Perfect Music

theman12 SG

You know those music programs in which you click out notes on a staff? If you were to to click in an entire piece, I would guess we would get a band with perfect intonation, precision, balance and everything else. But of course, it would be rather lifeless though. Anyone tried this before?

[ X ] & [ L ] SG

hm... ? no idea Idea

Tenroc SG

Of course is perfect. The timing, pitch, volume all can be controlled with accuracy of like 0.0001 seconds.

However, its mechanical, lifeless. Like techno, it becomes meaningless for serious listeners, maybe just for background music.

Try converting an entire score into a midi file, play it back. Its perfect, but you wouldn't want to listen to it too many times, coz its incredibly boring. Tone colour is exactly the same (And very lifeless), expression is limited to volume control and velocity etc etc.

tan_mx SG

also, since it’s in a midi format, the instrumental sounds you get would sound… strange.

Tenroc SG

Depends on your soundcard and software.

Cheaper soundcards use a very primitive kind of Midi, which is basically some artificial tones mixed together to sound like "instruments".

Better soundcards use "wavetable", which uses actual samples of real instruments to playback. It sounds more real, but is still far from perfect. Some software uses wavefonts, something similar wavetable, and more customisable.

But, no electronic instrument will ever sound like the real thing. For example Woodwinds, there are basically three ranges, lower, mid and upper (altosimmo and all that), all have different characteristics.

This, and many other factors seperate electronic music from the real thing.

esil3 SG

hehe real thing best la. want midi for wta!!

mIml SG

Actually midi will not produce the best intonation, it will only give equal temprement instead of pure temprement. Eg: in a major triad, the 3rd will have to be flatten while 5th sharpen.
So throughout the midi, there will be some kind of buzz and wave. Wink