Blog moved

Hello Everybody. I doubt anyone still reads this blog as I haven't posted here in ages. But for those who do, I just wanted to let you know I now maintain a new blog at my main website Audiomuse. Check it out for my latest compositions, arrangements, and writings. Remember to like me on Facebook too!

Audiomuse releases its first album!

Do you like video game music? Me too! My latest album Chronicles of Time is a collection of my latest music compositions in the Japanese RPG style and you can get it for $6.99. Alternatively, you can download singles for $1.00 apiece. Buy it today!

Yakusoku no Basho / 約束の場所 (FFXIII-2) - Original Piano Arrangement

Hello all. Thanks for waiting and sorry for not having posted for so long. I've been sooo swamped lately with school/work/life. A lot of changes are coming soon, so this will be my last video until the new year.

This is the main theme from Final Fantasy XIII-2, sung by Mai Fukui, written by Koichi Tabo, of Superfly.

There were some things I didn't like about the original song so I have made some minor modifications to make it stand better as a solo piece. For instance, I took out one of the repetitions in the final chorus, and also shortened the outro and included my personal coda. The chords in Yakusoku no Basho are less sophisticated than those in Kimi ga Iru Kara, but it is quite an emotional song overall. My reason for writing an alternative ending, was because the original ending sounded inconclusive, as it ends on an imperfect cadence. I don't know the story of Final Fantasy 13 extremely well, but as it is a sequel, I would imagine the story comes to a close. So I thought a traditional perfect cadence ending on the tonic (with signature added second) would work better.

Stagnant but different

Work and school continue on and the double-life persists, but unlike before, I can be a student for an entire day, and a web developer for an entire day, alternating days. And I also have Fridays off. I the word "off" loosely, as it usually implies I spend the time on whatever needs to be done, be it homework, freelance work, music composition, or collaborating with other artists.

Speaking of which. There have been a sudden influx of wedding gigs for Solaris Piano Trio all summer this year. Either it is a good year to get married, or we suddenly promoted ourselves really well. A couple of months ago, I designed some business cards for each member of the trio and we've been handing them out sporadically at gigs. People have responded positively to the business cards, so I guess I did a pretty good job then.

We played through the Overture and Gavotte I of my latest composition, Orchestral Suite No. 1, yesterday night and it was pretty smooth-sailing, with very few rhythm issues. Some of the rhythms were a bit troublesome, but in all, I'd say I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out. So far I've been approached by 4 people showing interest for the solo parts. Can't wait to hear the whole thing! As usual, our fall semester concert will take place in December. We are still deciding on the exact date, which will either be on the first or the second of the month. So stay tuned!

Vincent Lo - Orchestral Suite No. 1

Some time over the summer, I started sketching out what would eventually become the Overture of an orchestral suite. The fugue was originally going to be a keyboard work, but by the time I had something substantial, the fall semester was creeping closer, so I figured I would incorporate it into a work for the SFU Chamber Orchestra. And then the other movements sort of fell in place. And also I listened to lots of Bach to try to avoid accidentally copying him.

Comments welcome. Enjoy.

i. Overture
ii. Air
iii. Gavotte I - Gavotte II - Gavotte I da Capo
iv. Gigue

PREFACE

Orchestral Suite No. 1 has been composed for the Simon Fraser University Chamber Orchestra. I started the project in the middle of 2011 and worked on it on and off throughout the summer. Inspired by the orchestral suites of Johann Sebastian Bach, this work features a solo trio on flute, clarinet, and cello, with ripieno strings, continuo, and harpsichord.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Connor Bartol (clarinet), Adrienne Marino (flute), Steven Su (violin), and Jaewon Yon (cello) for participating in the reading session and advising for this work. I would also like to thank the entire Simon Fraser University Chamber Orchestra for inspiring me to take on this project.

Vincent Wayne--Ted Lo Saturday, October 15, 2011

A midsummer’s update

So thought I’d just do an update since I haven’t posted any videos in ages. My schedule for the past few months has been pretty routine. In short, it’s sort of part-time work with part-time school. I use the term “part-time” loosely, because sometimes my weekly work hours sometimes totals to be something close to the number of hours a full-time employee would be doing. It’s weird being both a student and an employee at the same time because I constantly find myself in a dilemma when deciding which one takes priority. And this is especially tricky since the one course that I am taking is pretty much all group work. Heh.

