Hello Josh! thanks for the kind comment. Yes the piano is quite fabulous. Very life. I thought so, when I heard it for the first time. :-) So how do I learn: It will be different for different people. But I can't read braille notation. I never learnt it. I know it exists and people can work with it, but it was never something for me. I have a notion of note lengths, rhythms and the like, but since my step sequencing days - long gone - it has drastically diminished. :-) In my piano lessons I always learnt by ear and talk. So I've learnt Bach almost exclussively for the last 10 to 12 years. I got very used to the harmonies and in any case I'm not bad a hearing intervals. So we start with one hand (right or left, which is suites us at the moment) and then move forward at most four bars. Then we look at the other hand and finally we try to merge them. :-) I'm usually in the advantage, since I have recordings of all the pieces I learn. So I have a good imagination of what the piece should sound like. Beyond that, of course the general idea of note length and basic musical knowledge helps. So I learn a piece in small bites. Very rarely my teacher tells me what to play and which length the note has, but it's quite slow. OK, we've worked together for more than 18 years now. We got used to each other and our methods of learning/teaching. Sohe usually knows, what I'm asking for, if there's a problem or uncertainty. He knows where to look mostly, when I discovfer a problem in a piece/part already learnt. It's quite effective I think. We at least manage four bars per half an hour. Mostly it's more than that. But some Bach fugues can be quite tricky. Also the beginning of a fugue is complicated for my teacher, as he has to look at the fingering and has to be comfortable with the flats and double flats and the sharps and double sharps. :-) But when he's had some time, we get through it quite well. :-) My teacher is closing in on 90, so I think it's pretty amazing, that we get along this well in personalities and manner of learning. I think it's quite a difference teaching a student by ear only, if you're used to reading notes and teaching your pupils to read notes and let them go rather quickly. :-) Sorry for ranting, but I like the way I work and I love the way my teacher adapted to it. It shows me, that a lot of things are possible if you only put your mind to it. You need to be open for it, but with an open mind, you can perform quite efficiently and in a very kind and productive atmosphere. Kindest regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

Hi Jack! You're welcome. I sometimes wonder: Is it so strange for a musician to know these facts? Might be, that I'm just used to it, on the other hand it's such a simple method of learning. Not very self-reliant, but I wouldn't say rare. Or am I wrong here? I suppose this method is especially appealing to jazz musicians, as they have to learn, not to play by sheet music, but to improvise. The most important thing for some kinds of jazz is - as I believe - grasping the basic theme, taking it up and then working with it. Well, this type of workflow is not so common among classical musicians, I daresay. Hm... Warm regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

Julien Claassen wrote: Kind of sad, if true. In Bach's day, musicians were EXPECTED to be able to take a melody whistled or sung by anyone in their audience - a melody they might have never heard before - then sit down and improvise contrapuntal pieces on it. Even including 4-voice fugues. My piano instructor taught me that - I used to be able to improvise 2-3 part contrapuntal pieces that same way. If many modern classical musicians can't do the same thing today, it says more about the inadequacy of musical training these days than any difference between jazz or classical musicians. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

Rustom Mody wrote: Julian, Nice work! As performing jazz pianist I am with Renato and Dave very pessimistic about the classical music training here in The Netherlands. In the 50ies and sixties classical musical students who also played jazz on another instrument (I worked with a now reasonably known classical pianist, who played jazz on the trombone) were threatened to be removed from the conservatory! I have many classical pianist friends who are very jealous as I play anything that comes into my head and, just as david mentioned sometimes improvise on short themes they provide and then hear them struggling to do the same. However, there are profound differences in technique and key-touch between classical and jazz pianists (the same goes for other instruments). I have written an arrangement for solo piano of Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Lady and given to some of them to perform. It is however rather difficult for them as (A) the chords are outside their normal repertoire and (B) rhythmic interpretation of the text is typically "non-jazzy", something you can hear from the first note. Julian, you know I presume that 2 very great jazz musicians were blind (Art Tatum and Lenny Tristano) you should listen to them and be amazed about the techniques they use. Joep

On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 09:59:50AM +0200, Joep L. Blom wrote: Not to mention singers. Every now and then one of the top class opera singers produces a CD with jazz standards, and the results are usually quite horrible IMHO. The issue of Aeolus' temperament was mentioned in this thread. The current release has Pythagorean, Meantone 1/4 Werckmeister III Kirnberger III Well Tempered Equally Tempered The next one will add Vogel/Ahrend, Vallotti Kellner Lehman Pure C/F/G which were contributed by Hanno Hoffstadt and Adam Sampson. The default (set not by Aeolus but by the definition files in the stops package) is Meantone 1/4, which is probably not the best choice for playing some of the WTC (this is my error, the intention was to make Werkmeister the default). Ciao, -- FA O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte !

