The Gondoliers rides on Midinotate Composer

Hello Tim,

What a great project you did!

You basically used MidiNotate Composer as a MIDI sequencer, to customize the MIDI arrangement of, wow, 1-1/2 hours of Gilbert and Sullivan's Gondoliers. Many folk use MidiNotate Composer to produce the score, and use the sound as an audit to make sure the score is right. You did it the other way. You used MidiNotate Composer to produce the sound, and used that notation to help you see what you were doing with the music. It probably didn't matter to you that the score was far from perfectly notated, as you weren't handing out parts, because you didn't have the musicians to play them.

I'm so pleased that you found MidiNotate Composer useful this way. You're at the forefront of MidiNotate Composer users who have discovered the MIDI sequencing/arranging features of the software.

Congratulations on your musical accomplishment, as well as technical accomplishment using MidiNotate Composer.

Gilbert and Sullivan. What fun!

Cheers
-- Mark

Oops. Obviously I should have taken 5 seconds at the beginning of my 2 minute exercise to switch off the match attack and duration to notation button! Performance of the clean notation has altered because I failed to do so. Mea culpa.

Tim Fatchen

David, have to say: it did get bums on seats, and it did make significant money. The public liability insurance problem in Australia is no joke. There are community fetes, agricultural shows, flower shows, craft shows, markets, theatre groups, you name, that have all vanished because they can't find the (literally) thousands of dollars needed for liability insurance for each. Indeed, to meet the advance payment, the Director and the Publicity Officer desperately flogged off trash'n'treasure at every boot sale in the region for months beforehand!!!

So what's this got to do with Midinotate? Simple. Mountain Theatre Co. couldn't afford royalties for a first production. G&S is out of copyright, yes, but all recordings (eg D'Oyly Carte) are still in copyright. Even a couple hundred dollars was too much. No pianist: fled with the original musical director, and the second pressganged into singing. No karaoke recording, cost too much. I was a member and had the software I knew could do it. Voila! No financial cost (tho' I'm going to be now jealously guarding my own copyright on the arrangement & recordings)

And I'm now formally persuing Aspects of Love for possible production in 2008, not necessarily with the same company. I haven't died of terror yet tho' I'm losing weight fast...question will be whether I can orchestrate it myself or whether performance agreements will demand Lloyd Webber's orchestration only. Either way, Midinotate will cope!

Tim Fatchen
http://www.music.download.com/timfatchen
http://www.music.download.com/internetopera
http://www.soundclick.com/flyingtadpole

Hi, Tim:

I know Composer can do it: I used the betas of Composer 1.0 to develop orchestrations for a musical of mine for 23 pieces and a big cast. It did the job. Now that we're approaching 2.0, I'm sure it'll handle it even better.

I'd think you'd be stuck with renting orchestrations for Aspects Of Love. Another local company hired me to do what exactly what you've been doing for their production of The Secret Garden. I created an audio CD from the score for them to sing to, although The Secret Garden was a tough show to "karaoke". I suspect Aspects Of Love would be more so.

Our current show is simplicity itself in comparison: 6 actors, 1 pianist, 30-some rag-time and blues numbers -- with arrangements done in Composer, of course!

Keep us informed on how it goes.

David

P.S.

Interesting to note about the liability insurance thing. It's not really a problem here in Canada for small groups, although I've heard of a couple of major events being cancelled, and I wonder what the difference is.

I also wonder how long until it becomes a problem here.

As our local building inspector once told me: "The best way to stop people from being burned in large numbers is to prevent them from gathering in large numbers." That's what he saw as his job.

David

David - sorry this is slightly off topic, but I am looking into producing "The Secret Garden" for a local amateur group in the UK and would be interested in talking with you about your accompaniments.

Not sure if you can see my e-mail on my profile here - if so, please feel free to get in touch. I am out of the country at the moment on vacation but will pick up my e-mails soon.

Apologies to all if this is a bad use of the forum, but I couldn't see any other way to get in touch - and it is "sort of " relevant!!!

Moray Nairn

Hello Moray,

No problem at all using the forum for collaborating with other musicians. We love to see folk making music!

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi, all:

I've emailed Moray off forum. The Secret Garden has some of the most beautiful music I've ever worked with, but it's FIENDISHLY difficult.
Think Stephen Sondheim meets Ravi Shankar.

David

Howdy,

You guys keep teasing us with this stuff - it sounds (pun intended) intriguing! Any chance we'll get to hear any of it? Excerpts even?

Breathlessly waiting (I just got done running upstairs ;) )
Sherry

Hi, Sherry:

Well, I don't have a rock band anymore, so I'd be performing it myself. I did have it in the back of my mind that my son's band might be interested in it.

They just did their first "adult" gig last night: an open mic night at a local pub, where some pretty heavy-weight regional pros often show up to do new material. They bowled people over, especially when they found out that the band consists of 15 and 16 year olds!

To hear my son ripping out, note for note, the Rick Wakeman organ and synth parts for Roundabout is pretty amazing. They're each working up a solo spot right now and Sean has decided on Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Hoedown: six and a half minutes of Hammond organ and Moog synthesizer.

P.S.

And, yes, Composer does play a part in this. Sean is using it to work out his parts and is starting to write some original songs, using Composer.

David