As the Cartel moves into its prog rock era, I see them taking on a nerdly keyboards guy who, having joined the band, foists upon them a long, serious, intellectual, instrumental piece for the new album. Not to be outdone by the gods of 1970s prog rock like Emerson, Wakeman, and Waters, he ventures into the weirdness of microtonal 15-tone equal temperament. Needless to say, there is immediate talk of firing him from the band.
Preliminary version:
http://doctroid.files-upload.com/176547/03AllRoadsLeadAwayFromRome.mp3.html
I like it! Maybe everyone should be fired from the band, periodically.
Was that generated from MIDI? I'm thinking you may need some extra drums and Charlie's guitar skills to fatten it up some more. I'm going to see if I can add some flourishes/effects...
I like the shift into TD territory at 1:30. I started doing something else and forgot for a moment - thought I was listening to Vangelis. Whadja use? Garageband, I'm guessing. The synth sounds are pretty good. In true classic prog style, you should have titled subsections e.g., (i) Dawn over the Coliseum, (ii) Rush Hour, (iii) Stuck in Traffic,... And thanks for the tip on files-upload.
Can you provide a bit more info about the piece.
BPM during various sections. That way I can work on syncing stuff rhythmically. I have some interesting ideas using a harmonizer on a 5th interval that sounded like it works well with the 15 tone thing.
I dunno, does Charlie have a 15ET guitar? http://infohost.nmt.edu/~jstarret/guitar.html
By all means tinker with it. And I'm going to think about what else I can do with it too.
Nope, didn't use GarageBand (well, I did at the last step just to add some reverb). I wanted to. I used Melody Assistant to lay out the score, exported a MIDI file, and imported it into GB... and it didn't work. Apparently the microtonal information is done using pitch bends, and I think GB ignores the pitch bend range in the MIDI file and uses some default instead, so all the pitch bends come out some small fraction of what they're supposed to be. Irritating. So... aside from an overall reverb, it was all done in Melody Assistant.
It may not sound it, but everything's at 120 beats per minute.
(If you want to work on it, let me know if you want it in some other format.)
I finally got back to this and have posted a new version. Not much has changed, but I did tighten it up a bit (still over 7 minutes though) by the expedient of removing a section I couldn't figure out how to make work, and I put in a tempo change and tweaked the final chord. Or final unison, I guess.
The mp3 is in this directory
http://doctroid.net/Music/InterrobangCartel/AllRoads/
as are .wav files for each instrument and a .mid file in case anyone wants to mess around with them. (Note there are repeated sections which don't get repeated when you play the .mid file.) As before, if you want anything in a different format, just ask.
It'd be nice to improve the instrument sounds and add some effects, but my main tool for doing that (GarageBand) doesn't seem to be microtonal-friendly.
Doctroid - If you don't mind, I would like to take a crack at remixing/remastering All Roads. My intent is not to touch the notes or arrangement, but to enhance the sonic qualities by adding EQ, compression, and other effects, and possibly replacing or augmenting some of the voices with other synths or samples. I succeeded in importing your MIDI into my DAW (Sonar Home Studio) but the 10 tracks have no identifying information other than the fact that they go to different output MIDI channels: 11, 3, 7, 8, 1, 2, 5, 6, 4, 9. I could just overlay the WAV files and figure out who goes with what, but it would be simpler (and more reliable) if you just told me the patches you used on each channel. Thanks.
Alright, so I got impatient and figured out the patches myself. Would like your feedback on this, however:
http://boxstr.com/files/3104611_bhdzr/May%20I%20Replace%20Your%20Oboe.mp3
Hearing that last MP3 later, I was surprised at how easy the synthetic voice was to understand - NOT!
So here's the text:
"This is your oboe patch. I dare say, it could use an upgrade. We have some wonderful patches to choose from. May I suggest an oboe from the virtual sound canvas? Or perhaps its neighbor, the bassoon. We also have a delicious collection of brass patches courtesy of DSK music. First, the soprano saxophone. Next, the tenor saxophone. And finally, the alto saxophone. Of course, patches can be combined. For example, the soprano and tenor sax at the same time. On the other hand, perhaps you desire a piercing artifical sound. There are uncountably many synthesizer patches to choose from. May I suggest the Superwave P 8 patch known as Emerson?"