Hi Julien, It's easy to change. Edit the file stops-***/Aeolus/definition. Near the top you'll find a line /tuning 440.0 1 The second number is an index into the list in my previous post, starting at zero. You'll find it as well in scales.cc. Werckmeister III will probably work well in most cases. To test, play something in A flat. The main problem with Meantone is the Ab-C-Eb chord (just try it !). If you want to switch easily, you could for example create a directory stops-***/Aeolus-ET, copy the definition file there and set it to Equal Temperament. Then use the -I command line option to select this one. Ciao, -- FA O tu, che porte, correndo si ? E guerra e morte !

Thanks for these hints Fons. It's good to hear such good news. I'll experiment with it and also try the Ab major chord to see how it sounds. Warmly yours Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

Greetings Lorenzo! No, Nama can't do MIDI. I just sit down and play in audio. I play as long as it takes to be good and that's that. I store the mix of instrument and reverb if necessary and I'm done. Warm regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

Just out of curiosity: Do you use equal temperament or something else like Werckmeister-III? On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Julien Claassen <julien(a)c-lab.de> wrote:

Julien Claassen wrote: Aeolus is equal-tempered by default, but you can readily change it. I've heard that before equal temperament arrived, there were very real differences between different keys, so that a piece written in C major would not sound harmonically the same as the same piece played in A major. That since equal temperament was adopted, there's less character/difference between the different keys. Now it's just a matter of transposing and you get the same thing, only higher or lower ... -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

Hello Stephen! Sorry, to contradict you in general. :-) But I simply have to. I met a few other blind people over the years and I found, that a good deal of them, can't hear any better than sighted people. Including disco damage and all that. I grant you, they are worse off, than those who do take care of their ears and train them. My hearing is OK, but not fabulous. I met loads of sighted people, who have a better sense of hearing. OK, remembering someone by voice is an essential thing. Otherwise you're simply marked as forgetful and you will have problems. :-) Kindest regards Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

Hello David! As I said, it's a question of learning or deciding. If you played by ear early on, it would certainly come very easily to you, as children are so well adaptable to new workflows. But really there are - in my experience - a lot of very dependent and immobile blind people. This is probably due to the fact, that they didn't really train theirsense of hearing and sometimes not even their sense of touch beyond the necessary limit. Listeningly yours :-) Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

On 06/20/2010 11:18 PM, alexander wrote: General: http://piano-midi.de/ or http://bachcentral.com/ This piece: http://www.bachcentral.com/BachCentral/WTCBkI/Prelude16.mid More Bach midi: http://www.jsbach.net/midi/index.html

Hello Niels! Thanks for these tarballs. As for the other tools you mentioned: Although I like the commandline I know no such things. I know, that Timidity estimates the playback length of one file. And I'm sure there are other tools libraries that can easily do it. But noone I know of, thought of this kind of problem. Kindly yours Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

