My new course teachs you how play by ear!

It's been a while since I updated my blog because I've been busy working on course that teaches how to play by ear from scratch. As you might already know, I'm not a classically trained, I so I'm not very good at reading notes (that's why I don't have any sheet music! lol).

However, What I am good at is playing by ear. Most of the tutorials and videos I've put up on YouTube were learned by ear. So over the years, I have learned some key concepts that enable me to play by ear. I wanted to share all the knowledge that I've acquired through a professional designed course. Since I get a lot of requests for sheet music and I don't have any I decided to create a course that would teach people how to play by ear. I wanted to make the learning process fun and easy, such that learning to play by ear becomes as easy as possible and you can get right to playing your favorite songs by ear.

The course is titled the Listen & Play Piano Course. A free preview of the course is also available on the course website. If you're at all interested in learning to play by ear, please have look at the preview and purchase the course. I've worked really hard on it, and I really believe it's one of the best ways to learn by ear.

Busy working on my clothing company

I don't have much time to post up tutorials these days, because I've been working really hard on my video game tees company, thegamingape.com You might have noticed some of the T-shirts on my blog which me and my bro designed. Hopefully I can crank out some tutorials real soon.

More tutorials are on the way!

I've been checking my Google Analytics for my blog and I am getting a steady stream of visitors from all over the world (more 30 countries). Thanks to nikon.bungie.org a whole bunch of people now know about my blog. If you like my content, please link back so I can keep producing more tutorials. I have been getting some requests for a "Unforgotten Tutorial" in the new format, so I'll get work on that when I get time. I'm also thinking about putting a tutorial for the Peril theme under the new format, I'll see what I can do.

Halo Maw Theme - Piano Tutorial

This track is from the intro of the last level (The Maw) of Halo: Combat Evolved. Switch to a slow strings or a choir voice. If you like this tutorial please Link back and Digg it. Enjoy!

Halo Theme - Piano Tutorial

This tutorial covers the main Halo Theme (From Halo: Combat Evolved). It is playing at half speed so it's easier to see what keys are being played. If you like this tutorial, it's a good idea to Digg it so other people find out about it too. Leave comments!



I want start using Flash objects to deliever my tuotirals. This would mean users can slow down, speed up, pause and skip sections by clicking buttons. There is one problem though :( I don't know how to code Flash. If someone help me out that will be great thanks!

Halo Action Theme (Ending) - Piano Tutorial

This is a tutorial on how to play the ending of Halo Action Theme on the piano. This is the new format for my video tutorials. Note: Switch to the slow strings voice.

A new format for my piano tutorials!

I'm currently experimenting with a new format for delivering my piano tutorials. The picture above is a mock up of how it might look like. It would feature a clean interface with a top down view of the piano/keyboard and it will show what keys to play in what order.

If this new format is popular I will replace my old videos with this format (including the Halo Tutorials). Since the process of making tutorials with the new format is more streamlined, I can also post up other tutorials (Metal Gear Solid, Perfect Dark and other user requested tracks)

What do you think? Leave a comment!

Note: You don't need a blogger account to comment, you can just post an anonymous comment.

Halo 3 "Unforgotten" Piano Tutorial

I have been getting a whole lot of requests for the "Unforgotten" theme and I finally got around to making the tutorials. There are two parts to this tutorial, the first video shows the strings section and the second shows the piano section. If you enjoy the tutorials, I would appreciate Link backs and Diggs.

"Unforgotten" - Piano Tutorial (Part 1)

Here it is, Part two of the "Unforgotten" Piano Tutorial. It's pretty long actually, around 8 minutes, so decided to split it up in to 6 different sections. This will make it easier to learn, you can take it section by section. It might look like there is a lot of stuff to learn, but most of the songs just repeats itself in different octaves, so it's not that hard to learn it.

"Unforgotten" - Piano Tutorial (Part 2)

Playing the piano by ear

It took me a while to learn how to play the piano by ear. But once I learned it was really cool because all of the sudden I can learn to play stuff without using sheet music (including the Halo theme from E3). You may have noticed that half the comments posted on my youtube video are different variations of "plz plz e-mail the sheet music to me" lol.

I learned to play by ear the hard way, through trial and error. This took a couple of years to develop, the more I practiced the better I got. I would listen to a song and then encode on to FL studio, just for fun, but it helped my hone my listening skills (this helped me with my remixes too). If you are interested in learning to play by ear then this a good way to start. You can download a trial version of FL Studio and mess around with it, it's really fun program to use.

