Hey folks! Here’s my latest composition called “Sunset At Bondi” featuring my son, David Abiel Galang, on electric bass.
Dedicated to my cousin, Glenn Galang (1978-2020), “Sunset At Bondi” (featuring my son, David, on electric bass) is now available via Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, and other streaming services.
I hope you all enjoy this one, especially when enjoying or chilling out late afternoon at the beach. Thanks.
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“Sunset At Bondi”
Mark A. Galang – Keyboards, Guitars, Drums
David Abiel Galang – Electric Bass
Composed on November 6, 2020 for Glenn Galang.
Copyright 2020 Mark Anthony A. Galang
All Rights Reserved
It’s always a pleasure to hear musical ideas come to life. It’s something that gives me great joy as a composer and arranger.
Last October 2017, I got a call from the UP Economics Society (from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City) asking me to arrange “Simbang Gabi” for unaccompanied SATB, SSAA, and TTBB choirs. The arrangement was slated to become the contest piece for Musikapella 2017, one of the hottest annual choir competitions in Metro Manila.
I said to myself that three arrangements of the same song for those ensembles shouldn’t be a problem but then UP Eco Soc said that they needed the arrangements within 3 to 5 days. After thinking about how great an opportunity this was, I told them I could do it.
Once UP Eco Soc knew I could work with a tight deadline, they took me in. I think they were already out of options, hahaha!
Remembering Symphony X’s “Candlelight Fantasia”, I went into making the score, and through God’s help I was able to complete the scores.
Fast forward to November 25, 2017, I hear my score come to life for the first time. It was astonishing! Here’s one of the Musikapella 2017 contestants, the UST Senior High School Chorale (Selah), performing my arrangement of Lucio D. San Pedro’s “Simbang Gabi”:
Lucio D. San Pedro’s “Simbang Gabi”, arrangement by Mark A. Galang for unaccompanied SATB choir:
This performance floored me! That’s all I can say.
I’d like to congratulate and thank Mark Agpasa (choirmaster) and the rest of the UST Senior High School Chorale for doing such an amazing job. I also would like to thank the UP Economics Society for entrusting me with such an important task. Perhaps this is a good start to really becoming involved with the Filipino chorale scene. Who knows, right?
There’s also an all-female choir version during Musikapella 2017. I thought St. Scholastica’s Academy Choir did a great job with my arrangement:
Lucio D. San Pedro’s “Simbang Gabi”, arrangement by Mark A. Galang for unaccompanied SSAA choir:
All of the 9 choirs that participated in Musikapella 2017 as well as family and friends made me feel like the biggest winner of the night. To them I send my thanks and my gratitude.
I also have to thank my vocal arranging mentor, Christopher Borela, for training me well back in PWU.
Now, time for me to go back to practicing my instruments, writing composition ideas, and all that stuff, a day before I go back to work on all things Freejazzlessons.com.
About nine months have passed since I accepted a full-time post as a music teacher. I currently teach mostly group piano/keyboard classes ranging from the 2nd to the 12th grade in varying skill levels ranging from beginners to advanced, some of them are at a virtuoso level. As the school where I’m currently assigned gives a rather considerable amount of workload, I barely have enough time for what is my primary musical medium and discipline: composition. Other than rare occasions where I can record little musical ideas here and there or film a piano improv every now and then, I have lost time for it to the point that I have no idea where to find time to finish the musical that I have been working on for the past two years. I do think, however, that having done this so far has been a blessing for me. I am very grateful to the Lord for having led me to the place where I am at for many reasons.
It is no accident that I am at this place. It is all part of God’s grand scheme of things, an opportunity for me to become a tool for young people to gain skill and knowledge in music. This in itself, I believe, will pave the way for the next generation to serve Him through music and lead others to Him through praise and worship. I pray that those who have received my instruction would eventually convince others of their need for a savior, given man’s wretched and sinful nature, and that it is only through the Lord Jesus Christ’s completed work at the cross that they will come into fellowship with God.
The process of teaching is intellectually and emotionally taxing. Each day at school, I have to pull out every intellectual and emotional resource available. Every real teacher gives out eveything in an effort to properly equip his or her students as much as he or she would do for her own children. No wonder teachers act kind of surrogate parents for their students in the classroom or in the teaching studio, the sort of effort that cannot be matched by any amount of financial remuneration. It all boils down to the love of serving and imprting knowledge that keeps us teachers going.
Having been holed up in my home studio prior to teaching full time, it has been a refreshing experience. Meeting and dealing with all sorts of personalities is a given. It can be so frustrating at times to the extent that sometimes I just want to run away and hole myself up again in my studio, writing and recording music by myself. However, doing so will only make me to revert to what I once was: a human analog of the Dead Sea. The bigger picture of things as an educator shows much more promise. Effecting changes in the lives of students through music is worth all the effort.
