This may have gone under the radar a bit since it was in my MTP, but my earliest assignment was to transcribe verse/chorus from a song called When You Believe from the motion picture Prince Of Egypt, in particular the version by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston..

Anyhow, a request to try to improve the arrangement lead to the following, which I kind of started as a joke but I carried on. There are lots of examples of different types of rearrangement so it serves on a functional basis too

This isn't mixed and I don't have the time to spend improving it anymore so the levels aren't great, but hopefully it's not too bad.

So here it is for your listening pleasure: When You Be Mashin'

 When_You_Be_Mashin_.mp3 ( 5.61MB ) Number of downloads: 750


EDIT: I've had a request to give some more detail on how this was recorded and such like. The instrumentation used to record was either my Clavinova or my guitar. These in conjunction with some VSTs, which are pretty outdated now. They include EWQL products (not the Play editions) and Amplitube or Waves Mercury GTR for the guitar/bass. My guitar goes through a GT8 but I only use it for the expression pedal, I very rarely use any of the soundbanks any more. The Clavinova acts as my midi input device for both recording and scoring by key input. When recording expressive instruments like a violin or such, I have a little trick where I use the GT8 expression pedal as a midi controller assigned to the mod wheel, to which I set various controls - usually to control the amount of vibrato or attack, but it varies depending on the musical context. That's about it really. Oh, occassionally, as you'll have one or two times in the above track, I'll use a Reason Drum Refill but I tend to use these for the individual drum sounds. The rhythms and patterns I key in using a midi editor. Sometime I'll steal of sample pattern and tweak it to suit, but most of the time I just key in the notes and velocities/expression envelopes. Bass I will sometimes use a VST instrument, othertimes I'll just play the bass for real, it depends - the funk and rock/metal sections at the end wouldn't work with VST instruments, especially the funk bit - those pops and slaps are easier to just play and record live and they sound better - it just takes a little while (for me) to get the right amount of compression on since my bass is very very twangy and I'm a twangy bass player.
Mixing.. well, that's another matter. I have had some experience in mixing and mastering but, as no doubt you'll be able to tell, I didn't bother here - mainly because there were so many different tracks that I had to keep bouncing and I don't have the time right now on something that was just meant to be a musical "joke". I have more serious songs to write at the moment

At some point, perhaps next week, I may attach the score for the big band section which seems to have garnered the most interest. The harmonisation and instrumentation may appeal to some of you. However, I did write about all that in my articles.. check those out if you're interested

Any questions, please feel free to ask. I'm more than happy to try answering them...

This post has been edited by Artemus: Sep 4 2010, 01:15 AM

Awesome jazz! I am really impressed, and seriously man, you are my idol when it comes to transcription, orchestration and arrangements...
... And let's not forget the sudden use of the James Bond theme

This post has been edited by Alexiaden93: Sep 2 2010, 02:59 PM

Cheers Alex
Actually, it James Bond style, but not the theme - it's still the melody of When You Believe
All of the track, whatever style, is either the melody of When You Believe or the chord progression/harmony or derivatives.

Oh, I mean the part starting at 3:32...

Fantastic arrangement...

Wow, I can't believe about this second jazz part, this is so professional!
Who played the piano?

Thanks man
The piano and everything is me

See edit in original post

Haha very electic Mash-up
Very nice quotations and original compositions

Cool work man!

this is way good! thanks for sharing!

ok, my question is:

Where do the brass sounds come from? what VST? I think it sounds excellent!

This post has been edited by Daniel Realpe: Sep 11 2010, 04:26 PM