Today, August 5th, is International Beer Day, a holiday straight out of Santa Cruz^[1].

This, combined with my birthday on the 6th will undoubtedly be a fantastic weekend. Here’s to a day of beer, and another year of music for me! Party on.

I’m back from Narnia with some more sheet music – To Aslan’s Camp. I simply couldn’t resist; after arranging Arrival at Aslan’s How, I needed more of Harry Gregson-William’s amazing compositional talent. Plus it was a very dear request by someone :)

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is a movie © The Walt Disney Company. The score is © Wonderland Music.

Plus, I’m beginning to feel that I’m getting better at this sheet-music-arranging thing. What do you think?

Sheet Music

• PDF
• MIDI
• Sibelius

It’s all very exciting to see others using my arrangements! Thanks everyone – you all rock!

geoffrey1218′s performances

A fellow pianist on Youtube, geoffrey1218, decided to play a few Portal 2 songs, using my sheet music.

Turret Opera (sheet music here)

Exile Vilify (sheet music)

Other sightings of my sheet music / MIDIs

Super Mario 64 meets the Turret Opera

Last year, I had the privilege to perform with a group of video game musicians. They also recently performed a shorter version of their setlist at Fanime 2011.

I just found out that they brought out an EP album. While I’m not part of it, I’m honored to say that I know all these people! You should get the album – it’s fantastic.

Here’s the latest cool thing we just finished at A Cappella Records. Album art by yours truly. Who else remembers this from the Hangover? :D

Valve just released the official Portal 2 soundtrack. For free! Get it on ThinkingWithPortals.com. Keep being awesome, Valve.

Tracklist

Sadly, neither the Want You Gone nor the Turret Opera were included. Perhaps there’s still hope for an extended version?

• Science is Fun
• Concentration Enhancing Menu Initialiser
• 9999999
• The Courtesy Call
• Technical Difficulties
• Overgrowth
• Ghost of Rattman
• Haunted Panels
• The Future Starts With You
• There She Is
• You Know Her?
• The Friendly Faith Plate
• 15 Acres of Broken Glass
• Love as a Construct
• I Saw a Deer Today
• Hard Sunshine
• I’m Different
• Adrenal Vapor
• Turret Wife Serenade (sheet music)
• I Made It All Up
• Comedy = Tragedy + Time
• Triple Laser Phase

My very first arrangement made its way onto iTunes!

About a week ago, I arranged an a cappella version of the Turret Opera. Through A Cappella Records, I got the song professionally recorded, mixed, mastered, licensed, and all that fun stuff.

Now on iTunes – get it here!

Listen to a sample

Full music Video

Here’s a project that I’ve been working on for a few weeks. One of my day jobs involves doing everything from coding/designing websites to video at A Cappella Records, the record label for a cappella music.

Last December, we had a lovely time in San Francisco with Awaken A Cappella, a group from UCLA. We recorded their latest hit – a song by Cee Lo Green you may recognize. [Read the full article on our blog.]

I filmed and edited the whole video over the last two weeks. Enjoy! Warning: explicit lyrics.

My recent experience with Comcast customer support. Don’t believe me? Comcast cares, really. 1-800-364-6489

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You would think that something simple like finding out about an additional charge on your account would be a phone call away? Silly rabbit.

Comcast phone support is the polar opposite of what customer service should be like. It reminds me a lot of Internet Explorer 4, in terms of user friendliness.

• This call may be monitored and recorded for quality assurance and training purposes.
• The biggest most powerful provider of Internets is still using touch-tone navigation? Okay.
• Para español, marque el numero nueve. If you would like to press 2, press 4, then 8. For better service, please hang up and try again.
• Reaching customer support took 4 calls, several battles with the utterly confusing and un-friendly navigation maze – which lacks a “go back to previous menu” functionality and leads to dead ends.
• Finding your account over the phone is easy.
• Please enter the telephone number, including area code, where you have, or want, service.
• Comcast cannot find an account with the phone number you provided. Please try again.
• Please enter the telephone number, including area code, where you have, or want, service. Then your zip code. Then the last 4 of your social. If/when you reach an account specialist, he/she will will will then quiz you on your account number, your address, date of birth, and the name of your first-grade teacher.
• Are you calling to bay market? If yes, press one. If no, press two. (This one just threw me off. What?)
• The one that really got to me: Comcast inserts ads, announcements, offers, coupons, specials, etc. in between EVERY menu option. I called to get help, not to be bombarded with offers.
• Finally, the main menu. For technical support, press one. For billing, press tw– *click*
• Did you know! Twice a year, a solar outage occurs, affecting cable customers. If you – the lady droned on for about 2 minutes until she shut up about her PSA and let me speak to an actual Human Being^TM.
• 24/7 hours of customer support! Except the tech support specialist doesn’t have full access to your account. Except they can’t really help you. Except the billing department is not open at this hour. Please call back during business hours. Except they still really really care and want to make things right for you.
• Also, did you know that for a limited time only, you ca– *click*

20 minutes later, and I still have no answer why my account bill is doubled, why I’m still being charged for renting a modem from Comcast (which is my own), and why the 16mbps rarely exceeds 8. Twice the price, half the service.

And with that, good night. </rant>

Last year, I played piano on the big stage – at the Hideo Concert. For the curious ones about sheet music, there’s a post on the main Hideo website with some links: Arranging Video Game Music.