Duck Music

(Or Other things Duck does to waste time!)

If there was ever a waste of bandwidth, this is the page. Well, okay, many of you were wondering what I do besides write stories. I make music. Of that is, a few years ago, I was a part-time wedding musician. Not an ordinary one though. Where I was at the time, northern Tennessee, I got this great idea. Our accountant’s daughter got married, we were invited to the wedding and reception. It was in a nice church, with all the trimmings, decorations, the service was nice and all that. Except the music. Although the standard music in the service was performed on a piano, the couple’s “special song” was done by somebody dragging out a boombox and playing a CD. Kinda looked cheap to me. I said, “At least I could play an instrument and supply a ‘real’ musician…”, me, to perform and help make the rest of her wedding a “little more special”.

At the reception, it was our first visit to a “southern wedding reception”. What’s different about a “southern wedding reception”? Actually about half the receptions are what you typically see with a DJ or live band, an all-out party breaks out and you have innumerable repeats of “The Chicken Dance”, “The Macarena”, “The Hokey-Pokey”, and the “Theme from The Godfather”…. The other more typical receptions down South have a single musician, a pianist, or in the case of this wedding, a harpist. Just playing some nice slow tunes in the background, unlike the “party” reception which usually wakes the dead and half the patrons at the Holiday Inn. I bugged the harpist, asked her a few questions, and I figured I had a fun, “profitable” idea. Many of these receptions were more like “tea parties” or “teas”. Just more sociable, more quiet, usually most of it is “outside” and on a Saturday afternoon instead of a Friday or Saturday night (gotta be able to recover from the hangover just in time to drive over to Bristol to catch the NASCAR races, ya know!).

I started off and practiced and tried out some music by playing from my synthesizer, an Ensoniq SQ1. But the fun thing was, though, was that this keyboard had a sequencer. A sequencer? What’s that? Basically I could take music and set it up to play by itself. Kinda like a player piano. Well, geez, maybe I have a market for this. Music for your wedding that plays perfectly. No errors. I bring in the real music equipment, my own sound equipment.

Another thing about Southern churches and weddings, any old church down south won’t just let anyone play their church organ or piano. Sometimes you even have to audition to a church for them even to let you play on their organ, even if it’s just for one wedding service. Well, la-dee-freaking-da. I’ll bring my own keyboard and even reproduce your organ sound. Fine, be that way!

Well, I started off by preparing a half-hour of “preludes”, or songs you play before a church service, the wedding music itself (The Wedding March and all that), and some more incidental music to play afterwards while everyone scatters off from the church. For these “tea” receptions, I arranged and sequenced up about 5 hours of soft pop music, old standards, and whatnot.

What’s this “arranging and sequencing”? Well, with modern technology, you can now sit behind your PC (or Mac) and write up music on your computer and have a keyboard/synthesizer play it back. I just took it a few steps further. I would take all of Mom’s church music songbooks and punch in all the music into the PC, and half of my songbooks of pop music and punch that all in. Then I would take the synthesizer and a laptop PC and play it back at the service or the reception. Some music I would have all the accompanying parts play by the laptop, and I would play the melody on the keyboard itself, so at least it would LOOK like a live performance.

That worked out nicely. But it took about a half year or so just to punch in thousands of notes. (Wore out three mice that year.) One of the other things I could do was that sometimes a couple (usually the bride) wanted to have a friend or relative sing at their wedding, but I could “tailor” the music for the soloist. “You can’t sing that in B-flat? Fine, let’s use the music-editing software on the PC and lower the song down to G and try that.” So I could custom-tailor music for the wedding.

So later I found “the Internet” and shared MIDI files with other MIDI hobbyists. (What’s MIDI? That’s a whole ‘nuther story.) So instead of punching in all the music myself, I would find hobbyists that have punched up good arrangements of popular tunes already and I published/uploaded some of mine to share. So instead of worrying about keying in Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do”, somebody else had already gone through the trouble of punching it in at his own PC at home and making it sound like the original Bryan Adams version.

Since I was using a synthesizer, I could sound like almost any instrument. I’ve changed piano music to organ music and vice versa. One amusing thing that I’ve done was for a bride who used to be a french horn player. She wanted the Wedding March done in brass instrument sounds. Piece of cake. Easy. I took my arrangement and changed all the organ settings to trumpets, french horns, trombones, and tubas. Sounded just fine in the basement of our house. The day of the wedding I carted my synth, a laptop, and my PA system (a couple of Peavey SP5’s with a 300-watt amplifier) to the wedding venue. It was at one of the pavilions at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville. Okay, now I know I’ve made it. Not only do I have a big audience just with the wedding party, but my PA system is playing throughout the interior of the Opryland Hotel. Sounded just fine there. When the trumpets kicked in on the Wedding March, everyone was looking about for real trumpets! After all was said and done, the couple was very happy. I gave out about 200 business cards that afternoon.

I was mostly busy for three summers in a row (the prime wedding season was May through August). I wound down my business after the third year as Duckling1 was born. Okay, so I was no longer able to try out new arrangements of songs at “concert level” volumes.

My first “successful” gig was my Cousin Julia’s wedding, a few years later, my last “successful” gig was my older brother’s wedding reception eight months after Duckling1 was born. As for “unsuccessful” gigs, I’ve had a couple. One gig was unsuccessful in that I got into a car crash while driving from the wedding TO the reception (See “Sunrise, Sunset” below). The other unsuccessful gig was that the mother-of-the-bride hired me, thinking I was a DJ, but didn’t tell her daughter that I was a musician, NOT a DJ. I was nearly beaten up by a dozen marines (the groom’s buddies) expecting The Macarena.

