Swing Feel

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,

Actually mordents - both upward and downward - are already on the Ornaments palette (right after Turn and Delayed Turn).

ttfn,
Sherry

[dj]

Hi, guys:

An inverted mordent would, roughly translated, be an "upside down dying".

Jargon is weird, sometimes.

(It's so freaking cold here that I'm in a joking frame of mind, to try to generate warmth. Spent most of the day yesterday down in my well, trying to unfreeze things. We have water again.)

David

[Sherry C]

Hi David,

Originally Posted by dj

(It's so freaking cold here that I'm in a joking frame of mind, to try to generate warmth. Spent most of the day yesterday down in my well, trying to unfreeze things. We have water again.)

Glad you've now got water, and hope you're enjoying some of the heat wave we're having now (it got up to 15F today). I know you guys have it a lot worse than we do.

I also hope thinking up jokes revs up the brain to put off more heat

ttfn,
Sherry

[rrayner]

I have added another score that features the points made in this discourse. You can see/hear "Autumn Nocturne" at:

http://www.notation.com/vb-forum/sho...4782#post64782

Ralph

[herbert]

Hi Ralph,

I have given up on producing more readable scores for real musicians. What I mostly need are orchestral accompaniments for vocalists. I could not afford to employ the Sydney Symphony Orchestra or any other orchestra for our performances. The next best thing is to use Notation Composer and other software in support, to produce backing tracks.

I read with interest your posts on Swing Feel. As I see it, there are many meanings to the word “swing”. At least three meanings relate to music. Swing can mean jazz-related music of the early 1900’s and the dance style that came with it. Swing can mean rhythmic reinterpretation of written music using doted triplets. To me swing means communicating complex rhythm patterns between jazz musicians. With current methods of notation, swing of the type I am interested in is not notated but is created “on the fly” by capable musicians

Ralph, your arrangements are very impressive. Yet to me, they miss the spark of life in its performance. No doubt musicians playing the arrangements would infuse much life into your music. One observation I have made, is that you place most notes exactly on the beat. This is quite un-natural.

I am primarily a notation person. I would be lost without notation and the music theory that goes with it. But to create a good performance, the notation is only a part of the work. Midi editing brings the music to life and is absolutely essential. Good sample libraries are a must.

David commented elsewhere that the Drums staff in “Autumn Nocturne.not” is rather low in volume. What strikes me in that respect is that some instruments are overshadowed by other more dominant instruments. Not hearing certain sounds due to other sounds is part of our hearing physiology. The mp3 process for instance makes use of this by removing masked sounds we do not hear, in order to reduce the size of an audio file.

Notes that cannot be heard need to be made more prominent or removed to maintain the clarity of the sound (avoid muddiness of sound). The Hi-hat in “Autumn Nocturne.not” is for instance suppressed by the snare. One way of dealing with this is to advance the Hi-hat say by 40 ticks and perhaps increase its volume. Just shifting the Hi-hat to the left by say 40 ticks is already an improvement. Try it with the advance in time you feel is right. BTW this adjustment has nothing to do with swing but with getting good sound.

The attack of a note is the important rhythmic part of a note. It must not necessarily fall exactly on the beat in a measure. Having the attack of all notes at exactly the same time, on the beat for instance, is bad practice and not natural. Particularly with percussive and plucked instruments, the sound will be poor and hard to make out. Importantly, there is the danger of clipping and distortion as all volume levels will add together at the same time. The total volume will be the sum of the individual volume levels of each instrument at the time of percussion and pluck of strings. In contrast to this, if we look at ordinary music files, the sum of random sound levels is much lower. It is the geometric sum of each sound level, expressed as: Total volume = square root over (sound level A squared + sound level B squared + sound level C squared …) This ends up much less than a simple sum of coinciding peak sound levels.

I play double bass and played many years ago in various modern jazz groups. There is always competition between the drummer playing his bass drum and the bass player. Harmonic spectra of both instruments overlap. I was mostly able to persuade the drummer to use the bass drum only minimally, at times by bribing the drummer with drinks. At one concert I had to hide the drum pedal from the drummer. The drummer was most upset and kicked the bass drum directly and continuously with his boot. Since then is the bass drum also known as the kick drum.


Best wishes,

Herbert

[rrayner]

Hi Herbert,

You make a number of excellent observations and points. Bottom line -- it would be a lot easier for me to write these scores plainly (notation-wise) and not worry about attack and duration, because the musicians would interpret the notes and feeling of the piece. I would LOVE to be in that world again, but my Clavinova is my only outlet for playing my music myself with a semblance of a real band.

Some of the early pieces I actually created on the Clavinova (before Notation Composer came into my life), with the lead part being the midi output of me struggling with the midi keyboard, trying to play a single-hand representation of what the melody line was supposed to be (I didn’t try anything up-tempo). At times, this came out not too bad, and as you point out, when I read that midi file into Composer, I see that not all of the entrances of the multiple voices are on the same tick, and I know from personal experience of playing in bands and fronting my own, that there are subtle human variances in the attack timing. One of the joys of playing is to play in a “tight band” (beverages not involved) and really put in a tight performance, i.e., multiple horns sounding like one instrument. So, in regard to the horns, at this point I would rather have something passable to play along with than spend more time in varying the individual attack points. You are so right that it would sound more natural if I did this, but I don't want to spend a lot of time tweaking, when that time could be spent in making other passable scores. I don't feel this is laziness -- simply me trying to be practical with my limited time -- my choices are: one score really humanized for playback; or five or ten that are good, but maybe not great.

The drum part in my Autumn Nocturne is tailored for my Clavinova. The GM sound card on my PC and the Clavinova both have very disparate sound samples in regard to volume and velocity. When I start to write a new piece, Composer wants all staffs to be Velocity=96, so I have to vary these levels to make the final product listenable. My trumpet voice for instance, is rather weak and needs to stay at 96. I drop the tenor sax and baritone sax to 79 for a better balance. The trombone gets dropped to 71 or lower depending on the overall balance in each individual piece.

This variance in Velocity is particularly a pain in the drum kits on both GM and Clavinova. The Hi-hat (Ab3) at 63 sounds okay, as it cuts through fairly well on my venues. The brushes on snare (E2) are set to 63 also. The bass drum (C3) at 96 will knock you into the Old Country, so I have it set to 31, and you are right, it is rather weak. I will probably boost it a little bit higher.

By the way, the brushes on snare (E2) in my "Autumn Nocturne" gives me the brush sound I want on the Clavinova, the circular motion of the brush on the snare surface. Playing around yesterday with my Shuffle Beat posting, I found out that the GM D3 is a much better choice for proper sound of a brush on snare on my PC, but it is not the circular motion sound.

I am really loathe to use MP3 -- so much is lost, but out of respect for the data storage capability on Notation Software’s server, I have chosen to sacrifice some sound for storage size, just so I can present what my score sounds like (somewhat, with a percentage of the sound missing) on my target system, the Clavinova.

Thank you very much for all of your insightful commentary. I am always interested in the ideas of others on how I might improve my music, particularly as it is played by a PC.

Loved your tale about the “kick drum”.

Ralph

[rrayner]

Hi Herbert,

Please see my Shuffle Beat thread.

I adjusted the Hi-hat attack by -40 ticks, and it is quite helpful in "uncovering" the Hi-hat, while not being disruptive to the overall feel of the beat.

Thank you very much for the tip.

Ralph