#oneaday, Day 144: Another Multimedia Extravaganza

More pictures with sound for your delectation tonight. This time I thought I'd experiment with some black and white photos. I hadn't originally intended to take the photos with a particular theme in mind, other than that I knew I wanted to try doing some black and white ones. When I loaded the pics onto my computer, though, it became apparent that I had managed to take pictures with almost no people in them whatsoever. This wasn't intentional, but it provided a theme for the set anyway. I shouldn't have told you that, you weren't to know, were you? Let's start again.

This is a set based on the theme of being alone.

Whew, got away with that, I think.

I can assure you that Southampton is just fine and has not suffered a 28 Days Later-style zombie apocalypse which emptied the streets. Some may say that's a shame. But there are a few nice people here, so I don't wish a zombie apocalypse on the whole place just yet. A few areas, perhaps.

The music for this particular slideshow is "Living with Determination" from Persona 3. It seemed a fittingly melancholy piece for the moody nature of the photos.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how these pictures came out, and with the overall effect of the slideshow as a whole. It was an interesting day to take photos, actually. You can probably see how the weather changed as my journey progressed – it started dull and cloudy, but the sun eventually came out. The clouds stuck around, though, making for some dramatic, stormy skies. Hence the many pictures of clouds!

I'm definitely going to do more of these, as they're fun and reasonably easy to put together. Plus it's yet another means of self-expression, which is always good.

I've always enjoyed photography over the years. I remember getting a bit bewildered by an old film-based SLR camera back home with my parents, and later getting my own point-and shoot cameras, taking bajillions of photos and often being complimented for my good composition. Obviously I'm no pro and haven't had any proper training, so I'm sure there's all sorts of things technically wrong with them that I can do better. But as I used to tell people who came in wanting to learn about iPhoto and Aperture – if you're not being paid for the pictures you take, whether or not you like them is the only important thing.

So true – for so many things besides photography, too. Sums up the whole idea of #oneaday, in fact, not to mention the photography-based variant #365. People are doing these things for themselves as a means to express themselves, develop their own skills and perhaps show off just a little bit. When other people end up appreciating your work, it's always a pleasant surprise. And if they don't like it, it's the old artist's defense – "it wasn't for them anyway".

So anyway. I hope you enjoy (or enjoyed) the slideshow. There will be more to come in the future as soon as I get back out there with my camera and get all snap-happy.

#oneaday, Day 139: Multimedia Extravaganza

It is indeed a multimedia extravaganza for you today as I share with you both pictures and sound! I even share them both at the same time! That's pretty exciting, isn't it. Admit it. You're a little excited right now at the prospect of pictures and sound at the same time. If you're not, you're either lying, or dead inside.

Err, anyway. Today was another one of those beautiful sunny days so, not having anything better to do and not having anyone to share it with, I decided to head out into the sunshine with my camera and take some pictures around the city. Turns out Southampton is actually not a bad-looking city in the sunshine. The city centre has an awful lot of green space, with about five parks all right next to each other. One of them was hosting some sort of arts festival today – there was live music, craft stalls and somewhere, apparently, workshops on things like drawing and making things.

I always find it interesting how wandering around with a camera makes you notice little things more. A flower with a bee on it, for example. If I didn't have a camera in my hand, I wouldn't have given that a second thought. But because "ooh, that makes a good photo", it gets noticed. It's also immensely annoying if you spot something that will make a good photo and you then miss the opportunity. I didn't have this problem much today. I even managed to get the bee.

I present to you, then, a YouTube video of some pictures from around Southampton. They're a fairly random selection, to be honest, and not necessarily particularly characteristic of the city itself. But they're things that my eye was drawn to today and thus up came the camera, click click, boom. Wait, not "boom". That's something else. The music in the video is the theme from Final Fantasy VII, played by me. Oh yes indeedy.

Yes, as well as taking those pictures, I also recorded a few more pieces for your delectation. Four today, in fact. Here they are. As usual, iPhone users should tap on the titles to hear them, while everyone else can use the Flash player and be smug twats about it.

