Chief Inspector Dreyfus at the Organ

Here is my latest:

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/dreyfus.mp3

http://www.xenharmony.org/scores/dreyfus.mid

Here is the description on my web page:

In the movie The Pink Panther Strikes Again, an insane Inspector
Dreyfus escapes and terrorizes the world before accidentally
disintegrating himself with his own death ray. As he slowly
dissappears, he plays the organ. This is my idea of music appropriate
to such a condition; it is in the Octoid[72] scale, 72 notes out of
224-et. To quote from the film, "What is the price of one piano
compared to the terrible crime that's been committed here?"

Here the sustain of the organ shows the limitations of
pitch bend, don't you think? Is it just me, or are the
bends audible?

Wait, the midi version sounds much better on my machine.
Maybe it has something to do with the soundfount. And
definitely there is too much reverb and chorus for my
taste. I hate reverb and chorus.

-Carl

At 12:26 AM 3/17/2006, you wrote:
>Here is my latest:
>
>http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/dreyfus.mp3
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/scores/dreyfus.mid
>
>Here is the description on my web page:
>
>In the movie The Pink Panther Strikes Again, an insane Inspector
>Dreyfus escapes and terrorizes the world before accidentally
>disintegrating himself with his own death ray. As he slowly
>dissappears, he plays the organ. This is my idea of music appropriate
>to such a condition; it is in the Octoid[72] scale, 72 notes out of
>224-et. To quote from the film, "What is the price of one piano
>compared to the terrible crime that's been committed here?"

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@...> wrote:

> Wait, the midi version sounds much better on my machine.
> Maybe it has something to do with the soundfount. And
> definitely there is too much reverb and chorus for my
> taste. I hate reverb and chorus.

What, even with a giant organ being played by an escaped lunatic?

Here's the scores page:

http://www.xenharmony.org/scores.htm

You can reduce the reverb and run it through Scala and make your own
midi file. Then you can use SynthFont or Timidity and make your own
wav file.

Gene,
I loved it. The MIDI version and the MP3 version are so different from
each other, that I wished you had found a way to mix them together.

When I listen to either one, I enjoy them for a while, but the
textures become monotonous after a while. The sound space is so
uniform, with the same volume, number of notes, rate of change,
timbre, reverb, envelope, and method of movement, that the ear turns
it off as noise. How about a mix of wet vs. dry? Or times when there
was only one voice, instead of many. Or change the octave mix to just
very low or very high, and back again to the middle. Or stacatto
contrasted with legato. Music is interesting when it changes. Then you
get the wonderful challenge of the transition sections. When there is
only one sound, there can be no change, and your listener longs for
something different. At least this listener does.

Prent Rodgers

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> Here is my latest:
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/dreyfus.mp3
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/scores/dreyfus.mid
>
> Here is the description on my web page:
>

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Prent Rodgers"
<prentrodgers@...> wrote:
>
> Gene,
> I loved it. The MIDI version and the MP3 version are so different from
> each other, that I wished you had found a way to mix them together.

Thanks Prent. I thought it was going over like a lead balloon.

> When I listen to either one, I enjoy them for a while, but the
> textures become monotonous after a while.

I could try changing the font as I went along, but it's not clear to
me how to do that. Changing the midi instrument would be easy, but
there's nothing else much like that crazed pipe organ sound; it's
going to sound like an entirely different piece on a glockenspiel.
Using the other ogran fonts, or ensemble strings, might do it.

The sound space is so
> uniform, with the same volume, number of notes, rate of change,
> timbre, reverb, envelope, and method of movement, that the ear turns
> it off as noise.

I was thinking of it as sound you bathe in; wear earphones and sink
into the texture and it's like bells peeling.

Gene Ward Smith wrote:
> I could try changing the font as I went along, but it's not clear to
> me how to do that. Changing the midi instrument would be easy, but
> there's nothing else much like that crazed pipe organ sound; it's
> going to sound like an entirely different piece on a glockenspiel.
> Using the other ogran fonts, or ensemble strings, might do it.