Inside FL Studio

I use FL Studio a lot (Formally known as fruity loops, I guess the cereal company and Tucan Sam sued FL Studio to change the name the name lol). FL studio is a really good program for making music and it's pretty easy to use. If you are at all interested in making music, remixes etc. FL Studio is a good place to start.

I'm almost done my Chicago theme remix and I plan to release it soon on my blog and on youtube. For the youtube version I'm thinking of using screen capturing software to show the remix inside of FL studio. You might remember that I did the same thing for my last Perfect Dark remix except I didn't use screen capturing software to record that one (it was just recorded off the screen).

Choclate rain, anyone?

Chances are you've probably seen the "Choclate rain" single by Tay Zonday on youtube. I thought it was pretty hilarious and it has a pretty catchy piano riff. This got me thinking, maybe I should do a chocolate rain remix...

Maybe I can somehow integrate it with popular video game music (Mario, MGS, Halo etc.) I haven't tried this out on my keyboard yet nor do I know how to play chocolate rain (I'm sure I can learn it pretty quick) but it just might work lol.

What do you think? Let me know.

Halo 3 - 'Unforgotten' Remix

If you watched my 'Unforgotten' Tutorial on revver you probably noticed the music at the end of the video. Yepp, that music came from the yet to be released ' Unforgotten' Remix. The Halo series has an awesome soundtrack, and it gives me a lot of of material to do remixes.

The first thing that greeted me when I popped the Halo 3 disk into my Xbox 360 was the three red rings of death! (lol, no I'm just kidding). Actually it was the menu music and it immediately set the tone for Halo 3, I knew it was going to be EPIC. After beating the game I took some time off to learn to play 'Unforgotten' by ear (which explains why there are some mistakes on the youtube video).

I have been getting a whole bunch of requests on youtube to make MP3 file of the remix. Good news! I'm working on one and it's almost done. But there is a little problem... I'm not sure how to host the MP3 on my blog, if you know how to do this let me know.

I'll post the MP3 when I figure out how to host it on my blog.

UPDATE: I figured out a way to stream MP3 from my blog, but it's missing some features (ex. downloads, volume) I'm still looking for a better way to host MP3s

Starting is easy, finishing is hard!

When I start on a remix, I usually have some good ideas so the first one to two minutes of the song comes easily. After that I usually hit a block and I'm not sure which direction to take. This can get pretty annoying and tends to delay the completion of the track.

Part of the problem is maintaining the quality of the track, if I start off strong and then slack off then I'll end up with a track that has a good intro and then it becomes weak sauce. This is the opposite of what a good track should do (finish off strongly).

When I'm really stuck I use repetition a lot (like hip hop beats) but unlike hip hop beats which can afford to be repetitive because the lyrics will carry the track, my remixes can't be too repetitive because they are instrumentals. The trick is to add little variations to the repetition by using different drum loops, FXs, and instruments.

Chicago Theme (Perfect Dark) Remix

Perfect dark 64 had some really cool music in it, and one of my favorites was the Chicago theme. I was messing around with the PD tune on the keyboard and I got some good ideas. I collected enough ideas to make a remix so I started plugging in some stuff into fruity loops.

After a little while, it started to sound pretty good, maybe even better than my last PD remix. So right now I'm working on it, I have around 2:30 minutes completed. I'll post it up on youtube when I'm done, hopefully soon (although I tend procrastinate a lot and put up half-done songs)

The remix has a lot of original music in it, so it probably won't be instantly recognizable. But there is a point, maybe about a minute into the track where the Chicago theme kicks in. After about another minute of the Chicago theme, the track fades back to more original music. When you listen to it, everything flows seamlessly and fits in well with the Chicago theme.

I'll post more updates as the track progresses.

Welcome to my blog

How's it going? Thanks for dropping by and reading my blog. Let me introduce myself, My name is Dharshan Raj and I have randomly built up a small fan base on youtube by making remixes and tutorials. A while back I posted a tutorial on how to play Halo 3 main theme. It started to catch on with Halo fans and music fans in general and right now it has over 100,000 views (despite the crappy production quality).

I also make remixes using FL Studio, and so far I have posted up a couple of remixes. Like the tutorials the remixes were also getting good comments so I figured I write a blog as well. When I'm working on new stuff I'll blog about it. So this blog will give an inside look what I'm up to these days.