FAQs

Like my website? Please support me by clicking on the Donate button

Here are some questions I’ve been asked by viewers since I started making YouTube covers. I thought it might be a good idea for me to post them here, with some answers, just in case anyone else might want to know too 🙂

If you have any other questions which I haven’t included here, or any comments, please feel free to comment at the bottom of this page… I love interacting with viewers! Remember to put in your name at least , otherwise WordPress considers it spam and tries to ‘protect’ me from it haha! 😦

1. My Headphones – quite a few viewers have asked me about them

Q: What is playing in your headphones? The song that you’ve transcribed or the output from the piano you’re playing?

A: The output – The headphones are connected to my digital piano so that I can hear what I’m playing without it disturbing the neighbors! I live in an apartment and I usually record at night, so it’s more considerate to use earphones. I don’t listen to the original while I’m doing the recording. I do that while I’m transcribing the song. I’m pretty good at writing down what I hear. Playing from memory takes much too long for me. I can play by ear, with basic chords, but I want my covers to be more complete and as much like the original as possible, so I always write the notes down.

2. My Tablet – I read my music from it while I perform. So far, I haven’t seen anyone else do that on YouTube, although I just read an article on BBC news, that some orchestra is going to use tablets for their scores. Might be a bit hard for them to turn the pages though –  can’t use the violin bows haha! And tablets are still a lot smaller than A4 size.

Q: I’m just wondering, how did you get music sheets onto that tablet? I’m used to having a physical copy of the music sheet, but to save money and paper, I want to try reading from the tablet while playing.

A: Reading music from a tablet saves a lot of trouble dealing with paper copies. I write my music using Musescore (free and really easy to use!) on my laptop. Musescore themself tweeted me (So pleased!!!) And informed me that I don’t need a separate pdf converter 🙂 Just go to File > save as > select. pdf 🙂 Easy peasy! It turns the scores into pdf files which can then be copied over to my Acer Iconia tablet via a USB cable. If your tablet doesn’t have a USB port, you can email the file to yourself and open it using the pdf reader on your tablet.

3. Playing the pieces

Q: Thanks to you, I can now play this song. It does not sound as good as when you play it however! How do you do it?

A: You’re most welcome 🙂 It’s the fluency and expression that makes it sound good, so if you practise till it becomes really easy, then feel the music when you play, it will sound just as good! The secret, is individual voicing of different notes in the bar, meaning you’ll need to make certain notes softer so they taper off gently. This is so that it won’t sound ‘chunky’ – like a solid block of sound, but will flow and weave pleasingly 🙂 Just go lighter on the ‘weaker’ beats of the bar. 🙂

Read [FAQ Page 2] [FAQ Page 3]