…and should be humanely destroyed.” Or so many would like you to believe. I am referring to classical MIDI files in particular.

Lets look at the case of a particular Wendy Carlos-wanna-be. Lets say:

- You want to record a synthesizer version of a particular piece like “Jesu Joy” (Please, for the love of all that is holy, NO! We’ve got enough of that one already!!) Anyway…

- You have a sequencer/computer program with several soft synths built in and/or have downloaded them from free VSTi sites

- You cannot play the piano at all, or not well enough to actually “perform” said piece

- You download a MIDI file (created/performed by someone else) from a site like The Classical MIDI Connection and load it into their sequencer (DAW)

- You assign a synthesizer voice to each track

- You listen in wonder as an slightly Wendy-ish-Carlos-ish sound comes out of their speakers

When I relay this method of production to people, many claim You cheated! But did you, really?

I think not. I, myself, play all of the arrangements I make on a MIDI keyboard controller directly from the printed score. But that’s just me. I happen to play the piano well enough to do that. Most people don’t. Take Berlioz, one of the most brilliant orchestrator ever to have lived- couldn’t play a note on the piano! All the same, he wrote amazing scores with new and exciting effects for the symphony orchestra. Would you accuse Berlioz of cheating because he couldn’t play his own music? I think not!

Just like you, our intrepid arranger. I have no problem with someone loading a MIDI file and making a synthesizer arrangement of a piece of classical music. But, in order for it to really come off well, that person needs to have

- a keen ear for creating/choosing synthesizer voices/patches

- the ability to effectively orchestrate using the voices chosen (when you choose synth voices, you are essentially building an orchestra from scratch)

- the ability to manipulating MIDI data (many MIDI files are hand-entered, not performed, so they sound very mechanical when played)

- knowledge of the correct (most musical) way in which to perform a piece. This includes things like Rubato playing, re-interpretation of accents, trills, and tremolos, which sound notoriously bad in MIDI files and many of the other problems associated with them

If you’re able to manage all that, and come up with a truly professional recording and not play a single note of it, more power to you, I say!

RD

I recently found this great article about Modular Synth Epics at The Stretta Procedure blog. It talks about the rise and fall of the Modular-driven landmark synthesizer CDs of the late 60’s and early 70s, most notably,The Well-Tempered Synthesizer (1969), Switched-On Bach II (1974), By Request (1975) and Switched-On Brandenburgs (1979), Sonic Seasonings, Clockwork Orange Soundtrack, Beauty in the Beast and others.

Excerpt:
The introduction of patch storage and presets caused a schism. What inevitably happened with pre-built sounds was people stopped programming and simply played the instrument. There is nothing inherently wrong or bad about this, it was a much needed technological step forward. However, the idea of building a sound as needed for a composition decayed to relative insignificance. The sound was chosen first, and the music followed. Analog modulars themselves drifted into obscurity with the introduction of MIDI and digital synthesizers like the DX7. Not only were modulars finicky and time-consuming to use, the sound itself was old-fashioned and out of date. Thus followed a dozen years of inactivity – a modular synth dark ages.

Read the full article…