Sorry, not ignoring you. It's just that I got out of the habit of checking this board after I subscribed to its RSS feed, but guess what? It seems most of the posts don't show up on the RSS feed.
Anyway.
>>10: That'd be great if you could take a shot at it. I wrote this thing in Melody Assistant, which is a pretty good piece of shareware for music notation and sequencing, though its user interface is a bit idiosyncratic. However, the quality of the sounds is not great and no provisions for processing the sounds. For some purposes it makes sense to export a MIDI file from Melody Assistant and bring it into GarageBand, but the latter doesn't grok pitch bend (I think -- whatever it is Melody Assistant does to get microtones, I think it's pitch bend), so that doesn't work in the present instance. Of course I could use other software to process sound files output from Melody Assistant, but that doesn't address the lame sounds issue.
>>11: I had no trouble understanding your post.
I agree the "oboe" voice is pretty lame. I labelled it "oboe" but in fact it's a sound Melody Assistant labels "Shanai" in its "Ethnic" sound set. Wikipedia says a shanai, or shehnai, is a North Indian folk oboe. Which is about what I was going for, conceptually -- something like a folk shawm, mizmar, whatever.
Of the samples you presented the oboe is a little too refined, but it's closest to what I want.
Saxophones, by the way, aren't brass instruments -- they're instruments, they're made of brass (usually), but they're not brass instruments... they're woodwinds. A trumpet's a brass instrument. So's a cornetto. Which is made of wood. But isn't a woodwind.
By the way... ARLAFR (the composition, and the recording I posted) has the usual CC AT/NC/SA license.
I put some mind-numbing details on the 15-ET scales on this page: http://doctroid.net/TikiWiki/tiki-index.php?page=All+Roads+Lead+Away+From+Rome .
> Sorry, not ignoring you. It's just that I got out of the habit of checking this board after I subscribed to its RSS feed, but guess what? It seems most of the posts don't show up on the RSS feed.
Weird, I never have that problem. What are you using as a feed reader?
>> 17
Goolge Reader.
I didn't get the chance to tell you how I enjoyed listening to ARLAFR as it transported me back to Sever Street. I could imagine you coming in, waving a new piece of vinyl. "It's like a collaboration between Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield!" So I sit down across from the Flying Advents and mellow out...
>>14: Anyway, check this out: http://boxstr.com/files/3118172_aovli/Shanai_etc.mp3
BTW, all ARLAFR-related files will be in this folder: http://boxstr.com/browse/majorzed/3567861_ppBTS
What about the flute and guitar? They're next on my hit list. Any specific desires there? The other instruments just need a little boost, I think.
I knew saxes were reed instruments, but they are included in the "DSK BRASS" plug-in along with trumpets, trombones, etc. So Not My Fault.
p.s. Didja like the Emerson patch? I have to use this somewhere in the future.
See what you think of this for guitar: http://boxstr.com/files/3118402_k1v1x/Guitar_KMRDW.mp3
Kore sample player "Made in Rock" electric guitar patch run through ReValver II amp simulator "Wake Up!" patch. Hmmm... It's 9:24. I think I'd better go to work now....
>>19: "It's like a collaboration between Tangerine Dream and Mike Oldfield!"
Well, then, guess I'll quit my day job.
And go back in time 30 years.
And do this on a PAiA Gnome? I don't think so.
Ah, back when loops were really loops and it took two hours to sequence four bars... iron men and wooden machines...
I'm not sure exactly how the plug-in works. I think it uses very short samples, with a lot of synth-type processing to get the different notes, ADSR, filtering, articulation, etc. I'll try a mix.
That sounds pretty good, I'd say. http://boxstr.com/files/3132338_uuynm/VSC_Oboe_Shanai2_mix.mp3
They classify the VSC as a wavetable synth "modeled after the ubiquitous Roland synth of the same name." Apparently it's available for Mac 9.x, too, but not OS X. http://www.roland.com/PRODUCTS/EN/VSC-MP1/index.html
Cool.