Some variations in the articulation, and a few well-placed pauses, would also help. For a realistic organ sound, you'll probably want to separate the left hand, right hand, and pedal parts, and use a different registration for each part (with the hands occasionally switching out from one manual to another). But the articulation should make a big difference; some notes can be overlapped slightly to produce a legato effect, while other notes can be kept apart with brief pauses between the notes as the notes aren't always held to their full durations.

> The sound space is so
> >>uniform, with the same volume, number of notes, rate of change,
>>timbre, reverb, envelope, and method of movement, that the ear turns
>>it off as noise.
> > > I was thinking of it as sound you bathe in; wear earphones and sink
> into the texture and it's like bells peeling. I'm sure you may have meant to say "bells pealing", but actually "bells peeling" is a pretty good description of the bizarreness of the sound... Makes you wonder what kind of supernatural force it would take to peel the sound off a bell like that...

> When I listen to either one, I enjoy them for a while, but the
> textures become monotonous after a while. The sound space is so
> uniform, with the same volume, number of notes, rate of change,
> timbre, reverb, envelope, and method of movement, that the ear turns
> it off as noise. How about a mix of wet vs. dry? Or times when there
> was only one voice, instead of many. Or change the octave mix to just
> very low or very high, and back again to the middle. Or stacatto
> contrasted with legato. Music is interesting when it changes. Then you
> get the wonderful challenge of the transition sections. When there is
> only one sound, there can be no change, and your listener longs for
> something different. At least this listener does.

Ditto for me: I love the harmonic movements on the micro-level, but I
literally can't keep up for the duration of the piece. Good fugues
are an interesting solution to the dilemma, as the "intense" bits
don't last too long, and they're balanced by transparent statements of
the theme. Even the most grossly flamboyant romanticism has moments
of cohesion, where the listener can hone in on just one thing.

At the very end of your piece, there's about a 1/2-second where
there's only one note playing. That was the first time I could
breathe since about :30 from the beginning. It was a gasp, but I was
thankful :-D

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, c.m.bryan <chrismbryan@...> wrote:

> At the very end of your piece, there's about a 1/2-second where
> there's only one note playing. That was the first time I could
> breathe since about :30 from the beginning. It was a gasp, but I was
> thankful :-D

Thanks for the comments; I'll keep these reactions in mind for future
reference.

>> At the very end of your piece, there's about a 1/2-second where
>> there's only one note playing. That was the first time I could
>> breathe since about :30 from the beginning. It was a gasp, but I was
>> thankful :-D
>
>Thanks for the comments; I'll keep these reactions in mind for future
>reference.

It's true your music is very active, and I often wish for some
breathing room. Pre-American Western music tends to be notey, and
this turns off many modern listeners in my experience. But
nowhere is this more true than in organ music. I wonder if
Chris is a fan?

Organ music in particular will suffer from the soundfont treatment.
So much is wrapped up in the reverberations/texture, it's classically
claimed that it can't even be recorded!

I think Herman's suggestion of registration (different stops) would
do wonders for this piece.

-Carl

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@...> wrote:

> I think Herman's suggestion of registration (different stops) would
> do wonders for this piece.

See what you think of the version up now:

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/dreyfus.mp3

I tried a different font with chromosounds too:

http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/chrome.mp3

>> I think Herman's suggestion of registration (different stops) would
>> do wonders for this piece.
>
>See what you think of the version up now:
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/dreyfus.mp3

It's improved, but it still doesn't sound much like an
organ.

>I tried a different font with chromosounds too:
>
> http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/chrome.mp3

I like some aspects of this better, other aspects of the
original better. I suspect most people would prefer this
one overall.

-Carl

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@...> wrote:

> >I tried a different font with chromosounds too:
> >
> > http://www.xenharmony.org/ogg/gene/chrome.mp3
>
> I like some aspects of this better, other aspects of the
> original better. I suspect most people would prefer this
> one overall.

