"Lectures in Beginning MIDI," part 3
Let's talk about "ensemble"
The basic idea of MIDI was explained in lectures 1 and 2 of this series. But --- MIDI is more than simply turning notes on and off. We explained that MIDI represented a kind of agreement by which musical information is exchanged. However in order to record and reproduce something as complex as music, we need more wide-ranging agreement. |
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Music comes in all sorts of styles. Some people are crazy about jazz, others are heavy metal freaks, and for some, the day begins and ends with Bach. And of course, different types of music use different instruments. Although the musical structure of a song has a lot to do with how the music sounds, the instrumentation is also a pretty decisive factor. | |
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Even a melody by itself is, of course, music. But if we add rhythm and harmony, the music becomes more varied and rich. Music is more fun when we get several people together to play different instruments, and that's what we call an "ensemble." |
Most of the first synthesizers could play only single notes. But when
digital technology took off and became affordable, synthesizers gained the ability to produce multiple notes at once. If you've looked at synthesizer catalogs, you've probably seen an item called "polyphony." This refers to the number of notes that can be played simultaneously.
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![]() The history of the development of synthesizers (actually only a few decades long) is the history of the synthesizer's attempt to become the all-purpose instrument --- With just one synthesizer, how close can we get to the sound of a real instrument, or how many sounds can we create which never existed before? And that's why today you can purchase an affordably-priced synthesizer that contains from several hundred to a thousand different sounds.
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The fact that you can play lots of simultaneous notes with multiple types of sounds means that you can use a single synthesizer to playback a musical ensemble. |
As we explained in the second lecture, a sequencer used in conjunction with your synthesizer will let you record the performance of each instrument separately, one after the other, and then play them back together to create an ensemble --- all by yourself! If you make mistakes, you can re-record as many times as you like, and the complexity of your musical arrangements is limited only by your endurance and time. |
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![]() | Trying to do the same thing with acoustic instruments would cost a lot of money in studio time, and the musicians might be calling in sick and causing other problems (which of course can be sort of fun). |
Along with the performance of each instrument that you record on your
sequencer, you can also include the type of sound that was used for each
instrument. On synthesizers, the different sounds are handled as
"such-and-such a sound is number XX," so what you are including in your
sequencer recording is actually this "number XX." The agreed-upon means
that
MIDI provides for this purpose is called a "program change message." The
sound number that was recorded is sent from the sequencer to the
synthesizer, and the synthesizer will switch to the
correspondingly-numbered
sound.
However, an unfortunate thing sometimes happens with "program change messages." It's a sad story, but ... we're out of time, so we'll see you next lesson! |
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