Using Midi

[Nick Baty]

[The original poster has removed all his posts to this thread - moderator]

Removed

[musicus]

Very helpful, Nick - thanks.

Don't be afraid to ask about the technical stuff,folks - software, hardware, how to, etc - as someone on here is bound to know the answer.

I used to use MIDI a fair bit, but these days, now that sample libraries are so much better, I tend to prepare audio files (AIFF, WAV, MP3 etc). You know what an audio file is going to sound like wherever you play it, unlike MIDI, which is dependent on the hardware you're playing it on. Also, I find it easier to do the tempo change stuff in an audio sequencer, where you can just do it graphically, by drawing a line.

If your computer is fast enough, Sibelius can generate useful audio files, especially if you have one or two good additional sound libraries (the Sibelius Pop and Rock one is good for contemporary liturgical music). I then use GarageBand to apply the tempo changes and other stuff. (GarageBand is Apple-only, but there must be similar things for Windows or Linux.) As Nick says, you can write audio files - not MIDI - onto an audio CD, which can be very useful.

Of course, MIDI is fine too. Use whatever you are happy with, but do practise everyone with it. I could tell you horror stories

(Just noticed: this is my 600th post!)

[contrabordun]

so everything must be sung at strict tempo.[...]You have to work out a strict time for the “gap” between the verses and stick to it.

If only...and that's just me playing hymns live on the organ.

[NorthernTenor]

We ought to encourage one of those bright tech & music chaps at York, Goldsmiths etc to come up with a digital to analog bridge between Sibelius and your average pipe organ. Of course, pipe organs being what they are it would have to be tailored in each case, but the design principles are sufficiently constant to make it feasible.

Another area that would bear investigation is singing-voice synthesis, for all those parishes that lack a cantor or choir.

[NorthernTenor]

Nick wrote:

There's a pipe organ with midi two parishes away from where I'm sitting. You 'record' live and then play back is almost identical. Midi is an interface – it drives rather than records.

I guess there are two seperate problems: a midi interface to a digital console, and a digital - analogue converter to a mechanical console.

Nick went on to wonder:

Do I detect cynicism?

I don't know you well enough to speculate, Nick

[musicus]

We ought to encourage one of those bright tech & music chaps at York, Goldsmiths etc to come up with a digital to analog bridge between Sibelius and your average pipe organ.

The new Quire organ in Worcester Cathedral has a built-in MIDI interface. I suppose that any organ with electronic key action could be fitted with MIDI control, so that software could 'play' the organ, rather than the player at the console - though such customisation would be expensive (as it is when applied to pianos).

I have also heard the question asked recently as to why organ builders still use the traditional drawstops, soundboard & sliders arrangement for selecting ranks of pipes when preset electronics could do the job. The answer was rather along the lines of "we have always done it that way".

Musicus (an ex-music chap at York)

[NorthernTenor]

Musicus,

Nick was wrong in ascribing cynicism to my comments, but it is true to say that my tongue was in my cheek. Digital technology makes many things possible in liturgical music, but not all are necessarily desirable.

NorthernTenor (a technologist and an ex-music chap at Goldsmiths).

[musicus]

Please, gentlemen – enough of academia!
Nick (an ex music chap of the original redbrick university!)

LOL

[musicus]

I would drop your Audacity file(s) onto iTunes, create a new iTunes playlist and burn that to an audio CD. That's what I do. (I am short of time now, but I will check this out later and post more detail.)

[musicus]

You're very welcome, Nick. Since it works, I won't bother to give any further details, except to say that Audacity and iTunes are both free and are both available for Windows and Apple PCs.

(Spooky coincidence: BBC News this morning reported on a national shortage of organists and featured a vicar who was using prerecorded tracks from his iPod. It was quite an extended and sensible piece, and the clergyperson did point out that [a] musically this was totally inflexible (you just had to follow it), and [b] this solution should be seen as a last resort.)

[Southern Comfort]

We've had this argument before. It's about authenticity.

Much as I appreciate the care that Nick takes over preparing Midi stuff in his situation (and he probably takes more care than most), what we are doing when we use pre-recorded music of any description is simply not being true to the resources that we have available on a given occasion. You might just as well play a CD of the accompaniment. How about a DVD of the homily on a large screen? Or those oil-filled candles that pretend to be beeswax? Or synthetic altarcloths? (Yes, I know some parishes where they use disposable towelettes instead of purificators....)