The SFU Chamber Orchestra is still going strong this summer, which is something new, since we usually take a hiatus and make our return in the Fall. This summer, we’re playing a variety of pieces including:

• Concerto Grosso No. 10 in b minor, by Vivaldi
• Memory of the Wind ~Legend of the Eternal Wind~, by Nobuo Uematsu, re-arranged by Tsuyoshi Sekito, and re-rearranged by Me!
• One Summer's Day, by Joe Hisashi

Most of our repertoire requires substantial substitution by other instruments, since our ensemble is a bit smaller than it is usually. My arrangement of Memory of the Wind ~Legend of the Eternal Wind~ was composed strictly for our current ensemble, so there were some interesting challenges to overcome and redistribution of soloists to make things work. Our set-up is roughly like this:

• 2 flutes
• 2 clarinets
• 1 horn
• 1 piano
• 6 violins
• 1 cello

For example, a solo line that was originally for trumpet was given to the clarinets in the arrangement, or something like that. We will be premiering this work and the concerto at the end of July in an out-doors talent show run by the university. Stay tuned!

Swamped

Work. School. Music. Agh!!

Yuna's Decision (Yuna's Determination) (FFX) - Original Piano Arrangement

Yuna's Decision (also known as Yuna's Determination) is an incidental music piece composed by Nobuo Uematsu and Junya Nakano for the video game Final Fantasy X. It accompanies the Calm Plains location.

Yuna's Determination is full of voice-overlapping goodness! When I first started this arrangement I was faced with the challenge of how to best notate the left hand, as it crosses into the treble register many times. To change clefs would occupy horizontal space, and to use cross-staff beaming would confuse the hand distribution of notes. For this arrangement, I have decided to accommodate explicit hand distribution to the two staffs since each hand is already so busy with multiple voices. That is, throughout the piece, if a note is written in the upper staff, it is for the right hand, otherwise it is for the left hand. There is no notation to indicate this, but rather, it is usually up to the pianist to figure out.

When we get to m.16 (0:33), things get interesting with the addition of a countermelody indicated by the small notes. In the original, this line is sounded by a slow-strings synth, so during performance, try to implement an exaggerated legato if possible. That is, to keep the previous note held down for some extra duration while you play the next note.

Score is up on my website. Comments and feedback welcome. Enjoy!

Vincent Lo - Concerto Grosso in F Major

Surprise! For the past few months, I have been working on composing a Baroque concerto grosso. It was a wonderful learning process requiring many discussions and reading sessions between myself and various friends from the SFUCO. As I have expanded my writing to winds this time, there were many new fun challenges to tackle and it has been an immensely enjoyable experience. So anyways, enjoy and leave comments as you please.

i. Allegro ma non troppo.
ii. Largo.
iii. Menuetto - Trio - Menuetto inverso

PREFACE. This piece was composed for the Simon Fraser University Chamber Orchestra and I started the project in December 2010. Having composed my first violin concerto not long ago last summer, I decided to expand my instrumentation to incorporate winds into my next work. Having studied the Brandenburg Concertos of Bach, I was inspired to compose a concerto grosso in a similar style with my own personal touch.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. I would like to thank George Chung (violin), Rei Miyasaka (violin), Jerry Yon (cello), Grandy Chu (cello), Colin Hume (horn), Fatima Lee (basoon), and Maia Smith (oboe) for dedicating their time to review my writing on request. And once again, I would like to thank the entire Simon Fraser University Chamber Orchestra for inspiring me to take on this project.

Vincent Lo Monday, January 31, 2011

Kimi ga Iru Kara / 君がいるから (Final Fantasy XIII) - Original Piano Arrangement

The first time I came across Kimi ga Iru Kara on YouTube, I couldn't hear anything special about the song. But upon repeated listenings, I realized that this song is full of unique modulations that one does not typically find in Japanese pop songs. The driving force behind this piece is the key change between the tonic and the flattened fifth (B major and F major and all their related keys). Who would have thought to implement that into a pop song? That is simply genius.

Some challenges in arranging this piece was getting the page turns to be as unobtrusive as possible, while minimizing the number of pages. Also there is a part in the first introduction where I use a triplet. This is to accommodate for the rolled chord that comes right after. There are also some subtle rhythmic differences between my arrangements and the original for the sake of pianistic writing and ease of playing.

Hope you enjoy it. Please rate and comment. Score will be available at my website.

Vivace, from Organ Trio Sonata III (Bach, BWV 527) - Original Piano Arrangement

Finally!

Got owned by the flu

So I recently got owned by the flu and went through a bit of vomiting and fevering, but am all better now. I had to miss two rehearsals for my choir accompanist job, but from what I gather, things will be okay for the concert on Sunday. On the upside, I had time to recover, so it was all bed rest for the past few days. Tomorrow is my graduation concert, so I am excited for that. Will post audio clips after.

Holiday begins! (well sorta ...)

Today was the last day of classes for the semester. I know this blog post probably won’t count towards my course blogging component, but what the hell, I might as well blog about it anyway. I only have one exam this semester—lucky me—as two of the courses I am taking do not have exams: one of them being the technical writing course (this one) and the other one being my graduation music composition course. So for the rest of this week my schedule is a non-stop stream of gigs! This is both good and bad since I get to play music and earn money, but it doesn’t leave me a lot of down time. We’ll see if I can get back to doing more piano arrangements next week if my schedule frees up.