So what do I have to show for these years of musical mayhem? Some tunes! All of the tunes below are MP3’s. I now have a different synthesizer, and a much newer PC, and music editing software. I collected a few hundred MIDI files over the years and thought I’d have them played and recorded into MP3’s here for your enjoyment. Each has a description and why it’s here. (Click on the name of the song to play.)

Allegretto – The first piece of music I ever sequenced with PC software. I’ve used different instruments over the years when played. Also it’s usually the first piece of music I play before a wedding.

AirWaves – Somebody else did the MIDI file, don’t know who. I found this on the Net, played it through the synth and recorded what you hear now. Sometimes, I’ll modify the MIDI files to make it sound like I want it to sound, but this one sounded great already. So I left it alone and recorded it.

Hit Me Baby One More Time – Yes, it’s just an instrumental of Britney’s song. I stumbled across this, played it, figured whoever did the MIDI file did it on a cheap PC or didn’t have high expectations, one of the two. I went ahead, changed the sounds (instruments) of the vocal parts, beefed up the bass, and sped up the tempo. If you’re a bass fanatic, play this on headphones or anything with a subwoofer.

Beau Soir – Found this one years ago, again, somebody else created the MIDI file and put a tinny sound (instrument) in it, a standard xylophone. This became a favorite with guests at the “wedding teas” I described above, especially if I change the sound to a “harp” or as you hear it now, the General MIDI “Music Box”. Sounds like a marimba, but with a longer duration.

Pachlebel’s Canon in G – I coded this one from sheet music years ago for my cousin Julia’s wedding. Still use it every wedding, I’ve used it as the song as the bride enters the church several times. Now if I could only get that tune out of my head….

Claire DeLune by deBussy – Good with a straight harp sound, I chose the GM “Atmosphere” sound instead.

Downtown – If you like old 60’s pop, yes, it’s that tune, just made a little bit more peppy. How? There are a few pieces of software out there, called “auto-accompaniment” packages, or that is, they automatically provide the “backup band” by throwing it chord names and what kind of rhythm you want and it cranks out a song. One package is called (I am not making this up) “Band In A Box”. Another is “The Jammer”, which I use. I just grabbed an old 60’s song book, type in the chords of the song and it cranked out this. (The key change 2/3 of the way through the song was MY idea, though…)

Eternal Flame – Nice and sweet. Coded years ago for Cousin Julia’s wedding as well.

Higher Ground – The original tune of course was by Stevie Wonder and later the Red Hot Chili Peppers did their own version years later. What happened here was that floating around the Net in the early 1990’s, somebody sat down and coded a MIDI file based on the Red Hot Chili Peppers version and made it a MIDI-karaoke file. Or that is, a MIDI file with out the melody, so you can sing along with it like in karaoke. So it had no melody. I didn’t want to sit down and try to hand code the melody by ear, but I found another MIDI file of this song, but it was the Stevie Wonder version WITH the melody. Hmmm…. I like the RHCP version better, so what do I do? With all the handy-dandy music editing software, I copy and GRAFT the melody of the second song (Stevie Wonder version) with the first (RHCP) version.

Only Love – By Wynona Judd. I hand-coded this piece a couple month’s before my brother’s reception. I’m amazed how well it turned out, considering I’ve never actually heard the song done originally by Wynona. I was just given a pile of sheet music and told just to “have at it”.

Sunrise, Sunset – This had an interesting story. I was playing several weddings one summer a few years ago. The bride and groom really liked all the synthesizer music and at the last minute (the week before the wedding), the bride decided to have a relative sing this. I hand-coded this song in about two hours using another old songbook. I made up the single-note violin introduction just to give it a bit of “tension”. However, the synth I used then was a Roland MGS64, which had a much better accordion sound than the Ensoniq MR76 I have now. What’s the interesting part? I was booked to do both the wedding AND the reception. The reception was two miles away from the church in an old mansion. As soon as the wedding was over, I through my equipment into my car and tried to drive on over to the mansion. That is, I TRIED. Instead, a 16-year-old in a pickup truck in the oncoming lane of the road turned left in front of me and I collided with him. I wasn’t hurt, my speed at impact was only about 20MPH. However, the couple had rented a bus that looked like a trolley to ferry over all the guests from the church to the reception and they drove right by the scene of the accident! In the window of the bus, I could see the bride’s and groom’s jaws just DROP. I did get over to the reception about 2 hours later and played a few tunes, MrsDuck had to come get me. (MrsDuck was not exactly the epitome of calmness when the police called her up to tell her I was in an accident!) The 16-year-old was charged with failure to yield.

The Whale – An old Electric Light Orchestra favorite. Found this one on the net. Increased the bass (if you haven’t noticed).

Valentine – A Jim Brickman country tune. I coded this one from sheet music, just like “Only Love” above. Again, I never heard the original, so I don’t know how well it sounds compared to the original. You tell me.

When I Fall In Love – The old pop standard. Hand coded years ago, but I had also found about four other versions on the net that I could have used as well. I like this one though.

All tunes above were performed on an Ensoniq MR76. MIDI files of the songs were played from Cakewalk Home Studio XL over to the Ensoniq and back to the PC and recorded via Cakewalk Pyro.

I’ve got plenty more tunes I can record. I can even make custom CD’s for you, if asked nicely.

Copyright 2004, www.misterduck.net