#52, Evening Exchanges

Quiet North Shore, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.


Boat At Sunset, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.


Evening Exchanges, Santa Clara, California, July ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

It has been about a week since I started working on Evening Exchanges, but it is finished now. Decided to introduce some of my conversations with others during recent weeks into this piano tune. Not literally but the essence of them. You should hear that from music. Written in an F minor key, 78 bars, and 3:50 minutes long. Hope you will listen to it more than once. Please leave comments if you do so.
I do leave snippets of information on twitter during composing, not much but a little bit. You can follow me if you care to know how things are moving along. Since I am fairly new to twitter, it's going to take some time to figure out how, when, about what, tone, etc. to tweet. So far things are progressing quite smooth, and are quite fun. Have a good time listening to Evening Exchanges.

Sheet music: Sara Bareilles - Love Song, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Alicia Keys - No One, EMI Music Publishing, Coldplay - Viva La Vida, Universal Music Publishing Group, from http://www.musicnotes.com.

#51, Nights and Piano Solo Piece

It’s Quiet Now, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

It Wasn’t Me!, Honolulu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.


Nights and Piano, Santa Clara, California, July ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

Just finished this piano solo piece and decided to call it Nights and Piano. Spent many nights working on it, and many days thinking what and how to write it. It is not too heavy; I try to keep it a bit on a romantic side. If you enjoy it, please let me know. In a few moments, I will be thinking about another piece. Did try it with other instruments, in unison only, no attempt to arrange it for several instruments. As it was, sounded quite good, which means that I probably should sit down for few more days and write for those other instruments as well. Let me think about it. The score will be available for download as soon as I get my other web site up and running.
What else? Twitter is getting more and more fun, I hope it does not start to control me in any way, although that could happen, I see it, no kidding.

Dinner: Sushi Boat at a Kobe Japanese Restaurant, http://www.kobesushi.com. $25.57 with tip.

Later in the evening: A glass of a cold Umeshu plum wine, http://www.choya.com.

Books: Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, Guide To The Practical Study Of Harmony, Dover Publications, Inc, http://www.doverpublications.com, ISBN 0-486-44272-1. Can you imagine the original was published in 1900!

Norah Jones, Come Away With Me, Piano - Vocal - Guitar, Hal Leonard Corp., http://www.halleonard.com, and EMI Music Publishing, ISBN 0-634-95264-0.

#48, Green Summer Piano Solo

Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.


I May Be A Robot, Waikiki, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

So I am finally done with a piano solo, which I decided to call Green Summer. Actually it was written before a Good Morning piece, but only finished in the last two days. I think it sounds quite good, and I hope to get some positive comments from you. Why is it called like that? Well, when I look through my windows, I see everything mostly green; trees, grass, plants, and kids wearing green clothes. And it is much warmer because the summer arrived. Now you know how I ended up with this title, although I must say that till this morning it actually was called something else! I do have a "bigger" version with the orchestra also finished, but decided to release the solo piece first. The other version may end up on my next video, I suppose. Enjoy it!


Green Summer, Santa Clara, California, May-June ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

Lunch: Almost vegetarian, with small pieces of chicken, iced tea, at Fresh Choice, http://www.freshchoice.com.

Reading a Book: Lonzell Watson, Final Cut Pro 6, For Digital Video Editors Only, http://www.wiley.com, with DVD, ISBN 978-0-470-22450-2, purchased at Barnes & Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com.

Financial Magazine: Barron’s, http://www.barrons.com, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Do we know when things are finally going to turn up?

#46, Good Morning Piano Solo

Green Leaves And Buds, North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.


Evening Flame, Honolulu, Hawaii, May ‘08, artistic view.

I have been talking about it for a while, and now it is time to show where I am. Decided to keep it as a piano only piece, and not add any more instruments. The basic theme behind it was, and still is: If you woke up in the morning and this piece approached your ears, would you listen to it – first, and would you like it? – second. If I get two yes votes, I would be delighted. No votes means I need to work a bit harder – I actually consider it to be quite fair, not only because I did not spend enough time on this piece. Is it the final version – probably not, every time I look at it, something is about to change. The more I play it, the more I like it, a good sign of things going in the positive direction. Now, let us play it.


Good Morning, Santa Clara, California, May-June ‘08, Piano Solo, Composed by Vatsek.

Good Morning Music © 2008 by Vatsek Music.

