Piano Piece Named After a Girl

by Brian Hazard on May 14, 2010 · View Comments

The instrumental arrangement of Song Named After a Girl centers around a reversed piano, as you can hear in this snippet from the intro. It starts with the reversed piano, and then the normal “forward” piano plays the same thing on top of it.

At first I wasn’t sure how I’d arrange a whole song with the piano reversed, but it turned out to be pretty easy. I recorded this short “piece” containing all the chord changes used in the song, then reversed it, sliced it at each chord change, and arranged the component parts in reverse order.

And so I present to you: Piano Piece Named After a Girl. If the monotony doesn’t bore you to tears, you’re welcome to download it by clicking on the down arrow in the player.

Mark

Beautiful. I love how this turned out.
http://www.907Britt.com 907Britt

Thanks for sharing, Brian! Lovely piano.
http://www.satiesfaction.net Satie’s Faction

Lovely. The piano piece would stand well on its own if you developped the left hand a bit, but I guess you’ll just need the right hand for your song.
http://www.colortheory.com Brian Hazard

Exactly. I cut the left hand out entirely in the main piano line. The left hand octaves are just to fill in the arrangement for the reversed part.

Thanks for the kind words everyone! The song is done, and I’m thrilled with the way it turned out. Today I started Pretend Extroverts.
http://reginator.net/ Reginator

Creativity beats a new plugin every time. I like how the reversed part swirls around the piano.
I’ve also used a similar technique but with rev’d violins and a fwd synth line. A different sound but still cool.