Beethoven - String Quartet Op. 18 No. 5 (Rock Arr. w MAM Animation)

I 0:03 II 8:35 III 12:55 IV 21:33
Remastered version with better sound and more drums here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WAw2s0pWhA

Guitar Arrangement by Ed Chang using Synthfont.
Visuals from Steven Malinowski's MAM Player
Original MIDI sequences : www.stringquartets.org

http://lvbandmore.blogspot.com/
Boilerplate: These tracks were originally created for my own use to understand Beethoven's string quartets. As an electric guitarist, I "hear" guitar and drums better than violin, so these helped me to follow the different melodic and harmonic turns that Beethoven used in these frankly still-revolutionary works. Weird syncopations and awkward double-stops and trills on violin sound even more exciting and shocking in today's musical vernacular IMHO, and when you add 'Chad Wackerman-style' drums doubling the bass melodies it gets pretty close to fusion/technical metal - tho the most complex metal you'll ever hear.

Of course these are generated from MIDI sequences and triggered soundfonts (samples) so there's a little bit of a "suspension of disbelief" necessary. However if you like Squarepusher, Meshuggah, Alec Empire, Merzbow, or even Nine Inch Nails, then the "oddness" might not require much of a leap - I quite like the "gunny-glitchy" parts myself and decided not to fix them. There were many things I could have done to make these more "real" (for example alternating dynamics on up/down strokes for fast passages, and modifying sustain envelopes on long notes, etc...) but I'll leave that to some one with more patience than I....

About the visuals: YT-er Smalin has been making visual scores of classical music for a few years now and when he made a "home-use" software version I was all over it. The only problem was that in it's current version it doesn't support soundfonts and does not render to video. Nonetheless I LOVE these visual representations and they are the closest approximation to what I see in my mind's eye when listening to instrumental music. I ended up rendering the audio on Synthfont, screencasting the MAM Player with CamStudio, and syncing them up in WMM. Obviously just one step above recording these on a cellphone, but that's what it is for now. Smalin will hopefully release a new version of the MAM Player with rendering options in the coming year(s)...

I'm happy to answer any questions about these in the comments.

Видео Beethoven - String Quartet Op. 18 No. 5 (Rock Arr. w MAM Animation) канала The Real Ed Chang