Swing Feel

[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