Ditto!

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@...> wrote:

> It's improved, but it still doesn't sound much like an
> organ.

I think if you compare it to the entire repetoire of 11-limit organ
music it stacks up pretty well, though.

> It's true your music is very active, and I often wish for some
> breathing room. Pre-American Western music tends to be notey, and
> this turns off many modern listeners in my experience. But
> nowhere is this more true than in organ music. I wonder if
> Chris is a fan?

Western classical may be "notey," but somehow there's always a way for
the listener to extract themselves from the detail and just observe
the larger picture. I'm not a fan of Schenker, but there's definitely
something to the idea of hierarchy and level, even if that higher
level is just Debussian lateral movement.

I don't listen to organ music very often, but I already mentioned that
the classic fugue, at least, still provides room to breathe (or at
least for the reverb to subside... ;) )

I listened to a live performance of Handel's Messiah last Christmas in
a cathedral. Choirs, like organs, are very sustained and reverbed (at
least in that space!), but even during the busiest bits I could still
find simple, diatonic melodies that I could follow, which helps keep
my head above the waters of the texture. That's my 2 cents (or 2p,
now that I'm in England ;) ), I'm by no means a classical theorist...

-chris

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@...> wrote:
>
> Here the sustain of the organ shows the limitations of
> pitch bend, don't you think? Is it just me, or are the
> bends audible?
>
> Wait, the midi version sounds much better on my machine.
> Maybe it has something to do with the soundfount. And
> definitely there is too much reverb and chorus for my
> taste. I hate reverb and chorus.

Hi Carl,

You hate reverb? Do you mean the electronic effect or the naturally
occurring thing?

I totally hate new agey wishy-washy overuse of reverb.

But I love reverse reverb!

Kalle

>> Here the sustain of the organ shows the limitations of
>> pitch bend, don't you think? Is it just me, or are the
>> bends audible?
>>
>> Wait, the midi version sounds much better on my machine.
>> Maybe it has something to do with the soundfount. And
>> definitely there is too much reverb and chorus for my
>> taste. I hate reverb and chorus.
>
>
>Hi Carl,
>
>You hate reverb? Do you mean the electronic effect or the
>naturally occurring thing?

The effect. I see it as a bad way to make up for stereo.
(Ideally, metadata in the music would give the channel
topology of the recording, and the user's equipment would
be responsible for rendering it appropriately with the
number of speakers available.) Bose direct/reflecting tech
took a stab at the problem, but it was still stereo. So it
did generate some natural reverb, but at the cost of ruining
whatever image was there. These are a cool, though...
http://www.electrotap.com/hemisphere/
...with a recording made with a mono omni...

With electric music, some very mild convolution reverb is
usually better than none; of course reverb should never be
applied to acoustic recordings.

>I totally hate new agey wishy-washy overuse of reverb.
>
>But I love reverse reverb!

What's that?

-Carl

>> >I totally hate new agey wishy-washy overuse of reverb.
>> >
>> >But I love reverse reverb!
>>
>> What's that?
>>
>> -Carl
>
>LOL...Carl, you're such a hoot! Such deadpan delivery! Keep it up.
>
>Still chuckling,
>j

Er, I really don't know what reverse reverb is.

-C.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@...> wrote:

> >But I love reverse reverb!
>
> What's that?

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec98/articles/reverse.665.htm

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@> wrote:
>
> > >But I love reverse reverb!
> >
> > What's that?
>
> http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec98/articles/reverse.665.htm

"With tape, all you need do is flip the tape over so it plays
backwards, feed the track into a reverb unit and record the result
onto a spare track, (remembering that the track numbering is reversed
when you do this). When you rethread the tape the right way around,
the new reverb track will now have a reverse characteristic where it
builds up slowly before the sound that created it, then it dies
abruptly, as shown in Figure 1."

