[linux-audio-user] [ardour-users] new song on-line

[The Other]

On Saturday 26 November 2005 02:17 pm, Dave Phillips wrote:
> Btw, *anyone* on drums would be a vast improvement, but for the
> record here's some advice to recordists following my Ardour
> adventures: If you need to use a drum track composed with a MIDI
> sequencer there are a couple things you can do for greater realism.
> First, use a sample player like Specimen or Linuxsampler, you can
> then set variations in pitch on the snare and bass drums, it makes
> a big difference. Although percussion is usually classed as "noise"
> instruments there is still a pitch component that is heard. You'll
> certainly notice when it's missing, like salt in a cake recipe.
> Alas, you can indeed notice it in my tracks, indicating how lazy I
> am about this detail (of course it's also easy to improve just by
> re-recording the MIDI track using Specimen). The other trick is to
> add some sort of "disturbance" to the tempo track to upset the
> metronomic regularity. Example: For a song in 4/4 time I'll make a
> looping tempo track of perhaps three measures of 3/8 time, with
> tempo events at the 16th-note triplet level in a series like
> 120-121-122-120-121-122-121-120 and so on. This tempo variation is
> slight enough to be felt but not overly-noticed throughout the
> track.
>
> You can also eliminate this tempo dodge just by using Hydrogen and
> exploiting its humanization features. :)

A reference I've found helpful in programming MIDI files is by Rob 
Young, "The MIDI Files", Prentice Hall Europe 1996, British Library 
Catalog ISBN 0-13-262403-6 (pbk).  I got my copy in 1998 and it came 
with a 3 1/2" floppy disk containing examples and exercises. At that 
time it was USD $30.

Hope this Helps,
Stephen.