Kashish's blog

A blog of my music and musings. I improvise on the guitar. I create music for films, theater, and games. Some of my works Ask me anything Contact me Blog changelog Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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First ATCL exam yesterday.

And so ends the unhappy (largely through my own efforts) saga of my first ATCL exam. The program notes that I wrote for it - ("Spainish". Ugh.)

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Been unable to log into Tumblr for a few days - stupid old 'There was a problem logging in'. I had upgraded Ghostery and apparently it needed some more retweaking than I recalled. Recently completed twenty-three years of existence - twenty-three years of social awkwardness, feeling of inadequacy, and personal dissatisfaction. Life goes on in solemn hope that one can do something to quell the last two. There was a 12-hour powercut notification at my place recently. Which made me scramble to get the composition I was working on onto a paper so I could continue working on it. While the powercut thankfully didn't occur, I'm now looking into keeping all my compositions on paper after all, to protect against some kind of no-electricity-in-the-world scenario. How unlikely that is - very. How obsessed I am about it nonetheless - naggingly so.

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New composition

Writing the next in the 'Memories of Maplestory' series, 'The Warrior'. This is my first composition actually written for the orchestra from scratch. This will also be my first composition which I haven't 'heard', outside of sight-singing, in a scorewriter or sequencer before production. I hope this one will be a lot more interesting, harmonically, structurally, and rhythmically, than my previous works - I certainly tried to be more adventurous. Really excited about it. Have been listening to a lot of Mahler of late. I realized a while back I should be listening to a lot more music than I did earlier. And not just from the CPP, but also from the contemporary classical scene...even if the work is not my cup of tea. I might be getting another film job - yay. Wouldn't be ethical to divulge more than that at the moment, though. Speaking of films, I mentioned in the last post that I'd be putting up music from the last film project - unfortunately, I can't post said music until the film is released. Ack.

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At long last.

Shared with Dropbox

'Memories of MapleStory' - 1 - 'The Beginner'. The piece I mentioned in my last post, now completed. It is inspired by the game MapleStory, and is the first in a series of...about sixteen pieces (insert exclamations here). FLAC MP3 (Score for 12 string guitar solo (grand staff) and for two guitars with contrabass coming as soon as I get some glitches fixed) The composition is getting stale, at least to my ears. Probably because I came up with the basic idea really long back, but only started work on it last year, and have been constantly reworking it since then. At any rate, I don't hate it, else it wouldn't be here. In other news, I am back from a trip to Mumbai - my first 'work' trip, for my first...film score. :D Due to the requirements of the film I ended up doing only about eight to nine scenes. I enjoyed it, and I liked the work I did there, although it also made me question whether I really like doing film music - the money is certainly all there, but it does constrain you - your musical experiments are constrained within the boundaries of the film, the scene, the situation. I will put up the work I did there, if given permission by the good director.

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Kolkata, composition, ambition.

Went to Kolkata, for the Calcutta International Classical Guitar Festival and Competition 'Denis Azabagic' 2012-2013. My father, at the last moment, gave me a small blank notebook, telling me to keep a journal...I didn't have any inclination to, but it turned out to be pretty handy. Nothing like writing to take your mind off things, just like playing or writing music. Having been requested to do so by a friend, I will, in the days to come, post what I wrote there. I've made a composition, which, as far as I understand, and I'm told by some that in this case I don't, was not received as well as some of my earlier works, even though I really liked how it came out. Changing a few last quirks I have with it, and then...releasing audio and score. Attempting to get myself a small MIDI keyboard and a mic. Preparing to give recitals, too...although I am simply sick and tired of performance - I confess that I cannot trouble myself with thinking of presentation for such lengths - and am longing to improvise on stage. But the level required, to improvise such that it interests people...is quite high, I think...I simply do not trust my improv capabilities with that, as they stand of now.

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Classical guitar recording tumult

I wanted to record my classical guitar improvisations. Tried to, through a clip-on piezo that I have. Sounded...ultra thin. Like a mandolin. And that was the E2 note. Well, not entirely unexpected. -facepalm- Playing and recording through my electric was out, because I realized my nails were being shredded when I played it. I'll have to look for some kind of solution for that, because I love the electric guitar for it's long sustain, just as much as I love the classical guitar. Anyway, I was curious to know what the heck I'd do for live work and for recording myself as far as the classical was concerned. Piezo-based systems...no thanks, I have a budget guitar. I set about looking for microphones. Budget of under 10k INR...that's 200 USD. On one hand, I can afford the evergreen SM57 which could let me do a lot of things which any job might require (I'd be screwed if someone asked me to record vocals right now). Still, I hear too much bad stuff about it regarding classical guitar. The Sennheiser MD421 II gets rave reviews for a mid-range microphone for classical guitar, but it's absolutely out of my budget. Oh, and, I know these are dynamic microphones and all, but I'll be recording and playing in sub-par conditions, although someone did recommend a pair of Audio Technica 4041s...

Eventually decided to just save up for an MD421 or two. Will record on my portable audio player in the meantime. I also realized that it doesn't really matter that much. Take for instance this guy...the audio quality is trashy, but I didn't even notice for most part - I was too busy being blown away by the improvisation itself.

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Blast from the past, a transcription, and new work.

One of my friends recently posted something I had heard really way long ago. This -

When I had first heard it, I was just starting out in classical guitar, and this, in a way, demonstrated to me what was possible with what I was learning...where the Path could lead to, so to say. I wanted sheet music for this back then, but that wasn't available, and transcribing it was pretty much out of bounds for my non-existent ear back then. There was this Guitar Pro file floating around somewhere back then, too - I don't remember whether it was accurate or not... Anyway - now, however, is a different story, and now it's easy enough for me...so I ventured to transcribe it. While it's not finished yet, I've done up to 24 bars, and that may be downloaded here - Standard notation Standard notation with tab Update, with some attention to note groupings, more sections fleshed out; I think it's usable up to bar 27 now - Standard notation Standard notation with tab Both the scores are being done in MuseScore - I had to download the 2012-10-22 Nightly Build for getting the tablature facility, and I must say, the interface in it looks absolutely beautiful. Speaking of which, I don't recommend tab. It's primary weaknesses stand out in music like this - the first being lack of rhythm, and the second being lack of fingering flexibility. Particularly the former - it'll be very hard to understand the rhythm here unless you can read standard notation. You've been warned. I'm also working on polishing another old composition, eventually to be orchestrated and put up here. Stay tuned.

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(Click the title to download.) I had hoped to finish it by yesterday afternoon, but all I ended up with by night was an almost-final revision. This will have to do for now, because I feel my ears' judgment is failing due to hearing this song too much. Give it a listen - what do you think? As I mentioned, I originally scored this song for voice and two guitars, and you can get the original score here. As always, please tell me if any link doesn't work. Thank you. PS - From now on I guess I'll be uploading in the MP3 format, because Tumblr integrates that better and so do most playback devices...Sigh, I liked OGG Vorbis =\ Tumblr's MP3 implementation isn't great shakes - it's playing back all distorted (looks like a bug with Flash), and moreover, it won't let anyone download the file...and so we backtrack to Google Drive.

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(WIP) Orchestration and production of my 'Opening Song'

EDIT - I updated this work, please see this post.

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The music file can be downloaded from this link. It says 'Opening Song' but I think it's more apt to call it, 'What Is Theater All About'...a rename's due. It's a song which I did for a play, presented here in an instrumental format. It's my first attempt at orchestration. I'll put up a score of the original, which was for voice and two guitars, soonish. The link may change as I update. If the link does not work, please inform me through comments/messages.