This sounds like the hard way to do it. Why not reverse the wav file
inside of SoundForge or Audacity, add reverb, and reverse again?

>> >But I love reverse reverb!
>>
>> What's that?
>
>http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec98/articles/reverse.665.htm

Thanks!

-Carl

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@>
wrote:
> >
> > --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Carl Lumma <ekin@> wrote:
> >
> > > >But I love reverse reverb!
> > >
> > > What's that?
> >
> > http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec98/articles/reverse.665.htm
>
> "With tape, all you need do is flip the tape over so it plays
> backwards, feed the track into a reverb unit and record the result
> onto a spare track, (remembering that the track numbering is
reversed
> when you do this). When you rethread the tape the right way around,
> the new reverb track will now have a reverse characteristic where it
> builds up slowly before the sound that created it, then it dies
> abruptly, as shown in Figure 1."
>
> This sounds like the hard way to do it. Why not reverse the wav file
> inside of SoundForge or Audacity, add reverb, and reverse again?

Yes but the passage you quoted describes how it is done with tape.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@...> wrote:

> > This sounds like the hard way to do it. Why not reverse the wav file
> > inside of SoundForge or Audacity, add reverb, and reverse again?
>
> Yes but the passage you quoted describes how it is done with tape.

Why do it with tape? Anyway, I've tried it and my method works.

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Gene Ward Smith"
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, "Kalle Aho" <kalleaho@> wrote:
>
> > > This sounds like the hard way to do it. Why not reverse the wav
file
> > > inside of SoundForge or Audacity, add reverb, and reverse again?
> >
> > Yes but the passage you quoted describes how it is done with tape.
>
> Why do it with tape? Anyway, I've tried it and my method works.

The writer was describing how the effect was created at the time it
was invented.

Nowadays it is mostly done the way you did it.

But I bet there are some folks who do it with tape and spring/plate
reverb to get more vintage sound. :D

Kalle

Kalle,

{you wrote...}
>The writer was describing how the effect was created at the time it was invented.

Absolutely, this was historical perspective.

>Nowadays it is mostly done the way you did it.

Of course. Then again, it only takes the most microscopic of time-lines to know that having access to digital audio tools for the masses dates back just a few years. That we have Audacity, Sound Forge, Pro Tools, etc is really an amazing state, *especially* for those of us that cut our teeth (so to speak) on tape.

I still remember the first digital editing setup that was installed at the studio where I did most of my recording work, with a whopping 2gb hard-drive that cost thousands of dollars. Lust? Man, you could have arrested me for what I was thinking at the time! (I eventually got after-hours access to an engineer and the editing suite for some fun times. But I digress...)

>But I bet there are some folks who do it with tape and spring/plate reverb to get more vintage sound. :D

Heh. Why don't you float the question to Gene and the other young pups as to where the term "flanging" came from? :) I'll go look it up in the Archimedes Palimpsest.

Cheers,
Jon

Gene,

> > Yes but the passage you quoted describes how it is done with tape.
> ...
> Why do it with tape? Anyway, I've tried it and my method works.

Well... I guess you didn't actually *read* the article, did you? :-)
Try the 3rd paragraph...

Rick

Rick,

{you wrote...}
>Well... I guess you didn't actually *read* the article, did you?

I mean, the title was a dead give-away!

Cheers,
Jon

P.S. I'll write you off-list about the Wusik/Sample Convertor stuff. I've managed to have a bit more success...

Carl Lumma wrote:

>>You hate reverb? Do you mean the electronic effect or the
>>naturally occurring thing?
> > The effect. I see it as a bad way to make up for stereo.
> (Ideally, metadata in the music would give the channel
> topology of the recording, and the user's equipment would
> be responsible for rendering it appropriately with the
> number of speakers available.) Bose direct/reflecting tech
> took a stab at the problem, but it was still stereo. So it
> did generate some natural reverb, but at the cost of ruining
> whatever image was there. These are a cool, though...
> http://www.electrotap.com/hemisphere/
> ...with a recording made with a mono omni...