Hello Niels! I don't exactly know the Yamaha piano you mentioned, but if it isn't too ancient (early 80s late 70s) I'd say Coggie is the Yamaha and Gnulem is the Emu. It sounds horrible. I never heard a Yamaha sound that horrible. I think even the old Casio keyboard a friend of mine had/has had a piano with a nicer sound. It wasn't that biting at least. Pfui. :-) Still I suppose, you can work with it and for some bizarre synth arrangement it might even be a very special sound. I suppose you can use it a cross between piano, clavinet, guitar and synth arpeggio sound. Let me know, if I was right and pleas let me know from when both the sounds were. Best wishes Julien -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd(a)jdboyd.net> wrote: I'm sure it's around -- in general, all the Yamaha XG demos are quite amazing for their ability to cram an amazing amount of sound into a relatively small midi file. Yes the db50xg emulates guitars nicely, if that's what you're into. I'm more interested in the fact that this card is basically a "postcard sized" rave ... just be careful licking the stamps :-) A single grand piano is probably the worst and stupidest use of this card, unless you just happen to be listening to MIDI as a radio, which I like to do, and which this card makes very easy, due to its all-encompassing compatibility with every major midi standard. With no setup whatsoever, I can click on any web or filesystem-browser MIDI track, and if it's general-midi MIDI tracks, most Roland GS, and all Yamaha XG tracks, it will generally sound close to the original performer's intent. The fascination is that it's a dirt-cheap full XG synthesizer for $10-20 card ( http://cgi.ebay.com/XR385-YAMAHA-DB60XG-DB50XG-MIDI-Synth-Daughter-Board-/2… ) that fits inside your computer... which means you can have a slow and outdated computer and a USB keyboard and a controller and perform glitch and worry free. The load to your computer is absolutely negligible even with mad amounts of midi-controller data being sent to this synth. It never crashes. It is rock-solid. More important than being a full-XG synth, is that it's a fully controllable TG300B synth when using http://qxgedit.sourceforge.net ... making it much closer to a Yamaha AN1X (analog modelling synth) or a CS1X or a QS300 ... for details, see http://www.dancetech.com/item.cfm?threadid=328 http://webspace.webring.com/people/jt/the_qs300_website/ Speaking of the db50xg's negligible load, FYI, the recordings done below were done while my son was playing UrbanTerror at 60-80FPS on his linux box (since that's where the synth resides as I'm out of slots). Qmid was running on my computer "gnulem" using jack to route the MIDI via qmidinet to the computer named "coggie" housing the Yamaha and the Terratec Dmx6fire soundcard breakout box that houses the db60xg. The digital output from the Terratec DMX6fire is feeding my "poor mans digital matrix switch" composed of radio-shack 4 way passive video switch feeding the SPDIF on my computer's M-audio delta66. The recording is of this SPDIF input.... The way I have things setup, I can simply click on http://www.megatrade.ru/Midi/Isummer.zip and then click on the enclosed file Intelligent_Summer.mid and immediately hear this playback through kmid: http://nielsmayer.com/npm/Intelligent_Summer.ogg (which is also a better demo of this card, IMHO). Or for piano-based music "Skyline\ -\ Herbie\ Hancock\ -\ TG300B.mid" from http://www.blueman.name/Jazz.php becomes becomes http://nielsmayer.com/npm/Skyline_Herbie_Hancock_TG300B.ogg Next step: The -75db noise floor (per jnoisemeter), ancient D/A converter (AK4510), ancient analog output stage (JRC 4570), as well as the input analog stage (JRC4580) and input A/D converter on the Terratec DMX6Fire will be completely bypassed when I tap into the TTL SPDIF in on the AK4510 and connect it to the TTL-level CD input on the DMX6Fire ... if it works, it will be quite the hack due to the ease and $0.00 implementation cost (now, if I could only find my 25W soldering iron so i don't burn the PC board and lift the copper pads). -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 2:46 AM, Julien Claassen <julien(a)c-lab.de> wrote: I don't have an AN1X and don't need it, since I have the competing Roland JP8000 ( http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jp8000.php ), however I've seen plenty of comparisons between the AN1X and the db50xg/sw1000xg -- it's appears to be a follow-on using much of the same architecture. Alas, I think i was slightly confused, as the AN1X is related to the db50xg, and i have midi tracks for the AN1x that sound quite nice on the db50xg, the "analog" modulations of sound parameters come through on the db50xg too... In reality the db50xg/db60xg is closer to a CS1X, which is a pretty respected synth in it's own right, esp in waveblaster card format for $10.00 and taking up no space.... Fortunately, many of the slider-controls on the JP8000 just happen to map directly to the DB50xg -- so i can easily control "ADSR" on the filters, as well as control of resonance and frequency, as well as ADSR on the amp. Or use qxgedit to control various parameters in real-time. To get the equivalent of a db50xg and an AN1X "in a box", get an old MU-100R or MU128 ( http://cgi.ebay.com/YAMAHA-MU-128-XG-Sound-Module-QY-SU-Motif-VL-WX-PLG-RY-… ) and a PLG150AN daughterboard ( http://cgi.ebay.com/Yamaha-PLG150-AN-Analog-Modular-Synthesis-Plug-In-MOTIF… ): http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan00/articles/yamahaplgs.htm . The following article gives a pretty good idea of the constellation of synths from Yamaha that are all similar in architecture, right up to the Motif series. The biggest difference seems to be that the db50xg has 4MB of onboard (compressed) samples and waveforms   whereas the higher end and later synths can have up to hundreds of megabytes... (if you care for long wooshy samples that sound cool in the music store, but aren't worth wasting precious ROM on, IMHO). http://interviews.sonikmatter.com/2001/nick_howes.php ................................  Nick: The best for me in the past 10 years have been the VL1, the FS1R, SW1000XG and the AN1x. All of which were pretty ground breaking. .... The An1x was the closest thing to a Prophet 5 (a synth I owned and sold...DUHHH) I ever heard. It really did capture the Prophet sound quite well.  ..... New project which was to become the DB50XG daughterboard.... ... He then contacted Yamaha R&D's sound designer; a guy by the name of Dan Powell. They told him to talk to me, about possibly getting involved with some synth voice development. I had that year been working for Ultravox (the pop group), on an album and world tour as programmer and keyboard tech, so I had some credentials in this area. Dan gave me a prototype keyboard to do 32 voices for (the W7 as it turned out) of which 31 were accepted and made it into the voice ROM (apparently a very high percentage for a new guy!). I then took the job full time at Yamaha Kemble doing tech support and tech sales, but always hankered for the job at R&D London (sales never being my "thing"). After about 18 months at Yamaha Kemble, I received a call from the head of the European Music Software section at the R&D center. He was asking if I wanted to work for him developing voice data, and also building the new Yamaha.co.uk website (something I was getting into at the time was web development), and also work on a new soundcard project. I moved down to the London office (a very nice place to work, believe me), and continued to work on soundcard R&D (SW1000XG), voice design and development (QS300, CS1x, CS2x, CS6x, An1x, Motif, AN200, DX200 to name but a few synths I have voiced, and websites ( yamaha.co.uk, xgfactory.com and yamahasynth.com ). ................................. Niels http://nielsmayer.com PS: After reading the above article, we know why Yamaha synths sound like Ultravox: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJeWySiuq1I (ah, Vienna!)