#40, W Cliff Rd, US Video Is Out

Phalaenopsis Orchid, Santa Clara, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

I managed to release my latest video filmed mostly in Santa Cruz, California. Everything in that video comes from a West Cliff Rd, hence the title, but I expanded it to something broader. And added a little bit of dream quality through color changes. I was cruising up and down the street, filming everything that looked interesting, and then edited the best pieces I could. The filming part is the least time consuming part and most pleasant at the same time. Editing takes much more time, many, many hours. The longest one is writing the music, however, at least several days. It sounds good in stereo, as it is mixed for stereo, but ended up only in mono – not exactly sure why that happened since I did everything to make it sound stereo. The first part of the composed piece is a piano solo, Steinway D to be exact. The second and the third parts just add more instruments but play the same melody. I limited the number of instruments here to: Steinway D piano, Stradivari violin, cello, vertical bass, double bass, string section, and timpani to close it. Not too many but the sound is already getting quite rich. There is a definite need to post my music separately in its highest quality, but this site does not let you do it easily. This becomes more and more urgent. Writing for the piano is indeed the most challenging part of all.
I think I am going to write something for Spanish guitar, finished Celino Romero’s book and listened to the CD, and liked it a lot. Why not give it a try.
Comments do not seem to be working on YouTube very well; the whole site is full of new problems.
What next? Lots of filming, lots of tape, lots of natural sounds, lots of battery recharging, but a little bit of break from editing, and submitting videos.

Lunch: cooked mixed grains of rice, buckwheat, millet, and sorghum with Marie Callender’s marinara sauce and La Mexicana mild salsa. Mint tea to drink, hot not iced. Almost no fat, just pure goodness!

Book: Celino Romero, The Art of Spanish Guitar, Amsco Publications, http://www.musicsales.com, with CD, ISBN-10: 0-8256-3461-X.

#26, Music for Untitled

Need More Light, Santa Clara, California, September ‘07, artistic view.

Not long time ago I bought my first music mp3 files from Amazon.com, and downloaded them. Those were Justin Timberlake’s What Goes Around…/…Comes Around and My Love. The Amazon.com transaction was smooth, no issues, song descriptions are clear, reviews usually useful, and the search is also working fine. And most important, no DRM. In the past I bought something from Apple but the DRM pretty much prevented it from listening to it in any reasonable way. Things have changed since then, I know, but I did not go back yet.
Spent some time going over Sarah McLachlan’s I Will Remember You sheet music, pp. 149-53, while drinking coffee and eating fried chicken strips and rice pilaf dinner at a restaurant one late evening. Have to conclude that the piano part is relatively simple. If I could only sing like her! Regular, not decaf, in case you wonder.
Replied to email from Jewel, not private though. I am officially entered into a T-shirt drawing contest now promoting her new single. Hope I get the right size!
The next video for YouTube has no title yet, and only some vague ideas about the subject. The music is being written, three pieces finished, one more today, then intro and coda in the next two days or so. Now I am breaking my own rule about not talking about something not yet released!

For breakfast: cooked edamame, Japanese wakame seaweed salad with sesame seeds, roasted eel, multi-grain bread, hot jasmine tea. Yummy!
And a quick look at Barron’s financial pages and Yahoo finance. Gold went down so much in the last few days.

Sheet music: Pop/Rock Piano Hits for Dummies by Robbie Gennet, a Hal Leonard book, ISBN: 1-4234-0775-X, http://www.halleonard.com.

CD listening to: Amarantine by Enya, http://www.repriserecords.com, using Audacity.

Jewel’s web site: http://www.jeweljk.com
Barron’s web site: http://www.barrons.com

#23, Three New Videos

Time To Get Up, Santa Clara, California, April ‘08, artistic view.

Yes, I know. I did not write anything for a while, and my goal of writing at least twice a week goes up in smoke. And the goal of submitting a video per week is also unrealistic. I spend quite a bit of time shooting, about a day with preparations, travel, finding something interesting and shooting on location. It is good that in the Bay Area everything is not too far away, usually within 1-2 hours of driving. Editing, as you well know, can be pretty slow depending on your approach. I have, depending on the video length, 30-50 clips to edit. Every single one is tweaked till it looks good and makes sense, and is not out of line with the major theme for that part of video. Still using iMovie, but it is obvious and almost mandatory to switch to something better, simply because many other people on YouTube already switched to much more advanced, and expensive, video editing software. Those with iMovies are simply going to fall behind. Actually I was thinking a bit about the future on YouTube, and since good videos are expensive to make, and require fairly expensive equipment, there is probably not much room for people with small budgets, and cameras built into their laptops. Sad but true. The higher video quality, HD especially, is going to be expensive and not viable to many people making videos today. Do you agree with me?
My last three videos come from Monterey, Santa Cruz, and Mt. Hamilton near San Jose, CA. They look quite good, I believe. I seem to like recording natural sounds more and more, even very basic sounds, ocean, passing cars, and splashed water. The stereo mike I am using is picking up lots of sounds from different direction, even me breathing - not necessarily what I want. A good stereo shotgun will be tried very soon, maybe even on the next video.
Composing music is something I am enjoying more and more and plenty of music books are scattered around my place for easy reference. Today I was listening to the score from Serenity by David Newman. Also today started to read Gabriel Yared's The English Patient by Heather Laing, ISBN-10: 0-8108-5910-6, which is a film score guide. Let me say the Hollywod Studio Symphony sounds good!

PS. First year on YouTube summary as promised - tomorrow.