Alone from Persona 4

Living with Determination from Persona 3

Final Fantasy VII Theme

Eyes on Me from Final Fantasy VIII

That's not quite my normal 500 words, I know. But I gave you multimedia. So I think you can let me off 80 words or so. Except by the time I've finished justifying my lack of words I'll probably have hit 500 words anyway. So I may as well keep going. I hope you all had a pleasant day. I did, although it was rather quiet. Still, it's nice to have quiet days sometimes, isn't it? Means you don't have to fill them with meaningless conversations and attempts to fill spaces that words should go in. Like this one that I'm filling right now. Oh yes. There's 500 words. Time to go.

Hope you enjoy the slideshow and music. Let me know what you think in the comments.

#oneaday, Day 137: Flower Girl

I am almost falling asleep on my keyboard here, so I'll keep this brief to prevent falling asleep with all the letters of the keyboard printed backwards across my face. I can barely keep my eyes open. I'm not sure why I'm so tired, though I have had people over this evening and I spent the first part of my day cleaning up in preparation for said visitors. We had a lovely evening, by the way, thanks for asking.

Earlier in the day I did get a moment to record one more piano piece. I posted it on Tumblr earlier but I'm not sure who got the chance to hear it. A few people did, I guess, and it even got a couple of reblogs. But I thought for those people who don't "do" Tumblr, I'd post it here too.

The song in question is Aerith, or Aeris, or Flower Girl or whatever you want to call it. It's the piece from Final Fantasy VII that makes everyone cry. There are two reasons for this – one, it's a beautiful piece of music, and two, the most memorable point of the game in which this piece of music is heard is where Aerith/s dies. (Oh come ON! Surely everyone who is ever going to play Final Fantasy VII knows that by now.) This scene is widely regarded by many as one of the first times where computer games genuinely started to encourage emotional investment in their narratives – at least on consoles. Developers of adventure games on PC had been trying this for a long time already, but Final Fantasy VII was the first mainstream console game which people admitted crying to.

It's a cliché and a bit of a joke these days, of course, but it was my brother telling me about the sheer emotion in the game that made me originally want to pick up Final Fantasy VII. I'd never touched an RPG prior to that point and had no idea what HP, MP and Limit Breaks were. My life was shortly to change forever.

The piece of music itself, though; it's always held a peculiarly personal meaning to me, and I can't pin down why that is. I think it possibly may be something to with the fact that the older Final Fantasy games allowed you to rename your characters, so in my game, it wasn't "Aerith" dying, it was someone I knew. This made it all the more traumatic.

When I play the piece nowadays, I don't necessarily think of someone dying. But I do always find myself thinking of someone. I always feel that the character of the piece represents gentle, total, unconditional love and/or affection towards someone. So inevitably while playing it I find myself thinking of someone special to me in some way. The exact person who comes to mind has changed many times over the years, but the reason for my thinking of them hasn't. They are important.

iPhone users, click here to hear the track. Everyone else, use the Flash player below.

#oneaday, Day 136: Massive Pianist

Some more music for you today as it's awfully late and I feel like I've been busy all day today, even though the only thing I achieved in the daytime was to buy two shirts which actually look good on me. Oh, and record these two pieces, of course.

A bit of background on these pieces for those who aren't familiar with them. Final Fantasy has been a big part of my life for many years – at least since Final Fantasy VII came out. I believe I've talked about the fond memories I have associated with this game in the past – the long, hot summer days, the thirty-six hour playing stint which culminated with my friend Woody and I suffering strange hallucinations of items that didn't exist in the game – but the thing that's stuck with me longer than the game itself is its music. FFVII was the first time I really noticed game music as a positive thing and, just to make this even more clichéd, it was One Winged Angel which impressed me the most.

After playing FFVII to death, I tracked down the previous games in the series, which I'd never experienced before, not really knowing what an RPG was before that point. I discovered that they, too, had great music, and not only that, there were piano arrangements available.

After a considerable amount of time searching, I managed to track down some dodgy scans of the piano scores for IV, V and VI. Later, I acquired genuine copies of the VII, VIII and IX books. The arrangements of the pieces are gorgeous – proper piano arrangements in a variety of styles rather than simple transcriptions. I've been playing them ever since and everyone seems to think that they're very "me".

