FIlm / TV Theme playthroughs (YouTube)

Over the last week I've decided to record and upload to YouTube one film or TV theme per day.

None of these are perfect recordings, but I thought it was an interesting project for a few reasons. These are:

1) To get better at recording the piano, eventually ending up with something usable on a project hopefully.

2) Practice sight-reading. All of these pieces have nearly no preparation, and are the result of a few takes, and maybe a prior look the day before.

3) To get used to producing something regularly on a schedule.

Here are the most recent two videos, in which the video quality is actually fairly bad, but the audio is approaching a good standard.

Star Wars - Princess Leia's Theme

Star Trek First Contact Main Theme

As you can hear, there are a few mistakes in both of these, but of course that's not the point.

The rest of the videos can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DanielBarkleyMusic

If you have any suggestions for other themes to record, please let me know. I've unfortunately lost my Jurassic Park book, but when I find it, that's next.

I may branch out and do some classical stuff, but for now it's film & TV.

Any comments / suggestions are welcome.

yep, its nice but i feel as though you are not fluent enough with the theme(star trek one) there are lots of stops between, the first is good though.

i took out E.T. theme, which ain't so easy if you continue for all the changes, make it by ear and not by reading, the best way to get better imo. take out alf tune which is quite easy to take out but not so easy to play on piano. there are more but this what came to mind.

Hi The J.

I'm not doing these by ear because I'm working on sight-reading. Working on transcription is another skill which I do develop, and don't really want to combine with these videos since I'm under a lot of time constraints at the moment.

I don't hear lots of stops in the First Contact theme, only one (at 2:21). It felt fluent to play, except for one or two places, so perhaps what you're hearing is simply rhythmic variances, which unfortunately are there.

Thanks for the comments. I may try E.T. at some stage; I like the music from that movie.

Hi

that's great your video on youtobe

I like best : http://www.youtube.com/user/DanielBarkleyMusic

thank for your share and continue your work

and all are ready to listen to you new music

did you have any luck to produce your first album or liveshow?

Cheers

Vietnam vacation/Halong Cruises/Muine

Hi lehoa,

There is an album in the works, but totally unrelated to this stuff! It will be an album of Irish tunes on the trumpet + piano accomp. Likely some YouTube clips of that at some point.

I kind of neglected this for a while, but I'm thinking of putting up some more clips this week. Perhaps something from Jurassic Park.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, main theme (Jerry Goldsmith)

Some Jurassic Park coming soon...

great!

some stuff i hear-

the last chord just before the ship sets off, and the groove begins to pick up-is a nasty chord C#/C

you should fix 1:43-1:48 the pedal you're doing isn't going all the time in that chord-check the original.

if you could get it more up tempo, it would seriously rock.

all in all good job, need abit more fixing!

The last chord before the tempo change is a Db maj7 in first inversion.

The chords are right in 1:43 - 1:48 (at least in the official arrangement, and by my ear). As for any messy bits: I only worked on this for a short while over 2 days, so yea, it's far from perfect.

Same thing applies to the tempo. I was practising this at dotted quarter = 120 (insanely fast) but when it came to recording, there would inevitably be a mistake or two somewhere unless I slowed it down a bit.

I would've liked faster, but given the short time frame, I'm not too worried.

Cheers.

Dan -

You are on the right track - practice sight reading by going under tempo for accuracy of rhythmn and pitch.

Another way to improve your sight reading skills is to choose music with c -clefs (as you would for score reading). Granted there is a big debate about their utility, but for sight reading and, to a lesser degree, transposition at sight, it is very very helpful. Look for Morris' Prepatory Exercises in Score Reading. This would be an adjunct to what youare doing. Transposition at sight can be done once you can sight read accurately and at a comfortable tempo some of the pieces chosen. When you practice transciption at sight, your sight reading of the piece in the original key will be much better as transposition slows down your automatic reflexes and you become more aware of the mechanics of the piece.

Keep up the good work Daniel. BTW, what are you doing this for? And have you posted new pieces in the past monoth or two?

The last chord before the tempo change is a Db maj7 in first inversion.

last inversion i think-its the maj7 on the bass and the 5 on highs.

what is that official arrangement? i hear alot of other not so accurate, did you take it straight up from the theme?

@The J

It's in first inversion, F in the bass. There is a C/Db clash in the middle. Deal with it ;)

This is the arrangement published by Hal Leonard with a few tweaks by me.

@ Chris

I'll look into that book. I'm not bad with C clefs, though slow in lower tenor clef stuff (since tenor clef is almost only used for high stuff :-p) but good ideas.

Here's my latest Youtubing.... not film or TV but a Mozart piano duet with both parts played par moi :o

This is how I recorded it:

http://danielbarkleymusic.blogspot.com/2011/02/piano-duets-for-one.html

Jurassic Park - A Tree for my Bed

And a little explanation of the recording / videoing process.

http://danielbarkleymusic.blogspot.com/2011/02/jurassic-park-piano.html

I did a piano tutorial of the Star Trek: First Contact main theme.

Not perfect, but gets the job done.

Blog post about it too:

http://danielbarkleymusic.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-contact-piano-tutorial.html

I like the Star Wars theme. You're doing great. How long have you been doing these kind of stuff?

Thanks! I've been posting these vids for about a year now, just sporadically, when I have time, and feel like it.