Working with the particular department I am in is not without its perks. I can say that a teacher is the ultimate perpetual student. We have to learn more to be able to teach more. Each challenge we face allows us to learn new things. In a span of months, I have acquired skills that I only dreamt of having once. You can’t help but absorb some degree of knowledge, skill, and insights from colleagues who plan, work, and perform with you. As far as performing is concerned, the team I work with is a blessing from God: they are among the best musicians I have performed on stage with, bringing to life some of my arrangements of wonderful Christian songs in four school concerts. In the process, I even picked up learning how to play some woodwinds and brass instruments as well.
This point in time, I would say, is the eye of a storm that I would call student recitals. It’s a bit relaxed now compared to the preparations we had done for our students. In about two days, all of that is about to change as we start setting up the stage for the recital on the weekend, with the hope tht our students do well and give glory to God through music. Perhaps I would write more about my experiences as an educator in the days to come if time permits, but this is all what I can say for now.
In case you missed the April Fools’ Day gig at Checkpoint Rock Bar, here’s some live video footage of it. Filling in for Wilbert Tan is Cong Agabon of Chased:
I have been working with jazz pianist Steve Nixon (http://freejazzlessons.com) for a while now, and I got myself the opportunity to work with his Blues piano mentor: the legendary Bruce Katz! This new piano lesson DVD called the “Breakthrough Blues Piano Method” features my detailed transcriptions of Bruce’s Katz’s techniques as well as examples of his own blues improvisations. So, if you’re interested in getting your blues playing to another level, go visit http://www.freejazzlessons.com/breakthroughblues/ to get yourself a copy of this course.
For those of you who missed the album launch last March 5, 2016, there is still yet a chance to watch and listen to our set. We managed to acquire some videos of the entire set we performed that night (eight songs out of nine from the album).
“Jose at Musika” is Jose delos Reyes on vocals and acoustic guitar, Robert Taylan on bass, Wibert Tan on lead guitar, Wowoo Ranada on percussion, Jazz Magday on drums, and yours truly (Mark A. Galang) on keyboards.
About four years ago, I was in a rather curious phase in my journey as a composer. I was involved in writing and producing music that had what’s called “brainwave entrainment”. The works that I wrote for such a purpose pretty much sounded like this:
Take note that it’s best to listen to this music with your eyes closed and with headphones on:
This particular piece that I entitled “Night Sky” was released under a record label that was called a7records and is now known as Roundwaves. Now, what the heck is the purpose of all this? Music written with brainwave entrainment techniques (a.k.a. binaural beats) is part of what we can call “functional” or “applied” music i.e. music that is not solely written for simple listening pleasure or entertainment. Such music includes those used in film, video games, animation, etc. If music for movies enhances the viewing experience to a whole new level (try watching films without music, they suck!), brainwave entrainment music is designed to put you in a particular state of brain activity. Why? The theory is that setting your brain’s electrical activity into a particular phase will help facilitate various functions such as eliciting sleep, improving concentration, helping you to relax, excite you, etc. As it is universally known, music is a very powerful agent for altering your state of mind. You feel pumped up when listening to speed metal as you go across the freeway. You kind of feel very cheesy when you hear David Pack sing “You’re the Biggest Part of Me”. You kind of what to bob your head up and down when you hear some kind of four-on-the-floor drum and bass hit. Music with brainwave entrainment built into it is kind of like that too.
Now, the question is how do we actually go about writing music that is theorized to have the effect of relaxation, sleep, and other effects? Here goes:
Know what kind of effect you want to elicit first before you go write your track. Do you want your listener to just relax and chill? You need your music to elicit an Alpha wave response. You want them to go to sleep? Go Delta wave. Go ahead and read up on what these brain waves are and what they’re associated with. Start by reading this Mental Health Daily piece.
We need to generate the basic backing track for it, and that basic backing track is something that has a binaural beat that is equivalent to the brain wave activity you are trying to produce. To do this, you need two sine waves, tuned to a barely audible bass or contrabass frequency, one panned hard left and the other panned hard right. Now, it is VERY IMPORTANT that the two sine waves are tuned in such a manner that the difference between them will create an oscillating beat equal to that of the frequency of the brainwave you’re trying to elicit. For example, the sine wave to the left is tuned at 50 Hz and the sine wave to the right is tuned to 38 Hz. The difference between the two is 12 Hz, the upper limit of Alpha waves. The easiest way to do this is to use Audacity to generate these sine waves that are tuned to the exact frequencies you need. The length of this binaural beat track (or tracks) depend on how long you want your music to be. Usually 8 to 10 minutes is enough.