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 2:45 PM, Julien Claassen <julien(a)c-lab.de> wrote: Once you can get at the VLSI, I think it's more than a laugh. It's serious synthesis power (including effects and importantly, tempo-integrated effects on a per-track basis) encapsulated in a standard Yamaha XG format MIDI file, as evidenced by, the publicly available XG tracks that I rendered for demonstration purposes on the db60xg (NEC XR385), as posted earlier: http://www.megatrade.ru/Midi/Isummer.zip --> http://nielsmayer.com/npm/Intelligent_Summer.ogg Skyline\ -\ Herbie\ Hancock\ -\ TG300B.mid ( http://www.blueman.name/Jazz.php ) --> http://nielsmayer.com/npm/Skyline_Herbie_Hancock_TG300B.ogg ... To get these devices out of "toy" mode, you need to send the device an appropriate sysex to put it into TG300B mode. Or you use Rui Nuno Capela's QXGEdit ( http://qxgedit.sourceforge.net ) or the windows XGEdit ( http://www.yamahamusicsoft.com/en/product/1017294 ). http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/xgmasterclass.htm is a good article on what can be done -- nothing groundbreaking, just basic synthesis, but now available for a total of $10.00, hosted by a variety of linux-supported cheap&used ICE1712/1724 soundcards && a free PCI slot, using custom, mass-production, VLSI chips consisting of an AWM2 synthesizer chip and three 24-bit DSPs -- the entire digital portion are big chips, (c) Yamaha 1995, supposedly the same chips used on their synths from the same time-period, aka CS1X, AN1X, etc. http://www.soundonsound.com/soundbank/YamahaXG.php are good examples, both audio and MIDI done using the XG standard. That's exactly where having such a synth-board or an MU-series tone-generator might actually come in useful for you. The XG Standard starts out with an extensive, but well-organized set of standard English names for all the voices, which you could access via screenreader or enter as text. With that sonic frame of reference, just about any parameter can be tweaked extensively, and recorded as part of the performance. With per-channel controllable time-sync'd effects Because it's a wide-use standard, some of the opensource programs such as http://qtractor.sourceforge.net and http://kmetronome.sourceforge.net/ make use of existing Yamaha XG Cakewalk instrument definitions (*.ins) files -- if that's handled in the underlying libraries (drumstick?), perhaps a text-based midi-editor might allow you to directly select. from a given instrument definition, the"patch names" and voices from the XG set and automatically set voicing per-midi track -- handling up to 16, or 32, simultaneous voices, w/ 16 parallel effects, all real-time controllable, e.g. potentially with sliders or drawbars on a control surface. The Yamaha MU series might give you this capability: some of the cheaper earlier ones ( http://homepage.mac.com/synth_seal/html/mu10.html ) and the db50xg/db60xg have very little UI and are expected to be controlled by software. The fancier one that can host PLG card-synth that I pointed out has an extensive LCD and many buttons and a jog-wheel, and several modal-editor-looking status-lights that might not be very helpful to you... ( http://cgi.ebay.com/YAMAHA-MU-128-XG-Sound-Module-QY-SU-Motif-VL-WX-PLG-RY-… )... though underlying, would be the same level of external control. Niels http://nielsmayer.com

