Ken Locarnini wrote:

> Very unintuitive for music yes but if you use a miidi convertor like
> Midi2csound or Silence you can go back and forth between midi and score.  I
> find midi tools much more intuitive for writing music like using Cakewalk
> then go into Csound for rendering the midi file and score manipulation.  Of
> course if my computor were fast enough I would probably use midi alone.
> There are many good scoring tools that produce midi files that are easy to
> use like FracMuse2(fractals), Key Kit etc.  I am personally working on self
> contained orcs with ftgen that directly respond to midi to eliminate the
> translation process.
>         Can someone explain what the control difference between midi and score is?
> Someone objected that there is not a fine enough degree of control, but I
> don't understand.
> Ken Locarnini

 If one programs control of all parameters required for the generation of a sound
into your csound
instrument itself except duration, pitch and volume,  standard MIDI is useful for
controlling that
instrument. If you map a MIDI controller to a instrument parameter, then you can have
a little more
control, but at the cost of increased difficulty of MIDI editing and real-time MIDI
control (gotta
make sure your MIDI controller will out put an appropriate controller value, even
when it isn't
currently being "controlled"...trivial, I know, and I have no problem with this
approach,
EXCEPT:  when one "locks down" parameters such as envelope attack/decay times, depth
of pitch
deviation ("vibrato" or "jitter"...), vibrato,rates, etc.,etc., by hard coding them
into the instrument, or
by having simplistic control logic in the instrument (such as "keyboard maps"),
then you go far towards proving the "anti-synth" musicians right: these instruments
*do* sound
"canned", "boring", uninteresting, in a word.

I'm not saying taking the trouble to provide MIDI controller mapping or fancy
instrument-internal
control logic is *bad*, but I find the most exciting approach is to treat a csound
score like a
sonic sculpture...I leave as many control parameters in the note list as possible,
then use programs
to massage and vary the note list .... lotsa advantages: one can use these note lists
as "compositional motives", and copy and massage them to produce a related but
excitingly different
version of the "motive".
As Example "e.g": take a note  list, scale durations by 1.5, start times by 1.45,
double envelope
attack times, and adjust carrier mod ratios ( which are already slightly wandering
around by earlier
editing with small random deviations: "wow, what a colorful instrument"!) by scaling
them by .99,
and drop the pitch slightly less than an octave, and increase volume to global reverb
feed :
hey, a whole new  dark take on the earlier "series of sounds" !! (melody?))....
all impossible if you rely on having all these things controlled in the instrument.

I'm really thinking there is a lack of talk about note list/score editing, in our
excited rush to MIDIfy,
now that home computers have the cycles to do simple realtime synthesis. I know of
very few
software synthesis works which are widely  acknowledged to be
great/interesting/fascinating that
are purely controlled by MIDI level control (note,rhythm,amplitude, one/two
continuous functions).
They almost all have interestingly controlled note lists, that is note lists that are
not at all mappable to  MIDI.
Add to that the fact that MIDI allows 128 distinct values for most parameters, and
the smallest
control values in a software synth language usually have  65536 different values, and
most of them
have even finer degrees of control, (using floating point values), and you might see
the
inadequacy of the MIDI paradigm for software synthesis.


If you think that way, as do many , go ahead and write at the keyboard to begin, or
in standard
notation....no problem! But try to go a step further with the results: edit in all
sorts of fancy fine
control of :
 --  dynamics (are you *that* controlled a keyboard player,? or do you *really* want
that phrase all the same volume?)
 -- envelopes (please, a wind instrumentalist spends a lifetime controlling the
attack /decay times
of their instrument...why then should you offend their ears with with *exactly* the
same attack
time for every range and dynamic?)
 --   every parameter! go ahead, vary that FOF window time!!! It's *so* cool!
And much better music.

Again, gone on too long,
Pax,
Char lieB
*********************************************
Charlie Baker              baker@charlieb.com
 "when everything isn't roses, you don't get
   any headroom" - Thomas Dolby "New Toy"
*********************************************

Charles Baker wrote an inspiring call to arms for synthesists:

> -- envelopes (please, a wind instrumentalist spends a lifetime
>controlling the
>attack /decay times
>of their instrument...why then should you offend their ears with with
>*exactly* the
>same attack
>time for every range and dynamic?)
> --   every parameter! go ahead, vary that FOF window time!!! It's *so* cool!
>And much better music.

don't remember if i previously bored the list with this war story. but
around 1977 i spent a few days on a Lyricon.

a wind player, i was majoring in the saxophone at the time. poor but
interested in those exorbitantly expensive devices at school (a buchla
among other things), i rejected them as completely impractical. with no
money, synthesis just didn't seem a realistic avenue for expression. and
those horrible punch cards. forget about computers. and math without
purpose was boring.

but the Lyricon was surprisingly expressive and beautifully designed
-instantly comfortable. in fact i felt that it was, from the standpoint of
an interface for fingers, superior to any wind instrument i had ever
handled, including clarinet, oboe, flute and certainly the brass
instruments (although trombone does have that portamento stuff down cold).
and the keys had multiple uses: hit a side key and the pitch is raised half
a step. but none of those saxophonic multiphonics, the control of the sound
through its mouthpiece needed work and its synthesis capabilities were
limited. nuances of dynamics and timbre were just not adequately
executable. i thought to myself, just give it a few years and this is what
i'll be playing.

well i did and the Lyricon was replaced with those newfangled midi wind
synthesizer controllers. although i'm sure the designers were necessarily
brilliant, i felt the instruments were far inferior to the Lyricon! reading
up on it, i learned that the culprit was midi. don't know if that
assessment was completely fair but hey, even hated the way the instruments
felt. keys not as well laid out, and something uncomfortable about that
oblong shape adapted to facilitate mounting of the electronics inside. a
few years later, maybe 86, i tried again. no cigar.

now i still need money, but it sure as hell is about time to upgrade the
standard, make available a new generation of wild and wooley controllers,
and exactly copy the exterior of the Lyricon.

tolve