The biggest problem, already mentioned, is the inflexibility. This doesn't mean the fixed duration of the item, it means the inability to add ebb and flow depending on the number of people present, what sort of mood they're in, etc. What we're talking about is the minute bits of tempo rubato that all live musicians use as they adjust to the circumstances of the actual service. I'm sure that Nick's pre-recorded tracks are far more flexible than the dreaded Synthia and her like, but they still can't react to what is going on in the assembly - and that seems to me to be the key. It's the assembly that's celebrating, for better or worse.

I'm sure that it's this concern for authenticity, for the desire that what is done in the midst of the assembly truly reflects who that assembly is, which prompted the Council of Trent, no less, to recommend that everyone only receive Communion from bread that has been consecrated at the Mass that they're at (to revive another discussion from the past). Of course, most of us only noticed that when it was repeated in GIRM in 1969 (and every subsequent version).

If we don't have the instruments, too bad. We use what we've got. If we don't have any instruments on a particular occasion, then we sing unaccompanied. Anything else is pretending that we are who we aren't, even if the technology now exists to enable us to persist in that pretence. Sorry!

[pirate]

Well I've never met an organist with four hands, yet I see keys moving with no fingers on them, because of the technology...

And just because the technology exists doesn't mean we have to use it all the time. It would scare the living daylights out of me to be playing, say, recorder, alongside something 'prepared beforehand' (and, Nick, if I'm getting it wrong here, I apologise); but using midi to accompany a particular requested psalm at a funeral might be more doable.

The extreme is the 'digital hymnal' thing, with someone controlling four hymns from a switchboard built into the back of the altar, and no musicians or singers at all... but I don't think Nick is heading in that direction. Anything but!

[Southern Comfort]

Nick..Midi stuff in his situation…what we are doing when we use pre-recorded music of any description

Midi is not pre-recorded music. We do not (and never will) use pre-recorded music in our parish. It simply doesn’t work.

The biggest problem, already mentioned, is the inflexibility.

Not true – we have a Yamaha CVP401 which allows for quite an amount of flexibility including “ebb and flow” and tempo rubato.

Nick's pre-recorded tracks…still can't react to what is going on in the assembly

They’re not pre-recorded tracks – and, yes, they can.

If we don't have the instruments, too bad. We use what we've got.

Were we to take this approach, our repertoire would be cut by 80% and the assembly’s experience would be all the poorer for it. Tomorrow night we’ll be using Bernadette Farrell’s My Soul is Thirsting – I simply can’t imagine that without the piano accompaniment. In a few weeks the choir will be singing Franck’s Panis Angelicus – again, without accompaniment it would seem dull almost pointless. One could say then they shouldn’t be singing it. But why not?

Nick, you've lost me. I could have sworn I read this in your second post in this thread:

I prepare most items using Sibelius and then save to midi – on the plus side I can add in flute, clarinet or bass, on the other hand, it’s difficult to create rubato so everything must be sung at strict tempo.

<snip>
I lay down some of the tracks during rehearsals

<snip>
One of the pluses is that when a cantor or our priest needs to learn something, I can save the same track

<snip>
and it means I can add some synth-voice oohs and ahs.

<snip>
the Sibelius/midi version means I’ve been able to arrange for two pianos and bass – the latter helps to support the assembly.

<snip>
Perhaps the most useful plus is that I can be away occasionally. Everything is stored on memory sticks and a couple of our willing choristers are getting to grips with how to use it.

If all of this isn't using tracks (your own words) that are pre-recorded, saved, whatever, I don't know what it is. And you can add instruments and oohs and ahhs that wouldn't otherwise be there.

And, if I understood that entire post (and this thread) correctly, the original object of much of this was so that you could have a pre-recorded piano accompaniment and so liberate yourself to be able to wave your arms around for the singers. Or even have a Sunday off. Perhaps all the bells and whistles came later. But it still seems that you (or a choir member) play back via your Clavinova, with some facility for tempo rubato.

Am I missing something here?

[Southern Comfort]

it is v difficult to create Rubato etc in Sibelius but not too difficult when inputting directly into midi or adding later.

<snip>

If inputted directly you get what you put it – rubato, legato etc.

It would be good to have an explanation of this that a lay person can understand. Do you input by playing a part on a keyboard, like MIDI entering of music in Sibelius, Finale, or whatever? (Sounds like laying down a track in the studio to me, if so.)

It's not a recording of sound but of a set of midi instructions.

I thought you'd say this. Yes, but these instructions have to be recorded (saved, if you prefer) for subsequent playback (or whatever the correct term is) at a later date. I suppose "pre-prepared" could be a better description than "pre-recorded".

And it will never be the same twice as it's only an accompaniment.

This I cannot believe. It must always be the same, because you've saved it.

What you're saying, I think, is that the actual performance is never the same because real people will be doing real (and different things) at the same time as the accompaniment track is playing. But the basic track itself must always be identical (though, I accept, susceptible of tweaking at your Clavinova - and once again, it would be good to have an explanation of how to do that).

