[sdiy] MIDI isn't musical : Flame bait?

[harry]

While recording my MIDI CD... I did one track with a guitar synth.

What a nightmare. The squeak of your fingers changing position gives about
30 extra notes... all of them near the time, note, and velocity of the correct
(desired) one.

I ended up recording the part one measure at a time, punching in. Took 10
hours to do a three minute part.

It IS possible and maybe even musical to slap five notes at once. Everyone (so
far) has forgotten the world of PERCUSSION (and maybe rightly so ;^)...
A player has 4 limbs... and can hit four objects at the same, or near the same
time...
with varying force.

If the (let's say) snare leads the kickdrum by a millisecond... the result is
very different
than if it lags by a millisecond. Its very difficult to master the concept of
playing on the 'front edge' or the 'back edge' of the beat.  MIDI can make this
much worse.

OTOH, I use MIDI drums exclusively with my band in live performance... its so
much better to hear a good sample than a shitty 'cardboard box' drum. There are

good drums... they were in the studio where the samples were made, and they
were
loved and tuned and treated to the best microphones... and burned into tiny
chips...
where I serve them to the audience with a bit of salsa... yes ???

I was (kicked out / left) a Theremin list for my heresy (that the theremin is
more curiosity and toy...than classical instrument!). So maybe my MIDI thoughts
will get
me kicked out here.

MIDI is as musical as you require it to be. You can use the tool, or abuse the
tool, or just pass it by.  I both love and hate it. I'm adding MIDI to my
theremin quantizer
(with assistance from list member Roman Sowa)... just to gain access to the
digital world of synths.  Maybe some nice FM bells over the top of my (mostly
moogy) EFM synth...

If you don't like it... you can sod off and get your coffee at the place down
the street
;^P

H^) harry  (who band plays exclusively at tiny coffeehouses...)

Ian Fritz wrote:

> At 01:43 AM 1/14/2002, Don Tillman wrote:
>
> >Seriously, a slide up the white keys over MIDI will create an awful
> >lot of note-on *and* note-off messages and the timing between them
> >will be grossly altered.
>
> I don't have a way to test this, unfortunately. But how fast are you really
> playing when you do this? Assume you can hit 25 notes in a second. This is
> 40 ms between notes. I don't see where there would be gross distortion.
> (Provided the keyboard is read fast enough).
>
> >And if I slap five notes at *exactly* the same time MIDI that will
> >spread out to 5 mSec.  That's audible.
>
> One of the biggest technical problems in developing wind controllers is the
> occurence of "extra in-between notes", that is notes that sound because you
> can't get your fingers all down exactly at once.  This problem has to be
> addressed by sensing the first key change, then waiting an appropriate
> delay time. This time is somewhere in the range of 20-30 ms.  What I am
> getting at is that you *can't* slap 5 notes at exactly the same time. Even
> if you could, it would be unmusical.
>
>    Ian

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