28 Sep
2004
28 Sep
'04
11:46 a.m.
I'm curious how everybody handles MIDI recording. I find it hard to
believe that everyone records to a straight tempo using the metronome,
only to add ritardandos and accelerandos later in some artificial way
by editing the tempo track. That may work for some kinds of music
(dance music perhaps), but certainly not everyone works that way.In
particular, I'm recording organ music, which is similar to piano music
or indeed almost any classical music in its need for expression.
But if I turn off the metronome and record at a free tempo I find that
the transports and bar information are more or less useless. It makes
it very hard to re-record segments or set up loops, etc. How do you
handle MIDI wrt tempo?
I'm using Rosegarden, but not entrenched yet.
--
De gustibus non disputandum est.
28 Sep
28 Sep
12:03 p.m.
Hi Hans:
A good question. I've transcribed a lot of piano music by various
composers, and I enter each note from the computer keyboard. I follow
the dynamics indicators in the music, then I apply a very little
humanization to start-times, durations, and velocities. After that I do
edit a tempo track manually. Again I follow the tempo indicators in the
music, but I also provide an underlying tempo loop (usually at the level
of the 16th note or 8th note triplet) to "disturb" the even playback
typical of step-entered MIDI music. My sequencer of choice has a very
easily edited tempo track, so all this stuff takes less time than you
might think.
I find that with some careful shaping of dynamics and tempo you can
create the illusion of a decent performance. Of course, you have to know
what a decent performance is, and of course you need to know something
about the performance practice for the kind of music you're
transcribing, but all this works well for me.
Best regards,
dp
Hans Fugal wrote:
I'm curious how everybody handles MIDI recording. I
find it hard to
believe that everyone records to a straight tempo using the metronome,
only to add ritardandos and accelerandos later in some artificial way
by editing the tempo track. That may work for some kinds of music
(dance music perhaps), but certainly not everyone works that way.In
particular, I'm recording organ music, which is similar to piano music
or indeed almost any classical music in its need for expression.
But if I turn off the metronome and record at a free tempo I find that
the transports and bar information are more or less useless. It makes
it very hard to re-record segments or set up loops, etc. How do you
handle MIDI wrt tempo?
I'm using Rosegarden, but not entrenched yet.
1:28 p.m.
On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:40:25 -0400, Dave Phillips <dlphilp(a)bright.net> wrote:
A good question. I've transcribed a lot of piano
music by various
composers, and I enter each note from the computer keyboard. I follow
the dynamics indicators in the music, then I apply a very little
humanization to start-times, durations, and velocities. After that I do
edit a tempo track manually. Again I follow the tempo indicators in the
music, but I also provide an underlying tempo loop (usually at the level
of the 16th note or 8th note triplet) to "disturb" the even playback
typical of step-entered MIDI music. My sequencer of choice has a very
easily edited tempo track, so all this stuff takes less time than you
might think.
I might give that approach a try; some of the stuff I want to get into
MIDI format is over my head in terms of what I can perform without
massive practice. :)
I find that with some careful shaping of dynamics
and tempo you can
create the illusion of a decent performance. Of course, you have to know
what a decent performance is, and of course you need to know something
about the performance practice for the kind of music you're
transcribing, but all this works well for me.
If you were recording a piece that you know well enough to perform (if
you're not a pianist, pretend your instrument of choice (even voice)
were a midi input device), would you be as satisfied?
This has got me thinking. I think the ideal for me would be to record
free and then mold the tempo track to the recording. Rosegarden will
let you do a beat track, perhaps I'll try that. But what if you could
just drag the barlines (or beats, or your choice of granularity) to
the appropriate spots?
--
De gustibus non disputandum est.
1:19 p.m.
On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 07:29:23AM -0600, Hans Fugal wrote:
But if I turn off the metronome and record at a free tempo I find that
the transports and bar information are more or less useless. It makes
it very hard to re-record segments or set up loops, etc. How do you
handle MIDI wrt tempo?
I'm using Rosegarden, but not entrenched yet.
No idea if any sequencer out there has such functionality.
But it should be possible to record a reference track with
straight notes and a function to use that as reference
for the master/tempo track.
Even better would be being able to use any material for
that, but I guess that would require a bit of artificial
intelligence.
---
Thorsten Wilms
3:03 p.m.
