Using Midi

[oopsorganist]

I might be wrong but I think Nick is talking about using his skills to support his choir and congregation which is not a lot different to what an organist does, but is just more skilled.

[VML]

Nick, I don't know how you manage to put so much into your parish music. I bet it was great.

I hope everyone's Vigil was as wonderfully uplifting as ours. Exsultet cantor on top form; our PP who had tried to learn the Exsultet but was not quite ready has at last gained confidence to sing the chant doxology, and intone the Alleluia and Gloria; no baptism this year so all seven readings and enough cantors for the psalms. One reception: she looked so happpy. We had a trumpet for Thine be the Glory for the first time. And everyone sang.

Alleluia!

[John Ainslie]

Very thought-provoking. Allow me to enter the fray, as a non-instrumentalist.

The prime form of liturgical music is song, because 'as sacred melody united to words, it forms a necessary or integral part of solemn liturgy' (SC 112). It follows that the principal purpose of instruments in liturgical worship is to foster, support and enable singing, whence the ruling that in Advent and Lent (with exceptions) this is their only role. They also have a secondary role in helping to create a prayerful atmosphere/context for the liturgy. 'Any musical instrument permitted in divine worship should be used in such a way that it meets the needs of the liturgical celebration, and is in the interests both of the beauty of worship and the edification of the faithful' (1967 Musicam Sacram 63).

Ideally all ministries in the liturgy should be delivered personally as offerings of service to the assembly - whence the ruling that recorded music won't do. But if there is no live instrumentalist available and the alternative to singing to pre-recorded accompaniment is no singing at all, or singing so compromised that it serves to distract from rather than aid worship, is not this a baby/bathwater case?

To be sure, unaccompanied singing has much to commend it - the Gospel and Eucharistic acclamations should preferably be sung at every Mass, which almost requires a chant-type repertoire for these alongside richer settings. But I am reflecting right now on how the most satisfying moment for me as music leader in the recent Sacred Triduum was the singing of 'O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder' (without the 'forest glades' verse) as the final hymn at the Veneration of the Cross. The congregation - containing many of infrequent church attendance - raised the roof and the organist did her bit to make this possible. (We sing it in B major, thanks to the transposing switch on the electronic organ...)

Organists are an endangered species, and while I resist the lure of Synthia and others of its kind, the proof is in their better-than-nothing ability to facilitate the people's singing, though never to replace it. Better to import a live instrumentalist, if you can, to lead the singing. Importing a choir is a different matter - and also a different discussion thread. At least here in England we don't have the Austrian custom whereby villages celebrate their patronal feast by importing a complete set of 'professionals' from miles away to supplant the parish musicians and perform a Mozart Mass 'for' them.

[NorthernTenor]

On the whole I agree with Gwyn, because the goal of actual participation is best achieved by live performance. To be fair to Nick, though, he seems to have used Midi to sustain just that in the absence of some of the musicians.

To be entirely unfair to Nick (mea culpa), it wouldn't have been a problem if he'd stuck to the music proper to the liturgy, as recommended by the Council and most of the 20th century's popes. It doesn't require accompaniment, and arguably is the better without.

[ I'll stop there, Nick and Musicus, I promise ... ]

[Southern Comfort]

I was pounding away at the Sanctus – midi was playing a basic piano part and I was playing (yes, live!) second piano at octaves above and below.

With both parts coming out of the same instrument, giving something of pub piano effect, I wondered who would even know which notes I was playing live and which I'd played earlier – and, if it was explained to them, who on earth would care?

Well, I admit that this does sound to me more like an organist using different stops - but with the difference that if for any reason you'd wanted to slow down or speed up at any point, you wouldn't have been able to.

[Southern Comfort]

To be entirely unfair to Nick (mea culpa), it wouldn't have been a problem if he'd stuck to the music proper to the liturgy, as recommended by the Council and most of the 20th century's popes.

As was done at three cathedrals I've heard about this weekend, entirely to the exclusion of the assembly, as specifically discouraged by "the Council and most of the 20th century's popes".

Surely more than three?!!! Let me guess - Westminster, Cardiff, Liverpool, Southwark.....and maybe Birmingham too??? There must be something about having an Archbishop in your midst.......

It sounds to me as if Northern Tenor is using a rather narrow definition of "the music proper to the liturgy". And this in turn sounds to me like the beginning of a different thread. Mr Bear?

[SOP]

Can Nick come to Summer School and run a session on use of midi files??

[musicus]

It sounds to me as if Northern Tenor is using a rather narrow definition of "the music proper to the liturgy". And this in turn sounds to me like the beginning of a different thread. Mr Bear?

