Music and Technology . . .
. . . an unhealthy mixture. I am being driven even madder by Finale in its pipe-organ aspect; it’s not just the third line of music, since piano-with-voice is no worse than piano alone, but there’s something positively wrong with the balance of the organ playback and all you really get is Generic Smush. You can have loud Generic Smush or soft Generic Smush but those are pretty much your only options. The whole point of organ music is all that resonance* and when you can’t pick out one note from another it’s not only infuriating, it’s demoralising. I’m having enough trouble figuring out what I’m doing. . . . No, that’s going too far: what I think I’m doing. What I like to hope I’m doing. Every now and then I slow the metronome mark down to about twelve which makes it g . . . o l. . . i . . . k . . . e t . . . h . . . i . . . s and therefore destroys any sense of rhythm and progression and pacing and story-as-a-whole and all that**, and so I lose what I’m trying to do all over again, but at least, for a very l . . . o . . . n . . . g moment I can hear the frelling notes. Sigh. Have I mentioned lately that among my many shortcomings I have no ear? I can hear hellhounds musically expressing a wish for attention and immediately identify which one is making that racket*** but the difference between G# and Ab, forget it.†
And then Jeanne Marie, hitherto be known as That Ratbag, last night, sent me this, under the heading ‘I know, you don’t need this . . . ‘:
. . . a friend just today sent me information on this computer program…here’s his note, followed by the youtube link of which he speaks:
“I have software called Hauptwerk, that is an ultra-sophisticated modeling program for the pipe organ. Basically, they digitally sample all of the individual pipes (each rank has typically 61 pipes, so for a 20 rank organ, that’s a lot of samples) of an organ, and with a high-end PC and a midi keyboard, you can use the software to emulate the sound of that organ with stunning realism. You buy the software to emulate a particular pipe organ, and then use your own system to produce the music. I think it could revolutionize church music, because even small churches could afford to build a “digital pipe organ” that sounds very much like a real pipe organ, far better than an Allen or a Rodgers. I’m hoping to build one as time permits. You basically take components-keyboards, a pedalboard, midi controllers, amplifiers, speakers, and a PC, and put it all together. If you’re interested, check out YouTube and search under stefanussen and listen to the Bach Gigue piece. That’s how realistic the sound is.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ncVblmduSQ ††
You see where this is going, don’t you…you could, conceivably, have this nifty computer program, so that when you compose some little pieces for Oisin, you could have realistic organ samples, as opposed to the dreadful Finale versions…
Thanks, Jeanne Marie. Thanks sooooo much. You’re a real friend. Although as I wrote back to her, with undue speed, and including such epithets as ‘you horrible person’, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to ask Oisin if he knows anything about organ software programmes. Oisin doesn’t need to know anything about organ programmes: not only does he live round the corner from the organ at the church I ring at††† he has his very own organ at the cathedral he’s organist for. Feh.
Meanwhile they’re trying to take my computer away from me again. Tall dark men in black leather jackets appear on my doorstep, smiling dangerously, and reaching out their long leather-clad arms to seize my computer! Okay, true, I have several computers, and my Computer Men all seem to wear black leather jackets ‡, but I have only one computer with Finale on it, and that is the one that continually has the megrims. Maybe it likes Mario Lanza and I’m giving it bad dreams.‡‡
A few days ago it was the Finale computer that hiccupped over a web site and presented me with a page that screamed, Your computer has been INVADED by evil tentacled beings from BEYOND TIME! They are THIS MINUTE EATING YOUR HARD DISC! MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH! THERE GOES JUST A LITTLE PIECE FOR ORGAN! BURP! Act now before it is TOO LATE FOR ANY RECOVERY! Download this FREE anti-evil-tentacled-beings programme RIGHT NOW and be FREE AND SAFE FOREVER!! –It would have been easier if it had said Evil Tentacled Beings, and possibly made some reference to the Necronomicon, because then I would have known I was in a role-playing game and behaved accordingly.‡‡‡ It said it was a Microsoft anti-virus programme and it had all the right logos and things, including all the ‘My Documents’ and ‘My Computer’ icons and similar with big red flashing ‘WARNING’ and ‘CORRUPTED’ banners stamped on them. This happened Sunday afternoon of course. However, paranoia will sometimes bear you in good stead when your brain has run away whimpering and wringing its hands and crying, I was an English major DECADES before computers! Computers are ALL evil tentacled beings!, and I did not download, but I’ve been jumping at small noises ever since and there’s definitely something going on with that computer.
Maybe it’s all that organ music, trying to get out. You’re allowed to put your Finale programme on two computers and I first thought the obvious second was my little travelling one, because I can always take it to the local piano . . . but coping with Finale’s weird jumpy way of moving through a score on even a large laptop screen is pretty nervous-breakdown-inducing. My latest disturbed and disturbing idea is to rearrange the office in the cottage, thereby bringing the old electric keyboard–which is where all the trouble started a few years ago–within reach of my desktop computer which has a huge and brilliant screen. Oh, now, haven’t I read somewhere about large folding screens for small travelling laptops? No, no, what am I saying?
* * *
* Okay, probably not the whole point. But I’m a very baby acolyte of organ music–I’m probably not even that. A foetus. No, a zygote. And all those pipes going REVERRRRRRBERANT BOOOOM is the first thing you engage with, with an organ. Okay, with an organ being played. The pipes just standing silent by themselves are pretty amazing too.
** Have I mentioned recently how similar in certain ways writing music is to writing fiction? In my case it makes my almost complete musical cluelessness that much more rampant, but as I’ve also said before, the familiarity is also what makes it possible. Oh, making stuff up again? Yeah, we can do that.
*** Darkness likes to lie down on the far side of the room or the back of the dog crate and then bark, a short, sharp, I am here! Attend me! bark. Chaos likes to stand at the foot of the cottage stairs and whine, Yooooooou should be taking us ooooooooout,^ when I have been so unkind as to close the puppy gate because an hilarity of hellhounds rushing repeatedly up and down stairs^^ is not what I want, when, in fact, I’m trying to get organised to take the little whatnots out. Of course Chaos also likes to hang off my forearm and growl the rest of the day, when I’m not late for a hurtle.
^ He still whines like a puppy! That MMMMmmmm, MMMMmmmm noise. Darkness, when he stoops to whining, has a more ironical tone.
^^ Soon there will be a whole new game of this, at Third House. I can hardly wait.
† Itty bitty tiny joke, based on equal temperament tuning http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/190596/equal-temperament
†† You want amazing organ music, go here: http://danielmoult.com/listenandwatch.php and play the Messiaen. I’ve posted it before, haven’t I? So play it again. It’s worth it. In spite of the whole the-only-good-organ-is-a-live-organ thing.
††† No, not my corner, more’s the pity. When I’m late for my piano lesson it’s a long way to run.
‡ Okay, and what’s that about?
‡‡ I like Mario Lanza^, but that is not the kind of music I’m writing
^ Especially in The Student Prince. You wouldn’t think I’d admit this in public, would you? But ‘Drink Drink Drink’ is almost as good to run on a hotel treadmill to as Marilyn Manson’s ‘Tainted Love’.
‡‡‡ I’m going to pursue the evil tentacled being into the dark unknown labyrinth armed only with a candlestick, an egg-beater and a box of tiddlywinks. Remind me what my strength rating is again?
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