CLASSICAL MUSIC
These are compositions by Classical Composers. I took their music and played it using a variety of instruments. I changed some of the tempos but the music is still as originally composed.
Funeral March by Charles Valentin-Alkan (1848?) - February 16, 2022
I was Bass heavy on this one. I used a bass sounding Piano and an Electric Bass (panned hard left and right). I used two pianos for the melody and added a Brass ensemble for the midrange rhythm.
Gigue by Charles-Valentin Alkan (1844) - February 15, 2022
This is a nice dissonant song. I didn't realize they wrote songs like this back then. It sounds like an Avante-Gard Jazz song of the 1960s. It fascinates me to study these old Classical songs. It just shows there is nothing new under the sun. I used Electric Bass, Electric Guitar and Piano for this song.
Chemin De Fer (The Railway) by Charles-Valentin Alkan (1844) - February 9, 2022
This one is fast. Think Flight of the Bumblebee fast. Alkan wrote this as a representation of a railway. There are 4 tracks in this song: 2 Pianos playing melody panned left and right, a midrange Piano playing rhythm, and when the midrange piano is not playing there is another Piano that has a Bass sound. Awesome!
Air De Ballet by Charles-Valentin Alkan 1844 - February 7, 2022
I used 3 Pianos and a Synthesizer Bass for this song. I added effects to the pianos (chorus on one and reverb on the others). I slowed the song down approximately 25% from its original tempo.
Adagio by Albinoni - February 5, 2022
This is one of my absolute favorite classical songs. I have been a fan of this song since I was in high school. As a young guitarist I was interested in all styles of music. I listened to the same music as my friends (hard rock) but I also listened to classical, jazz, fusion and flamenco. In 1985 I bought an album at Tower Records because it had a guitar player on the cover. I never heard of this person and this was before the internet so there was no way to look up any information. On top of that it was a Japanese Import only so this guy was not very famous. He was Yngwie Malmsteen (pronounced Ing-Vay) and he ushered in a new style of rock music that "those of us at the time" called Neo-Classical Fusion. Picture a rock band with a flashy guitarist playing classical style melodies and that is Neo-Classical Fusion. His album became famous and my #1 favorite song in high school was Icarus Dream Suite. There was no other music like this at the time. It was classical, had distorted rock guitar and acoustic classical guitar, with virtuoso type plying, and a hard rock band. Ten years later I was driving home after a hike, listening to classical music on the radio and what do you know - I heard the same melodies as Yngwie's song. I didn't realize he used the melodies of an old classical song and re-named it. Yngwie's Icarus Dream Suite was based on Adagio by Tomaso Albinoni.
There were many musicians who played Neo-Classical Fusion and it was one of the more popular genres amongst shred guitar players. My favorite guitarist is Tony MacAlpine. He is a trained Classical Pianist who also plays guitar. Here is a nice example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMvqc25AQik
Sadly, the term Neo-Classical Fusion has disappeared from the face of the Earth. I find little to no result when searching the internet. It seems it got changed to a more generic Neo-Classical. How does such a popular term disappear?
For this song I used Violins and other Strings along with Synths and Organs as the instruments. There are 4 different Violins playing the melody, another Violin playing the solo later in the song, 3 Synthesizers playing Viola, Cello, and Contrabass, and three different Organs.
Link to Yngwie's Icarus Dream Suite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Va1F1dQWo
And here is an excellent interpretation of Adagio by Lalle Larson, a Swedish Pianist I really like. He is somewhat unknown (only 300 views on youtube) but I have been listening to him for many years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb26-GsHOD4
Iberia by Isaac Albeniz (Spanish Composer) written between 1905-1909
One of the greatest piano suites ever written and one of the most challenging: "There is really nothing in Isaac Albeniz's Iberia that a good three-handed pianist could not master, given unlimited years of practice and permission to play at half tempo. But there are few pianists thus endowed."
I started creating these pieces with piano but by the 3rd piece the notes came so fast that my computer began to choke. Starting on Book 1 Piece 3 I changed the instruments to acoustic guitar and bass.
I created these tracks January 22-29, 2022.
I didn't change much on these pieces. I just chose the instruments, set the tempo, and mixed the instruments together. I added drums to Book 1 Piece 2 and slowed it down to almost half speed.
After creating the tracks I realized some of mine were much at a faster tempo than the original. I made alternate versions that are closer to normal tempo and moved the faster ones to the end of this track list.