Quite possibly, and if one or other of our Northern or Southern brothers (or anyone else, for that matter) would like to start one, please feel free. I, for my part, have done enough splitting of topics and moving of posts for one day - the board's software doesn't make it easy!

[SOP]

Oooh, that could be fun!

[Southern Comfort]

if for any reason you'd wanted to slow down or speed up at any point, you wouldn't have been able to.

I can – and I did.

Tell us how. It's a pre-prepared track, right? You're playing along with it with both hands, right? Therefore not able to tweak the midi playback speed in mid-performance, right? Inquiring minds want to know. They also want to know about tweaking speed without affecting pitch, which is very easy in the studio if you have the right software and are used to overcoming the compression problems, but not really possible in live performance.

[Southern Comfort]

Well, I accept what you say, but fail to understand it.

What do the instructions say? Follow me, and use these voices? How do you then stop the trumpets from playing all the piano harmonies?

I confess to being quite mystified, especially as you talked about laying down tracks in rehearsal earlier in this thread, which is something very different from live performance with different synthesised voices.

By the way, the trumpet stops on an organ are not imitating the sound of real trumpets: they're producing the sound of a reed stop of a particular genre on the organ, so the analogy is not exact here. The organist is not trying to pretend he has assistant musicians playing other instruments; he is simply using the colours of his instrument.

But I still can't see how, with a one manual keyboard, you can do what an organist can do on two or three manuals and pedals unless you pre-record some stuff and play along with the track(s).

You keep telling us what you can do, and do do, without telling us how, which is where this thread started.

The other blog you pointed us to is interesting (I had not come across it before - and by the way some of the links seem to be out of date) but can we not continue here?

[Southern Comfort]

You keep telling us what you can do, and do do, without telling us how

Because I have no idea – as I understand that a violin stringing vibrating at 440pm will produce a concert A and when the length of a string is halved the note shoots up and octave. But I don't need to know how, I just need to know how to write for violin.

I'm sorry to worry away at this, but I think it's important, so that we can throw away our (or I can throw away my) possible misconceptions about exactly what it is that MIDI can or cannot bring to live liturgical music.

I'm sure you do know how you do these things, it's just that perhaps I haven't phrased the question sufficiently clearly.

You didn't answer my question about how you can possibly stop the trumpet sound from appearing on every note you play. This is one of the crucial points. Unless the trumpet part has been prepared on a separate track, it seems logically impossible. If there is a separate-prepared track which is playing along in sync with whatever you're doing at the piano, but which speeds up or slows down when you do, please tell us. If this isn't how it works, and you are actually playing along in sync with the track, please tell us that too.

In other words:
(1) How do you ensure that the trumpet sound only appears on the solo line and not on every note of the accompaniment you play?
(2) (a) Is the track playing along with you and keeping pace with you (somehow - still don't understand that bit of it), or
(b) are you actually playing along and keeping pace with the track or tracks?
If it's (a), what sort of instructions do you give the track so that it keeps pace with you?
And how much live slowing down or speeding up is actually possible?

Hope that makes sense of the problem.

[NorthernTenor]

Southern Comfort wrote:

It sounds to me as if Northern Tenor is using a rather narrow definition of "the music proper to the liturgy". And this in turn sounds to me like the beginning of a different thread. Mr Bear?

And Musicus replied:

Quite possibly, and if one or other of our Northern or Southern brothers (or anyone else, for that matter) would like to start one, please feel free. I, for my part, have done enough splitting of topics and moving of posts for one day - the board's software doesn't make it easy!

If you have another look, you'll see that I got my apology in in advance! That said, my comment wasn't entirely off-topic, as the thread was happily covering both the possibilities of Midi and its appropriateness to the liturgy. It was thus licit to point out that, where the kind of music is used that has developed over the centuries hand-in-hand with the liturgy, and which has been repeatedly commended to us in modern times by Popes and the Second Vatican Council as peculiarly fitting to the liturgy, then the underlying problem which Nick addressed with Midi will not be an issue.

This is not a criticism of the use of other kinds of music in the liturgy per se, but merely a suggestion that we should examine the problem Nick described in the light of other possibilities suggested to us by Tradition.

[NorthernTenor]

Southern Comfort (and others) may find the following link useful for explanation of the MIDI interface, what it is and its uses:

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/midi1.htm

[NorthernTenor]

Nick,

Where church musicians are gathered there will be disagreement. However, I for one made a point of saying that my comments were

not a criticism of the use of other kinds of music in the liturgy per se

and pointed out in an earlier comment that your use of Midi appeared to be intended to encourage active participation, not diminish it. I trust that your laudable committment to new music does not lead you overlook the value of a kind of music that has developed with our liturgy, and which is peculiarly the Church's own.

best wishes,

NT.