And you can add instruments and oohs and ahhs that wouldn't otherwise be there.

As can the organist with his various bells and whistles! And what's wrong with adding oohs and ahs? I usually add these live anyway so I presume you would approve.

Your objections appear to be based entirely on the theory – you don't like the thought of it. If you'd been in the assembly, spotted the difference and found it difficult to sing then you'd have a point. But how you could possibly know it wasn't a live pianist behind the pillar? Most of parishioners don't appear to have noticed. Would you be so much happier if we dropped half of tomorrow night's repertoire in order to sing a few items unaccompanied?

My objections are not based on theory but practice. If I hear a clarinet or flute or two pianos, or some synth-voices oohing and aahing, to use your previous examples, but I can't see anyone doing these things, then there is a problem. You might just as well say that it's OK to play the Huddersfield Choral Society through the PA system.

My real objection is about ministry and whether we can/should pretend that we have more ministers than we actually have. I do have a problem with the idea of a set of artificial musicians ministering to me via modern technology. It isn't authentic, to use that word again. Those people aren't actually in the community. The fact that they could be hiding behind a pillar is irrelevant, and I find it actually even a little offensive to say this. It's almost as if you're saying that it's OK to "con" the congregation.

One of the primary rules of ministry is that you can't minister effectively to others if you can't see at least some of them and they can also see you. There ought to be some eye-contact. (And yes, I know that many organ-loft organists are effectively marginalised from the community and only "relate" to them via driving mirrors - and we should be doing something about that).

It's not a performance, such as one might see on TV, with all kinds of backing tracks and other technological know-how. Or when Dave Brubeck's clarinettist does that brilliant interweaving as he plays to a pre-recorded track of himself.

This is an act of worship. The people there are doing the worshipping. If "behind the pillar" artificial constructs are helping them, then those constructs are not real people.

And how far do we take these objections? Should today's organist not have played the Allen two-manual digital because there's a pipe organ upstairs? OK – so the timelag makes it impossible to use but as it's real pipes so should we stick with it?

My point is that here you have a real organist who is playing what is in effect a sound machine, whether it has pipes or electronic circuits. That's different from a box that is playing what someone in their study asked it to do the night before, and who may not even be there.

Our methods of creating music have helped the assembly sing with more gusto than ever before. Is that so wrong?

No, I don't think it's wrong. But I do think it's to some degree "fake". The fact that lots of people do this with set-ups of greater or lesser sophistication doesn't make it any less inauthentic.

I still think the underlying question is whether we should be true to who we are, what we're feeling like on a given day, and the resources we have when we come together to worship, or whether we should be pretending to be different from who we are and what we're feeling like and what we've got. I suspect that you and I will agree to differ on this.

As far as abandoning repertoire is concerned, haven't we spent years telling people to do less things better, and not to be overambitious in what they try? St Nemo's Church group ain't the same as Blogchester Cathedral choir, so don't try to do what they do. And then along comes the new technology that provides a way for us to do what we could never ever achieve in real life. That's what smells inauthentic to me. I think it's a dangerous path (perhaps not in the hands of a sensitive musician like yourself, Nick) which can lead and has led to excesses, particularly in other denominations.

For me, the sound of an unaccompanied unison congregation can be glorious, and it's certainly true to life. If I don't have the instruments, I'd rather go down the path of adding vocal harmony parts where possible.

[Southern Comfort]

May I ask one thing of the above posters: Once I've removed all those things which meet with your disapproval, once I've persuaded our assembly to drop items they love and to sing the rest unaccompanied, will your lives be any richer? I suspect not. Our, however, will be somewhat poorer. I don't quite understand why this thread has gone in this direction.

Our job is to lead and support the singing of the assembly. If, as a result of dropping an instrument which meets with disapproval from some quarters, our assembly feels less supported, and becomes less inclined to sing then we are doing something very wrong indeed.

Nick, I think we've been trying to have an honest discussion about whether it's OK to do these things, as well as trying to find out more about how to do them. I'm sorry if this has saddened you.

While I have a lot of sympathy for what you say, it's a bit like maintaining that you've always given people fast food and pizzas, instead of healthy eating à la Jamie Oliver. Would I feel any better if you took people's comfort food away from them? Obviously not, but I might be happier that they wouldn't have heart and obesity problems down the road. Perhaps that's not a very good analogy, because I'm sure you've not been giving them the liturgical equivalent of junk food, but perhaps you get my drift.

You want me to say that because you're already doing it, it would be a greater evil to stop now; whereas I am asking whether others should even start what you've been doing.