On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 07:29:23AM -0600, Hans Fugal wrote:
I'm curious how everybody handles MIDI recording.
I find it hard to
believe that everyone records to a straight tempo using the metronome,
only to add ritardandos and accelerandos later in some artificial way
by editing the tempo track. That may work for some kinds of music
(dance music perhaps), but certainly not everyone works that way.In
particular, I'm recording organ music, which is similar to piano music
or indeed almost any classical music in its need for expression.
But if I turn off the metronome and record at a free tempo I find that
the transports and bar information are more or less useless. It makes
When I worked with midigraphy in my days as a mac user I did exactly
that. I just ignored the tempo grid entirely. If I wanted to line stuff
up I just did it visually in the piano roll editor eyeballing the note
starts and stops and zooming in if I wanted to be more precise.
Obviously this approach isn't going to suit many people. But, it is one
possible, if not at all ideal, workaround. My own styles don't require
strict meter or rhythm ... so I get away with a lot more.
Some of the results are available in http://zhevny.com/audio/MGGM/. This
stuff wasn't made in linux and is currently only available in .mp3 and
is pretty cheasy (it is at least hosted on linux though :) ). If nothing
else, it might give you an idea of why you don't want to do it my way
and would be better off with a laborious approach like Dave's.
-Eric Rz.
30 Sep
30 Sep
11:45 a.m.
Hans Fugal <fugalh(a)gmail.com>om>:
But if I turn off the metronome and record at a free
tempo I find that
the transports and bar information are more or less useless. It makes
it very hard to re-record segments or set up loops, etc. How do you
handle MIDI wrt tempo?
Maybe there is a sequencer somewhere that can be tempo-controlled with
a midi volume pedal -- or whatever midipeople call that -- during
recording and playback so one could use metronome/bars after all.
Wolfgang
1 Oct
1 Oct
2:44 p.m.
Wolfgang Woehl wrote:
Hans Fugal <fugalh(a)gmail.com>om>:
It's an interesting problem. About a year ago I took some jazz
recordings that I like a lot by Bill Bruford. I love his drumming and
was studying it to learn more about how I might program MIDI drum
patterns. Of course, as you start doing this you want to see how your
patterns mix and mesh with what a real drummer is doing, so I loaded a
few of his tracks into Pro Tools, loaded my MIDI patterns, adjusted
everything latency wise and went to work. The very first thing I found
was that his band's tempo varied almost measure by measure. 102.15,
101.56, 102.4, 101.9, etc. It became very difficult to map my work
against his audio for any extended period of time.
Using Beat Detective (part of Acid) I was able to develop a tempo map of
the song and do better, but it quickly became an exercise in frustration.
Along the way I ran across an Eric Clapton CD, not well reviewed and I
don't remember it's name, but the interesting this was when I looked it
it's audio visually I saw consistencies across complete songs that
didn't look natural. The audio had an almost over-compressed look where
the whole tune was the same volume. when I threw one of these tunes
against Beat Detective I found that the tempo didn't vary at all.
Reading the CD cover there was a big thanks given to someone for their
'drum machine programming' . Seems to me that this CD was probably made
by laying down drum tracks with a box of some type and then recording
audio against it.
I'm not suggesting that the way Clapton made that record (if indeed he
did it as I suggest) contributed to it not being well reviewed. That's
just an observation. However, when musicians play naturally then tempo
is naturally all over the place. Getting any sequencer to understand,
follow, record and notate all of this would be a huge accomplishment I
think. None the less, it would be a very interesting capability, going
the other way around, for a sequencer to add some capability to generate
natural tempo changes to notated MIDI to give the output some additional
life.
Cheers,
Mark
But if I turn off the metronome and record at a
free tempo I find that
the transports and bar information are more or less useless. It makes
it very hard to re-record segments or set up loops, etc. How do you
handle MIDI wrt tempo?
Maybe there is a sequencer somewhere that can be tempo-controlled with
a midi volume pedal -- or whatever midipeople call that -- during
recording and playback so one could use metronome/bars after all.
Wolfgang
3:26 p.m.
