About Me and the Channel

The Beginnings

I’m Braden Fallon, musician and arranger, specializing in piano music. Thanks for wanting to know a little more about me and the channel.

Starting in 2013, I began arranging orchestral music using synthesizer softwares and MIDI files. After arranging a few pieces, I decided to post them to Youtube using a visualization software. This channel didn’t have a name as was more of an experiment than anything else. I was curious to see if my work would be noticed. Sure enough, it begin to grow but I realized that the music community was more interested in piano musical arrangements. Furthermore, I began to receive requests for video game arrangements, which led me to change the style of my channel and tailor videos towards that.

Branding the Channel

From those changes, SynthesiaManiac was born. The name comes from the software used to visualize the MIDI files, Synthesia, and the fact that I love music and may be considered a musical maniac. With a name for the channel, I began the process of designing logos and banners to weave into the content.

Making Arrangements

Most of the ideas for arrangements have come via requests from viewers which makes this process much easier. The difficulty comes from making a piece playable on the piano without losing the integrity of the piece. Some of the pieces I arranged have effects that simply cannot be replicated on piano. The trick is to preserve as many of the nuances as possible. That is what gives character to each piece.

Finally, when working with MIDI files it is easy to lose the human aspect of music if not careful. I am referring to the subtle changes and variations that occur when people play music (especially with tempo and note length). With MIDI files, it is easy for them sound mechanical since a software is “reading” the music and “playing” it. Removing this requires numerous listens to the piece and shifting the position and duration of notes in the file so they don’t exactly line up.

Thanks for reading a little bit about my work and channel.

Make sure to check out the Downloads page to see all the available MIDI files.