Harlem Nocturne Septet

[herbert]

Hi Ralph,

My comments on your arrangements were about the .mp3 file. Playing the song over Composer, using the MS wave table on my computer, sounds awful. However I did look at the notation with interest.

All of music production is very time consuming. It took Richard Wagner 26 years to create the Ring. This included, designing new instruments and convincing wealthy royalty to built for him a most audacious venue, just to perform his works, as well as chasing after all the wives of his friends and even writing music for them. Wagner was a great innovator. Midi is today’s great innovation, completely revolutionising music production. Midi connects notation with the actual acoustic experience we want to obtain.

The language of midi is much more the language of engineers, technicians and computer programmers, not the language of musicians.

Velocity is a measure of how harsh or soft a note sounds. If you hit a keyboard key with great fury, at a high velocity, you will get a harsh sound. If you hit a keyboard key gently, that is slowly or at a low velocity, the sound will be mellow. Balancing Velocity and Channel Volume, gives you the ability to set the character of a note. For instance for an aggressive Trombone you would select a high Velocity, while adjusting the Channel Volume, to blend the sound level with the other instruments. Alongside with the name Velocity, Composer uses incorectly the name Loudness. This could be confusing. Loudness does not exist in the language of music, nor does it exist in the language of midi. Loudness relates to the human hearing physiology. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness

For a mellow sustained sound of plugged instrument such as an acoustic bass or an acoustic nylon stringed guitar, I use a low velocity value at a higher channel volume as you have done for the bass.

If you are only concerned about producing good notation, there is no need to spend much time on midi editing. There would however be a very considerable time involved in midi editing if you were producing the music track for instance for a Hollywood motion picture. In each case there will be a compromise of time spent against returns. I certainly have to limit the time I spend, for getting a necessary result. To obtain natural sounding results, the essential midi editing tasks are:

1. All notated expressions.
2. Spread out the point of time of attack of percussive and plucked instruments.
3. Set velocity and channel volume.
4. Set vibrato if used.
5. Set pan if used.

Various sample libraries provide the ability of programming special articulation such as shakes, kisses, doits and falloffs for brass, etcetera. Removing the “machine gun effect” is quite important too. Unfortunately, the list of CCs in Notation Composer is not complete.

Again it is all a compromise, in getting desired results for time spent, as you also indicate.


Herbert

[rrayner]

Hi Herbert,

Thank you for your insight, and the amount of time you spent on your response. There is so much to learn and so little time. I am continually torn by my priorities, but in the end, what has to be done is what gets done. The rest is dessert.

I understand what you are saying about volume and velocity -- I just have not tried to put it to practical use yet. Whereas I appreciate your compliment on the volume/velocity level of the bass, I cannot claim credit. Looking at the score, I see that the trombone, baritone sax, bass and drums are all set to a static volume of 100. The trumpet is set to 96 and the tenor sax is set at 110. I don't know how this came to be. What probably happened is that my original score for "Harlem Nocturne" was written on my Clavinova (before Composer came into my life), where I painstakingly entered each and every note with a very tedious data entry capability. I took that midi file, imported it into Composer and cleaned up the notation, so the volume levels had to have come from that source. I do not yet have the knowledge to have done that intentionally. But, spurred by the dialogs by you and others on the subject, I will try to become more knowledgeable in this area. I know that over the years, I have been very displeased at my inability to create a more legato effect in the horns. I have a suspicion that you are leading me into an area of discovery. Heaven knows, Sherry and Mark have tried to educate me in this area, but it has just seemed to bounce off.

Thank you for all of your commentary. I will see if I can put it to good use.

Ralph

[herbert]

Hi Ralph,

Thank you for your response. We’ll talk again soon.

Herbert

[aulos43]

Hey Ralph,

Just listened to your Harlem Nocturne.mp3 again. Love the interplay between the solo and the tutti (or whatever the jazz terminology equivalents may be). The tone of the tenor sax in the A section (Clavinova is remarkable) is indeed sultry. The delicious textural effects of pitting swung against straight rhythmic interpretations and the careful attention to atriculations. Satisfying contrapuntal chord voicings.

I was transported.

Walt

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[rrayner]

Thank you very much, Walt. I truly appreciate the compliments. I do love this song. One of the things about the Clavinova voice that really tickles me is on the starting note, the low B on the tenor, there is a little flutter that will occasionally happen to me when I play it live. Talk about realism!

Ralph