Dear Bill Norrie,

Hi! I finally caught up with some sleep after having only two hours the day before. Thank you for sending me a zip file of your version of "This Masquerade". I have done a comparison between your version and the one I had been listening to. I am pleased to say that they are a perfect match (literally identical twins), and therefore I must announce that you fit the bill (excuse the pun) as the mysterious person, the subject of my quest for a song-arranger identication.

I made further observations as follows. Four panel memories are used more or less in a cyclic fashion to furnish the change of solo instrument(s) in the Right 1 and/or Right 2 parts:

(1) Toy Piano & Ocarina
(2) Chiff Flute
(3) New EP Routes
(4) Symphonic Strings & Girls Doos

The left part is consistently Tremolo E Piano.

Your arrangement has a good sense of economy, and strikes a fine balance between unity and variety. Well done!

In terms of sound, the combination of Toy Piano & Ocarina is very effective and refreshing. I am glad that you avoided the less inspired or more common choice of piano or electric piano.

In the interest of saving time and getting the answers from the horse's mouth, I'd be interested to know whether:

(1) You played everything live.

(2) You entered the chord progression into the sequencer, or actually played in the Left part with the Auto Play Chord turned on.

(3) You activated the Panel Memory manually or automatically through the Music Style Arranger mode.

Most, if not all, of the versions of the song that I have come across are in either C minor or F minor. I notice that your version is transposed to Bb and you played in the key of A minor over that transposition, which later goes up a semitone during a repeat of the verse and returns to Bb in the chorus. A nice touch of modulation here! Is that your original idea or is it already in the original version of the song?

Khai

[This message has been edited by Khai (edited 01-17-2005).]