After completing the One Man Band article, I thought I would break out with one more Christmas inspired EWI music video followed up by a quick carol on my iPhone Ocarina. Enjoy some digital music goodness!
EWI USB
For the EWI solo I selected Kenny G’s version of “The Christmas Song” from his album Faith. I have a copy of the musical transcriptions of the songs on this album so could easily use it to duplicate the riffs and customizations Mr. Gorelick employed on this version of the Christmas classic. I was able to get an excellent background track from Karaoke Version. This website sells customizable tracks where you can modify or remove instrumental parts before downloading the selected song. They also duplicated Kenny G’s background music from “The Christmas Song”. For the performance I used the Bb Tenor Saxophone (Jazz version) in the Aria software rather than the soprano saxophone Kenny G uses. I also chose to play an octave lower to give the song a deeper tone. Amazingly I was able to record the song in only two takes. Aside from one or two minor timing flubs I missed a breath near the end but overall it was good enough.
iPhone Ocarina
I decided at the last minute (literally) to record a quick carol on my iPhone Ocarina to include in this Christmas post. Although I purchased Smule’s Ocarina software when it first came out I probably haven’t played it since. A little while ago I saw someone had transcribed the fingering for “The First Noel” so coupled with some background piano music I already had, I thought I could quickly throw something together. I would have liked to record the Ocarina music separately and then integrate all of the audio together in Audacity however the built in record feature in Ocarina wasn’t working correctly (no sound!) and trying to plug the iPhone into the mic input on my computer was also not working. As a result you’ll have to settle for the mic pickup on my camera.
