Re: Happy Birthday Keenan

Hi,

I don't think anyone has posted a midi clip yet, so here is one I did to listen to this scale you've all been enthusing about.

I've also been improvising in it in TS - a scale with a lot of character!
Midi clip:
http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/happy_birthday_Keenan.mid
Score:
http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/Happy_Birthday_Keenan.gif
NWC file:
http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/happy_birthday_Keenan.nwc
(just plain 12 tet nwc, no pitch bends in this one - I did the midi clip by sending it's output through TS.)

Robert

Robert Walker wrote,

>Midi clip:
>http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/happy_birthday_Keenan.mid

Awesome! (Margo wrote this, right?) But where did that little soprano voice
on the second-to-last chord come from???

Hi Paul,

Margo said that there were two poss. for the notes, which she imagined like two
versions of the original manuscript.

Then one could sing either, or if one wanted and had the voices, split voices at that
point and sing both notes at once.

Robert

>Then one could sing either, or if one wanted and had the voices, split
voices at that
>point and sing both notes at once.

Did you mean for the "extra" note to be in a different timbre?

This should be the subject of previous post (14947)

Robert

Margo, thanks for writing, and Robert Walker, thanks for recording,
a special Happy Birthday song for Keenan.

What is an "NWC" again?

Robert, the .mid file is neat, but it seems to have some problems.
You're using channels 1, 2, and 3, and playing notes on all three
right away (using, as I do, channel pitch bends to effect tuning), but
there's no voice (program) specification for channel 3 anywhere, and
the specification for channel 2 is well into the piece. Did you mean
to do this? Also, the voice specification for channel 1 keeps changing;
could you explain the effect that this helps create?

JdL

>What is an "NWC" again?

NWC file = Note Worthy Composer file (*.nwc).

It's the program I use for score editing.

It's great because it is just like a word processor - you can type whatever you like,
really fast, and move things about, and it doesn't do any check to see if you
have the right number of notes in the bar or anything.

You can just type whatever you like.

You can also enter notes from MIDI, but has an option to do it using "step time entry"
which means you just enter the notes one at a time in your own time. You can use
the pitch bend wheel to change the duration of the note - move it up then back to zero pos
to increment note length. (Toggles dotted / double dotted / dotted off if you use it
while playing the note)

Or you can use modulation wheel and data entry slider to change note length in
same way, but this time depending on pos.

It is sort of like editing from the MIDI keyboard.

Then when you play back, it respects most of the dynamics, tempo changes, etc and
all the repeat markings etc.

You can also apply pitch bends to notes, and do glissandi, which it respects on playback.

I've tried a couple of others, and this one is so much easier to use. It's really fast to
enter notes by just typing them, which is what I usually do.

If anyone is using it for a first time, a couple of things took a while for me to find:

You can move the expression markings, text etc around - there are little rather faint gray dots just
before them, which you highlight, then can drag it where you want. The vertical position of the
text is according to ledger lines, like the notes. For words of a song, so that you want
the notes spaced out to fit above the text, you use: highlight the gray dot, rt click on highlight,
go to Expression placement tab, and select at next note / bar from the Alignment / placement
drop list.

You can move blocks of notes up and down by highlighting, and then using shift + up /down
arrow keys (and use same method to shift text up / down)

You can change the spacing between the clefs using:
rt. click on clef | Staff properties | Visual | Vertical size.

Their web site is:
http://www.ntworthy.com/

Have a look at some of the scores on Fred Nachbaur's site to see what
can be done in NWC.
http://www.netidea.com/~fredn/muslist.htm

Robert

Hello, there, everyone, and thanks to Robert Walker for realizing my
"Happy Birthday" to Keenan Pepper both as a score and as MIDI files,
and to others also for their suggestions, a fine example of Tuning
List cooperation. Robert, you very nicely caught my intention about
that fourth optional voice in the final cadence.

Keenan, thank you for your most appreciative words on this happy
occasion, which encourage me to carry through a series of articles I'm
starting on neo-Gothic progressions and intonations. As I say in the
first article, soon to be posted, I hope, some actual music may speak
much clearly than theoretical concepts alone.

By the way, having the principal melody in the lowest part, or mostly
lowest part with some voice crossings, is typical of medieval European
forms like the conductus around 1200, which this piece maybe most
closely resembles. This part is called the tenor in the original sense
of "holding" the melody which serves as the basis for the composition.

Anyway, it's wonderful to see a birthday celebration become a musical
event on the Tuning List.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net

Hi Margo

>Hello, there, everyone, and thanks to Robert Walker for realizing my
>"Happy Birthday" to Keenan Pepper both as a score and as MIDI files,
>and to others also for their suggestions, a fine example of Tuning
>List cooperation. Robert, you very nicely caught my intention about
>that fourth optional voice in the final cadence.

Thanks, it's a great pleasure,

I've just converted the NWC (Note Worthy Composer) et midi clip directly
in SCALA rather than playing it through FTS.

http://www.robertwalker.f9.co.uk/happy_birthday_Keenan_SCALA.mid

Result is much crisper. SCALA does the same thing FTS should have done
of changing channels when consecutive notes are played with varying pitch
bends.

Also because it is direct conversion of the file, the chords all are
exactly synchronised in time - when playing through FTS, some
of the time precision is lost on the way, as each note of the
chord is recieved one at a time, and has to be processed, and
the actual time it is recieved is what FTS uses for the times in the
MIDI file save.

Help in FTS about how to convert midi clip using SCALA is incorrect -
missing a command, and I'll update that in next beta.

FTS is good for previewing what the converted midi clip will be like
because you can change the scale in real time while the clip is playing.

(you play it through FTS by sending output of prog that plays it to MIDI
in of FTS using Hubi's software loop back cable).

However it's not really intended as a way of converting MIDI clips as such,
just as a method for preview, what you have had so far is a kind of
preview (though actually, I think the v. slightly ragged chords sound
quite nice too as real life performances are never totally micro-second
exactly synchronised).

Robert