assignment because it was fairly straightforward to analyze, even if I did get carried away and arrange the whole piece instead of just the first few bars. :) In any case, here's the piece (and here's the original for comparison):

Epilogue: To Good Friends



Date Submitted: 2010-09-16
Time: ~4 hours
Software: Finale 2008
MIDI Tracks: Flute, French Horn, Orchestral Harp, Bright Acoustic Piano, Celesta, String Ensemble 1, SynthStrings 2

Not much more to say about this piece. It's not quite perfect; perhaps one or two incorrect chords scattered around, but I think it's pretty close. Hope you enjoyed it!

Best wishes,

xds