Mark Knecht wrote:
It's an interesting problem. About a year ago I
took some jazz
recordings that I like a lot by Bill Bruford. I love his drumming and
was studying it to learn more about how I might program MIDI drum
patterns. Of course, as you start doing this you want to see how your
patterns mix and mesh with what a real drummer is doing, so I loaded a
few of his tracks into Pro Tools, loaded my MIDI patterns, adjusted
everything latency wise and went to work. The very first thing I found
was that his band's tempo varied almost measure by measure. 102.15,
101.56, 102.4, 101.9, etc. It became very difficult to map my work
against his audio for any extended period of time.
That's always a big issue with using electronic drums, they are *too*
even tempo and mechanical sounding. A good drum machine should allow
for 'humanizing' the tempo, so it varies a little in some non-linear
fashion, as well as the velocities, so the loudness of the transients
aren't always the same. A lot of cheap hardware devices don't do
this... some software ones do (Hydrogen, for example).
Trying to emulate someone like Bruford with a drum machine is going to
be next to impossible. Hell, trying to emulate his style with a human
is next to impossible!
--
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
bathroom.
3:59 p.m.
Brett W. McCoy wrote:
Mark Knecht wrote:
That's why you and I love him, right? ;-)
As I said, I was just studying his technique. He's amazing.
As for the humanizing issue, if you are going to use that then you'd
better record the drum audio early as it won't humanize the same way
twice and then things get very dodgy. That said I hear good things about
Hydrogen, but I got started with Reaktor's drum machines too early to
want to give up on them now.
Take care,
Mark
It's an interesting problem. About a year ago
I took some jazz
recordings that I like a lot by Bill Bruford. I love his drumming and
was studying it to learn more about how I might program MIDI drum
patterns. Of course, as you start doing this you want to see how your
patterns mix and mesh with what a real drummer is doing, so I loaded a
few of his tracks into Pro Tools, loaded my MIDI patterns, adjusted
everything latency wise and went to work. The very first thing I found
was that his band's tempo varied almost measure by measure. 102.15,
101.56, 102.4, 101.9, etc. It became very difficult to map my work
against his audio for any extended period of time.
That's always a big issue with using electronic drums, they are *too*
even tempo and mechanical sounding. A good drum machine should allow
for 'humanizing' the tempo, so it varies a little in some non-linear
fashion, as well as the velocities, so the loudness of the transients
aren't always the same. A lot of cheap hardware devices don't do
this... some software ones do (Hydrogen, for example).
Trying to emulate someone like Bruford with a drum machine is going to
be next to impossible. Hell, trying to emulate his style with a human
is next to impossible!
7:20 p.m.
New subject: [linux-audio-user] Drumming [was: metronome-free MIDI recording]
Mark Knecht wrote:
Yeah... it's funny, I'm not a kit drummer at all (I have some training
in Middle Eastern percussion only), being primarily a guitarist, but I
am finding myself more and more listening to the drums in music to
better my own electronic drum programming.
For bands like Yes, King Crimson & Rush, the drum parts are very
composed and do more than 'just keep the beat'. Bruford and Peart are
all over the place... to emulate that kind of playing with a drum
machine or software, you damn near have to have a different drum pattern
for every measure!
Suprisingly, for Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, his individual beats
aren't very complex, its just that the tempo and key signature change a
lot that make seem it complex.
Trying to
emulate someone like Bruford with a drum machine is going to
be next to impossible. Hell, trying to emulate his style with a human
is next to impossible!
That's why you and I love him, right? ;-)
As I said, I was just studying his technique. He's amazing. As for the humanizing issue, if you are going to use
that then you'd
better record the drum audio early as it won't humanize the same way
twice and then things get very dodgy. That said I hear good things about
Hydrogen, but I got started with Reaktor's drum machines too early to
want to give up on them now.
I've not tried Reaktor. I've just started playing with Hydrogen, and am
very impressed with it -- before I was either using a hardware drum
machine or using MIDI (via Finale, Cakewalk, Rosegarden, etc). I've
written several tracks now using Hydrogen. There are some things it
*doesn't* do yet that I need, so I will either wait until Comix
implements it, or just bite the bullet and hack the code to make it do
what I want and see if Comix will take my patches :-)
--
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
bathroom.
7386
days inactive
7389
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
9 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
-
Brett W. McCoy -
Dave Phillips -
Eric Dantan Rzewnicki -
Hans Fugal -
Mark Knecht -
Thorsten Wilms -
Wolfgang Woehl