Battlestar Galactica Cylon theme on Eigenharp Alpha

I've been studying the Eigenharp Alpha for a few months and have been looking for a nice song to cover until my own compositions are finished. I accidentally stumbled into the melody of the Battlestar Galactica Cylon theme while jamming and thought it could be a perfect fit.

The theme is heard in the series by the final five Cylons and it's a melody that Bear McCreary composed on top of the chords of Bob Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower'. I continued improvising off of the piano song that the series' character Kara Thrace is trying to remember and made my own version of it.

This arrangement on the Eigenharp Alpha features Tonehammer's Emotional Piano, the Eigenharp's natively modeled Cello, Orange Tree Samples Evolution Electric Guitar Strawberry, Studio Devil Amp Modeler Pro and FabFilter Twin 2. The drum loops are part of the extensive collection that ships with the Eigenharp.

At the end of the song it seems that I'm taxing my two year old MacBook Pro a bit too much and there's some crackling since the CPU has trouble keeping up. It was fine while rehearsing, but recording at the same time seems to have pushed it over the edge, sorry about that. I should have expected this as these Kontakt sampler instruments are so detailed that some computers have trouble even playing them by themselves.

I hope you enjoy this performance nonetheless, do tell me what you think of it.

You can download it freely from SoundCloud here:
http://soundcloud.com/gbevin/battlestar-galactica-kiara

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Battlestar Galactica
• Cylon theme
• Final Five
• Eigenharp
• Eigenharp Alpha
• BSG
• Bear McCreary
• cover song
• Electric Guitar
• Piano

[vladimer1st]

i have no prior music experience, and after seeing this i want to learn how to play this instrument. is it difficult to learn and eventually master as you did?

just bought the alpha, so now looking for music teacher who knows this instrument (good luck, sigh...). how did you learn?

[gbevin]

@vladimer1st congrats on your purchase. The Eigenharp is really new and there are not teachers available yet. There's a very active user community though. The Eigenlabs forums on are very helpful and we also meet once a week in a virtual clubhouse using Google+ hangouts (video conferencing).

The Eigenharp is significantly easier to learn than any other instruments I tried because it's a very smooth learning curve. You can start by playing in one particular scale without wrong notes ...

[gbevin]

@vladimer1st ... and then move on to more complex keyboard layouts. You can also start by just playing melodies or chords and then gradually learn other things.

[gbevin]

@vladimer1st I learned by just starting to figuring out where normal chord shapes are located and by just improvising in major and minor musical scales. Practicing daily gives you results quickly and then you just take it step by step. It's a musical instrument though, so don't expect it to be able to play it without efforts. However, compared to other instruments I found it much more rewarding during the process.

[solarnitemovie]

Wow.

This is great.

I wonder, is this instrument capable of making orchestral sounding versions of other themes, ie Fringe?

[gbevin]

@solarnitemovie totally, this is a real instrument, but with virtually no limits in the sounds you can make or how you play them

[lonesailor21va]

These things are awesome, and your playing is top notch!! I hope they add PC drivers for the Alpha as they have done with the Pico, I might have to get one when they do. Your cover of this song is phenomenal, two giant thumbs up!

[carvingCode]

Every time I listen to this I think it's more amazing than before. Nice!

[mbu00]

unbe-frakkin-lievable

[esolonet]

by your command

[tsns1]

From Moody Blues to EigenHarp's

[MrCroky123]

Wonderful ! I think you did just great. First time I've seen this instrument as well and I think it's amazing !

Keep up the good work.