Vid. 1. The SFU Chamber Orchestra premieres my violin concerto! December 3, 2010.

Also, my violin concerto was premiered by the wonderful SFU Chamber Orchestra last Friday. My friend Rei has uploaded the above video recording. Enjoy!

Random thoughts on sonata form

Just like the Rondo form, the Sonata allegro form also supports memorable themes well. It is presented with a binary form superstructure, where the first and second halves are of the form A B—A being the principle theme, and B being the secondary theme. And on its return in the second half, the B section is in the tonic key. While many contemporary musicians object to the strictness of this setup, I believe that a composer has the capabaility to make some "contemporary" modifications to obscure the strictness. As in the first movement of Schoenberg's third string quartet, we can mask the sonata form by treating the recapitulation differently, whether by varying:

• the vertical configuration of voices,
• The overall musical texture of the passage, or
• even the lengths of sections by adding or subtracting parts from the melody.

While these variations may not be very novel, I believe they can too be considered as "contemporary" influences, as we are changing the form of what was once traditional, and instead using it as a vague basis for new innovations.

Random thoughts on rondo form

Much of my writing is formal, in that it follows a standard musical form. The rondo form in particular carries a certain elegance in that the recurring A sections are memorable and are separated by new contrasting material (sections B, C, etc.). I find that if I make the A section just long enough to be memorable, the audience will anticipate its return with a sense of familiarity. Then the other contrasting sections can be longer, as they are heard only once.

Here is an example rondo form I have used recently, for the third movement of the string trio that I composed for my graduation term project. The superstructure is A B A C A Coda. The A section is in binary form:

||: a :||: b :||

Then sections B and C each feature two themes the come one after another, and then they are repeated once more with slight variation:

a b a b′

where for b′, I replace the second half of its statement with some material that is derived from both the a and b of this section. I then finished off with a coda derived from material of section B, but with much sparser notation of sustained notes, leaving the audience hungry for more. (I hope!)

On rehearsing Violin Concerto in A Minor

We had a solid rehearsal of the Violin Concerto in A minor again tonight and I must say it’s really becoming close to how I had imagined it. We spent quite a lot of time on the ritardandos at the ends of movements, and I think we are getting better at keeping in time with one another. I was especially impressed at the amount of progress everyone made since we first started learning this piece. Cheers to all!

Canker sore woes

Canker sore. A pair of words that I associate with excruciating pain. (If you already know what they are, you may want to skip the following paragraph.)

I find it socially awkward to explain what a canker sore is to someone who has never encountered them, so instead, I will have my trusty friend, Wikipedia, help out:

An aphthous ulcer (pronounced /ˈæpθəs/) also known as a canker sore, is a type of oral ulcer, which presents as a painful open sore inside the mouth or upper throat characterized by a break in the mucous membrane. Its cause is unknown, but they are not contagious. The condition is also known as aphthous stomatitis, and alternatively as Sutton's Disease, especially in the case of major, multiple, or recurring ulcers.

Maybe that wasn't the best way to describe it, but then again, how do you describe something that causes so much discomfort and pain, that people cannot see without asking you to open your mouth and peer inside?

Canker sores can affect one’s social life in several ways. When one gets a canker sore, depending on the location and severity, it can be unbearably painful to speak. Sometimes speaking is unavoidable. I work in an office-type workplace and luckily for me, I can use e-mail to explain to a co-worker why I was so withdrawn earlier. My work is also related to public health, so at least half of the staff may have some idea. But this is not always the case.

Sometimes I have to pay for food at the convenience store. If a friendly cashier tries to strike up a conversation with me, in most cases, I try my best to speak a moderate amount—not too little to give the impression that I am rude, and not too much to give the impression that I am talkative—and try my very hardest to bear the pain.

It is situations like these that explaining the circumstances—that I have a canker sore—that causes social awkwardness. What if he or she doesn’t know what a canker sore is? That would lead to more questions, or even worse, he or she may think I have some horrible contagious disease, and it is too painful to try to explain it isn’t so.

Random thoughts on mixolydian mode

The mixolydian mode is another one of my favourites. The flattened seventh softens the effect of perfect cadences from V to I. When I hear music in this mode, I often think of adventure and fantasy, a little bit playful.

Random thoughts on dorian mode

I find that much of my writing tends to gravitate towards dorian mode. I find that anything written in dorian mode has the ability to sound more sophisticated than it would be otherwise. There's something about that raised sixth that lifts me up. As if I'm floating in space, looking down at the state of the world ...

Sick :(

I think I have a cold or something because my throat’s been bothering me for the past few days, not to mention the lack of sleep and stuff with all this school and work stuff. As you may have suspected, my piano arrangement work has been put on hold for the time being. In the mean time I will be preparing for several concerts, 3 of which I will be playing in. The one coming up, of course, would be Memoire d’hiver, during which my Violin Concerto in A minor will be premiered.