Make sure that the sine waves you use for your binaural beat is in key to the music you are going to write. This is plain musical common sense. Why? First of, you want to make the music as pleasant sounding as you want. Tune your sine wave to a root or a fifth. Second, anything atonal or dissonant will only irritate your listener. For instance, if my music is in the key of G and I want Alpha waves, my left sine wave is in 24.5 Hz (G0 if A4 is 440 Hz) and my right sine wave is 36.5 Hz (about a microtone below D1 if A4 = 440 Hz). 37 minus 24.5 is 12 so I expect my binaural beat to match Alpha waves. In some instances, you may have to adjust the pitch of your sine waves accordingly if your music changes to distant keys. The point is that your sine waves (more or less) have to be in tune to the music.
As for the amplitude of your binaural beats, it should be kept to a minimum as possible. You bury it in the music and it should be more felt than heard. This is the reason why we usually tune our sine waves to bass frequencies.
When your binaural beats are set, write your music over the binaural beats. Notating it first on paper (or your scorewriter) or improvising over it doesn’t matter as long as you get to have appropriate music over it.
Make sure that the music is LONG. We are not writing a radio hit here folks! Not everybody can fall asleep, concentrate, relax in just under a minute or two.
You can write in any genre as long as it is appropriate for the effect that you want. You surely won’t want screaming metal guitars on your sleep music, right? It’s just common sense.
I suppose these steps should be enough to get you started in writing your first brainwave entrainment piece. If you all think I missed out on something, please leave your comments below.
Jose at Musika, the band that I currently play in, will be launching its album entitled “Luma” on March 5, 2016. The launch will feature guest performances by the following bands:
Antimano
Dhruva Tara
Maryzark
Carlo Ordonez of Kastigo
Clubhouse
Soil & Green
Jana Garcia
Agos
Unmute
Coming Up Roses
Mooncake
The likelihood that I’ll be playing with another band (*ahem* Clubhouse *ahem* among others) is a possibility.
The launch will hosted by DJ Acey and will be held at Mang Rudy’s Tuna Grill and Papaitan, Yakal St., Makati City. There will be an entrance fee of Php 200 (includes one free drink), and a copy of the album costs Php 250 which will be sold at the gate.
Jose at Musika is Jose de los Reyes on acoustic guitar and vocals, Wilbert Tan on lead guitar, Robert Taylan on bass, Jazz Magday on drums, and yours truly on piano/keyboards.
About a day after the UE campus gig, I got an invite from Bong Cervantes (bass player extraordinaire and DJ at Pinas FM 95.5 MHz) to attend the first anniversary celebration of Bongskie Prods, the local live indie band production outfit he runs. Since Clubhouse was on the billing for the gig, I expected that the Clubhouse guys were going to ask me to play as well. Since my synth and keyboard amp are always in the trunk of my car, I’m always up for a performance.
After performing Clubhouse songs, something that I didn’t expect happened. I was up on stage and Clubhouse was about to perform the song “Hoy Adik” by Bong Cervantes. And so it happened that I was about to perform the song cold, without any rehearsal whatsoever. I didn’t know the song at all! Fortunately, I was able to listen to it, figure out the patterns and the song structure, as well as listened for cues where I could play. Thankfully, I was able to play through the song without any incident, hence the video you see here courtesy of Bong Cervantes/Bongskie Prods. Enjoy!
Hello, folks (a.k.a. the 20 or so more or less readers of this blog)! It’s been some time since I’ve written a proper post so here goes:
About a week ago, Choy Marasigan (singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist) of the local indie band “Clubhouse” asked me to play with them at the University of the East – Caloocan for a campus show. He said he didn’t have a lead guitar player so he asked me if I was willing to play for that show. I said yes and then also offered to play guitar as well since I did know how to play a number of their songs in that capacity. I’ve always wanted to try doing that sort of Kerry Livgren, Robert Henshall, Tony Banks, or Geddy Lee-styled multitasking so I asked him if I can play guitar as well. Choy was probably hesitant to say yes to yours truly playing lead guitar as well but he did.
I am not so sure if I’m ever gonna do multitasking onstage again. I might do it again if I can get a band together to play my solo artist stuff (something I am having a lot of trouble with). I would say the experience of doing that was very fulfilling. However, it was a pain carrying a lot of gear myself. I probably need to train to strengthen myself to keep on doing such on a regular basis. Maybe if I start earning enough to afford a roadie to help me in such times, it would literally take a load off of me.
Anyway, I enjoyed playing that day with Clubhouse for a bunch of college kids. See for yourself in the videos below:
The first song was “Mundo”:
Second song was “Nais”:
Many thanks to Choy Marasigan of Clubhouse for inviting me, and thank you Nathan Avante (drums) and fellow session player Bong Cervantes (bass) for playing onstage with me.
