----- Original Message -----

From: Greg Schroeder

To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk

Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 8:47 PM

Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [OT] Human speech is music to out ears

I just meant to express that MIDI is quite capable of "musicality," and I thought I heard it being given a bad name.

Greg

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Dave Phillips <dlphillips@woh.rr.com> wrote:

gmschroeder wrote:

Most MIDI implementations I'm aware of incorporate amplitude or some other qualities outside of pitch and duration, right?

Velocity values are typically associated with amplitude, but of course they could be routed to anything on the receiver (assuming such a routing is available, as in Csound).

The MIDI note-on event include channel, pitch level (note number), and a velocity value. Any further modulation of the event comes from controllers (pitch bend, aftertouch, mod wheel, etc), which are not components of the note-on event.

[OT]: rerererererererererere - Jeez those things are annoying.

Best,

dp

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To begin with, we must distinguish between real-time MIDI, and MIDI
used in the context of a digital audio sequencer with multitracking
and overdubbing.

Real-time MIDI (i.e. MIDI signals controlling hardware synthesizers)
has much more serious limitations. To get even moderately good timing
with dense polyphony you have to use multiple MIDI ports.

In the context of a sequencer, timing and pitch can be more accurately
controlled. Even so, there are limitations, which I can perhaps make
clearer:

Each note is a grain of sound. The grains are approximately 0.01
second long, and occur at frequencies ranging from 20 Hz to 16000 KHz.
The timing of each grain must be accurate to the sample frame. The
frequency of the grain must be arbitrarily accurate. The phase of the
grain, also, has to be precisely specified to arbitrary accuracy.
There are literally tens of millions of these grains in one piece.
With sufficient accuracy, the grains blend to make a single, sometimes
complex sound; without accuracy, there is grittiness.

With a Csound score -- easy. And some of the sounds are amazing and
impossible to get any other way as far as I know.

With MIDI -- how do you do it?

Another example. You have an very expressive instrument -- like an
Indian sitar -- the player bends pitches on several strings at once,
it plays both very loud and very soft, it is played in irregular
meters and with flexible and abrupt changes of tempo, some of the
changes of both dynamics and pitch are extremely subtle. I defy MIDI
to operate a software instrument that can make the same sounds in
"virtually" the same way with the same degree of control, but I have
heard convincingly subtle and expressive music made this way with
other software.

Another example: you are "phasing" multiple lines of music. The
attacks of the notes go into and out of phase very gradually. You do
not want any clumsiness or irregularity as the onsets of the notes get
closer and closer together.

Regards,
Mike





On 12/10/09, Greg Schroeder  wrote:
> I've seen devices or software that use the pitch bend CCs to generate a fair
> number of the scales you mention, limited, of course, only by the number of
> CCs MIDI allows.
> I'm not writing many symphonies, but the numbers I have heard limiting
> polyphony using these hardly sounds limiting.
>
> Could you give some examples of "good music" you couldn't make using MIDI
> control signals?
> Greg
> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:00 AM,  wrote:
>
>>  MIDI is simply not capable of representing the full precision of musical
>> performance, as found in developed traditions such as Western classical
>> music or jazz, Indian or Chinese classical music, or contemporary art
>> music.
>> This is true with respect to pitch, loudness, and time.
>>
>> MIDI is nevertheless enormously useful.
>>
>> There is no technical reason that the full precision of human performance
>> CANNOT be captured and represented on computers. Simply replacing the 7
>> bit
>> precision of many MIDI values, or the 14 bit precision of other MIDI
>> values,
>> with floating point numbers would take care of most of the problem.
>>
>> That said, of course limiting one's resources does not kill one as
>> composer. Limiting oneself to the MIDI precision for pitch, loudness, and
>> time does not prevent one from making good music, it just places some hard
>> limits on the KIND of music you can make good.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mike
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* Greg Schroeder 
>> *To:* csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
>> *Sent:* Thursday, December 10, 2009 8:47 PM
>> *Subject:* [Csnd] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
>> Re: Re: Re: [OT] Human speech is music to out ears
>>
>> I just meant to express that MIDI is quite capable of "musicality," and I
>> thought I heard it being given a bad name.
>> Greg
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Dave Phillips
>> wrote:
>>
>>> gmschroeder wrote:
>>>
>>>> Most MIDI implementations I'm aware of incorporate amplitude or some
>>>> other qualities outside of pitch and duration, right?
>>>>
>>>
>>> Velocity values are typically associated with amplitude, but of course
>>> they could be routed to anything on the receiver (assuming such a routing
>>> is
>>> available, as in Csound).
>>>
>>> The MIDI note-on event include channel, pitch level (note number), and a
>>> velocity value. Any further modulation of the event comes from
>>> controllers
>>> (pitch bend, aftertouch, mod wheel, etc), which are not components of the
>>> note-on event.
>>>
>>> [OT]: rerererererererererere - Jeez those things are annoying.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> dp
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to this list.
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>
>>
>
> Send bugs reports to this list.
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"

Michael Gogins  wrote:

> Real-time MIDI (i.e. MIDI signals controlling hardware
> synthesizers) has much more serious limitations. To get
> even moderately good timing with dense polyphony you have
> to use multiple MIDI ports.

Real-time MIDI these days will use USB interfaces.  The
timing's very good.


                    Graham


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