I don't see the argument here. You seem to be describing Ambisonic B-format. But the reverb emulates the room the recording was made in, and so it should be part of the recording. Equipment that emulated an ideal listening environment for headphones would be nice, certainly.

> With electric music, some very mild convolution reverb is
> usually better than none; of course reverb should never be
> applied to acoustic recordings.

Of course? Do you really mean acoustic recordings, or recordings of acoustic instruments? If it's done in a dry acoustic, it needs reverb. And how about dub?

Reverb's generally more microtonal-friendly than chorus but you have to be careful with polyphony.

Graham

>>>You hate reverb? Do you mean the electronic effect or the
>>>naturally occurring thing?
>>
>> The effect. I see it as a bad way to make up for stereo.
>> (Ideally, metadata in the music would give the channel
>> topology of the recording, and the user's equipment would
>> be responsible for rendering it appropriately with the
>> number of speakers available.) Bose direct/reflecting tech
>> took a stab at the problem, but it was still stereo. So it
>> did generate some natural reverb, but at the cost of ruining
>> whatever image was there. These are a cool, though...
>> http://www.electrotap.com/hemisphere/
>> ...with a recording made with a mono omni...
>
>I don't see the argument here. You seem to be describing
>Ambisonic B-format.

Hmm, very interesting. I hadn't heard of it.

>But the reverb emulates the room the recording was made in,
>and so it should be part of the recording.

First off, electric instruments like synths and guitars don't
have any natural reverb. Studios are designed to be dead, and
even if you play them in a live space you're probably playing
them through a directional speaker, which won't lead to any
reverb you'd want to keep (the exception would be, perhaps,
using something like an Electrotap hemisphere or Bose cylindrical
radiator). They come into their own with clever production
techniques -- which for me include very mild, high-quality
reverb and creative mixing (treating stereo like an instrument,
rather than an imager). Guitarists wax poetic about their
favorite combo amps, but to me they all just sound like s***
in person.

Acoustic instruments are a different story. But to my mind,
recreating the space the recording was made in is a neat idea,
but is ultimately confusing/disorientating. If the room I hear
and the room I see don't match... it's not cool. I became
aware of how much hearing has to do with the sensation of space
around my body when I accidentally bludgeoned my ear drum with
a q-tip in 2004. It's like the difference between going to a
concert, and having a concert in your house, I suppose. Though
I must say after reading about it that I'd love to experience
an Ambisonic recording sometime. Maybe I would just have to
close my eyes.

But I should think the reverb of the listening room would color
the reverb in the recording. Unless the speakers were highly
directional (esp. headphones) OR one had detailed info about the
listening room and corrected for it digitally OR if the listening
room was dead. Directional sources are problematic because they
restrict the listener's position, or in the case of headphones,
miss the HRTF, and in both cases fatigue the ears.

So to me, the very best that can be done is to have each
instrument coming out of a dedicated point source in the
listening space. For stereo, either the creative mixing for
electric music, or spaced omnis (at the width of the speakers)
for acoustic. Stereo images done with coincident techniques
always sound artificial to me.

>Equipment that emulated an ideal listening environment for
>headphones would be nice, certainly.

Well, that's basically binaural recording with a fake head.
The fake head fakes up the HRTF, but I find this kind of
listening very fatiguing (something about sound being
blasted directly in the ears... these do help, but not
completely

http://ultrasone.com/

...) and it doesn't produce good results through speakers.

>> With electric music, some very mild convolution reverb is
>> usually better than none; of course reverb should never be
>> applied to acoustic recordings.
>
>Of course? Do you really mean acoustic recordings, or
>recordings of acoustic instruments?

The latter.

> And how about dub?

That's a special case. The effects are being used like
instruments.

>Reverb's generally more microtonal-friendly than chorus but you
>have to be careful with polyphony.

Oh, chorus should never be used for any reason IMO.
I've always hated it.

-Carl