Persona is a bit different. I came to Persona with the third game in the series a year or two back thanks to the Squadron of Shame. We even did a podcast about it. What struck nearly all of us about that series was its peculiarly quirky and enormously Japanese soundtrack. I was very interested to discover earlier this year that both Persona 3 and Persona 4 have piano scores available too. Unfortunately, they're not nearly as well-arranged as the Final Fantasy scores, but they certainly sound good enough – for some pieces at least. The J-hip-hop tracks don't sound particularly good on a piano, so there is no way I am ever playing any of them in public.

Much like Final Fantasy, the Persona games hold a very fond place in my heart. Rather than having memories attached to them, though, I found the stories of both games to be very emotionally resonant. I identified a great deal with many of the characters, as Persona deals a lot with friendships, personal identity and figuring out who you are, both in yourself and in relation to other people. While I can't point a fake gun at my head and summon a mythical beast to do my bidding, I do at least understand what some of the characters have been through, and empathise with others. It's rare that a game is written well enough for that to happen, so both games hold a special place in my heart.

Without further ado, then, here's two more pieces for your delectation. Just like last time, iPhone users can click on the titles to hear the tracks.

*pauses* I wish I'd remembered to upload these tracks before I started writing this. *drums fingers* Tra la la la la…

Aha! They're done. Here. *Enjoy* the *sauce*. And yes, I know there's a couple of bum notes. I was in a hurry. 🙂

The Oath from Final Fantasy VIII

Heaven from Persona 4

#oneaday, Day 134: Busy Days

Hello everyone! Apologies for the late hour. It's been a genuinely busy day today, despite it being a Bank Holiday (or Memorial Day if you want to be all American about it).

My day started with waking up several times, snoozing my alarm and then waking up again. The last snooze inexplicably went on a lot longer than the other ones so I had a minor panic when I woke up the last time, because I actually needed to get up today.

Why? I hear you ask. Well, today was my first performance in public for ages. What? I hear you ask. For those of you who don't know, I've been playing the piano for quite a long time now. Since the age of five, in fact. Which makes it… a long time that I've been playing. I haven't performed in public for quite a while, though, and my friend Sam assures me that he'd never heard me play in public before. I'm convinced otherwise, but he's very insistent on this matter. I know he certainly didn't see the last piano performance I did at university, which was a duet performance with one of the strangest people I've ever had the curious fortune to encounter in my life that was followed with one of the most memorable and terrifyingly inappropriate pub conversations I've ever experienced. Those who know who I'm talking about also know what the conversation was about. Those who don't… well, I feel it would be improper for me to discuss it here. Unless you really want to know, in which case leave me a comment and I'll tell you there.

So today was my first performance in public for ages. We've established that.

What did you play? I hear you ask. Demanding, aren't we? Perhaps you should stop asking so many questions and let me get on with my story because it's entirely possible I might have been about to tell you what I played. In fact, I'm half-tempted to just not tell you now.

Except that would make this blog entry run rather short and not allow me to include the lovely media that I'm about to. So I'll tell you.

A few years back, I discovered the Final Fantasy Piano Collections and managed to acquire most of them. Some of them I have the actual books of. The older ones I managed to track down some scans from the Internet. More recently, I managed to locate some piano scores for the music from Persona 3 and Persona 4. These respective series have some of my favourite music of all time, so I figured a public performance would be a good opportunity to spread the love and let other people know what they're all about. So that's what I did.

The event itself was part of Southampton's "Keys to the City" event, celebrating local arts and the piano in particular. Today's performance took place in the city's art gallery, tucked away on one side of the Civic Centre near the library. I got the impression not many people know about it. But there's a lovely Steinway piano there which has clearly been crying out to be used for some time, so my friend and ex-colleague Stephen McCleery of Retrograde Recordings helped to organise an event to give it a bit of attention.

Here's three of the pieces I performed. I'll be recording the others over the next few days, so there's a few posts ready to go if I'm short of inspiration!

If you're reading this on an iPhone, don't get pissy about the Flash audio players not working. I've been good enough to supply direct links to the files. Just click on the title. I'm good to you people. Not every blog would do that, you know.

Anyway… enjoy. More to come over the next few days.

Category: Pete Plays Piano