O Tannenbaum

This rendition of the Christmas traditional song "O Tannenbaum" or "O Christmas Tree" was recorded on November 28, 2005 with a MIDI keyboard using GarageBand and Virtual Grand Piano software plugin by Art Vista.

I used the Classical Piano Dry patch and lowered the volume level down about 10 decibals to minimize distortion.

This is an arrangement of the Vince Guaraldi rendition from "A Charlie Brown Christmas".

Christmas Time Is Here

I play a little Christmas music by Vince Guaraldi to get everyone in the spirit of the holidays. The piano is recorded through a MIDI keyboard on GarageBand using a Virtual Grand Piano software plugin by Art Vista.

You might recognize this piece that was performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio who played all the music for the Peanuts cartoons including A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Beethoven 3rd Symphony for 4 Hands

A performance by me and Julie Knerr. Last year, we played a 4-hand arrangement of the 1st movement from Beethoven's 3rd Symphony ("Eroica"). It's actually not that bad considering the few times that we got together. This was part of a Beethoven Marathon Concert put on by the piano department at the University of Oklahoma. The department will be putting on another marathon concert on Friday, December 2 from 7 p.m. until whenever. The theme this year is music from the Romantic Era.

Here's some technical info on this video podcast. It's about 15 minutes long and is about a 40 MB download, so be patient! It was originally recorded on an analog VHS camcorder, but converted to digital video and processed through iMovie and then burned onto a DVD-R through iDVD.

In order to get it back to a format that I can podcast, I used a free program called HandBrake to rip it from the DVD-R and save it as an MPEG-4 movie. You probably hear some weird drops in sound in this recording. I'm guessing if it was recorded from an original digital source, then it would have came out smoother.

Disclaimer: I don't condone the action of ripping video from commercial DVDs that you do not own.