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Niels Mayer <nielsmayer(a)gmail.com> wrote: FYI, in addition to part-I above ("Creative Synthesis With Yamaha XG XG Masterclass: Part 1"), there's also two follow-on articles (part II and III): http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may04/articles/xgmasterclass.htm :: Creative Synthesis With Yamaha XG, XG Masterclass: Part 2: Layering voices is one of the best ways to maximise the potential of your XG module, so here are a variety of ingenious ways you can use this technique — you can even turn your synth into a high-spec step sequencer! http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun04/articles/xgmasterclass.htm :: Creative Synthesis with Yamaha XG, XG Masterclass: Part 3: In the final instalment of our series of XG programming tips, we take a look at how the advanced modulation parameters can bring your layered sounds to life. Although all the examples specify changing sound parameters via gui programs like XGEdit, these GUI tool only help the user associate a particular sound feature with the MIDI controller or sysex data that actually invokes the feature: it's closer to programming, which is still done textually, and not via GUI. http://electro-music.com/forum/phpbb-files/db50gde_276.doc details the MIDI programming needed to unlock the advanced synthesis features of fully-editable XG: "THE DB50/SW60/MU10 GUIDE Written by : Nick Howes ... This guide also contains notes for developers & system programmers." The above articles should provide a point of disagreement. :-) Are your comments about "fully editable XG" or about "XG Lite"? All of Yamaha's current products seem to use a simplified and nonprogrammable version called "XG Lite" which doesn't have the advanced synthesis features described in the above articles. I'm not sure why yamaha dropped fully-editable XG as a product feature in its latest line of keyboards. Probably marketing reasons (more profit from selling a complete synth with it's own custom GUI, very little in fully programmable computer card like the db50xg). The follow-on PLG modules from yamaha require buying an expensive synth from yamaha to host the cards... There's lots of command line midi tools available, e.g. (1) alsa-utils /usr/bin/arecordmidi by Clemens Ladisch ; (2) Pedro López-Cabanillas' http://drumstick.sourceforge.net/ which contains /usr/bin/drumstick-buildsmf /usr/bin/drumstick-metronome /usr/bin/drumstick-dumpmid /usr/bin/drumstick-playsmf /usr/bin/drumstick-dumpsmf ; (3) More complicated "scripted" MIDI programming could occur via Pedro López-Cabanillas' Kaseq: http://kmetronome.sourceforge.net/kaseq.shtml "ALSA MIDI Kommander is a DCOP interface exposing many ALSA Sequencer features for shell scripts, Kommander scripts, or KDE programs requiring MIDI Sequencer services. A few MIDI utilities have been developed with this tool, which can be used both as programming examples and as real work tools."). -- Niels http://nielsmayer.com

Niels Mayer wrote: <snip> Niels, As pianist (jazz) i have listened to your recordings. In the first place I'm amazed what you can do with MIDI and samples. I have no idea how you did it but from your explanation a gather that you used a midi recording from someone else and than processed it, but I can be wrong. From a pianist viewpoint I don't think anyone will ever play it in this fashion. I prefer the "coggie" version as it sounds more natural without the abrupt silences which are very remarkable in the "gnulem" version. The "coggie" version has much more dynamics, although for my taste the differences are sometimes too abrupt and no pianist will play this piece in this manner (listen to e.g Martha Agerich, or (much older) Rubinstein or Lang-lang (very popular but a phenomenal pianist) and you will hear what I mean. Nevertheless very interesting recordings showing what you can do with digital processing. Joep

On 06/21/2010 12:26 PM, Niels Mayer wrote: Valuable community service -- thanks Niels! :)