Poor Butterfly

[rrayner]

Originally Posted by mgj32

The drums diminished a bit my enjoyment of the piece because they seemed too dominant; so I tried diminishing the volume (nv 50) and everything leapt into life.

Hi mgj,

I appreciate your critique. Any and all suggestions are welcome. I'm a bit confused, though. I have two basic drum "feels" in this score. In the early section and ending (the two-beat feel), I have the bass drum at nv 47, the hi-hat and brush swirl at nv 79, and in the four-beat section, I have the bass drum at nv 31, the hi-hat at nv 95 and ride cymbal at nv 79. I tried to be consistent with this, but in scanning every note in every drum measure this morning, I found that in areas where I added syncopation after copying in the basic measure, that I had left some notes at the default nv 96. I have made these corrections so as to be consistent. The bass drum is below nv 50 throughout (after corrections), so you must be referring to either the brush swirl, the hi-hat or the ride cymbal. Of course, you may be referring to the several places where I left the default nv 96.

On my PC sound card, which has nothing fancy added, and on my Clavinova (my midi device), I don't detect an imbalance (beyond the above-mentioned corrections). Were there specific measures where you made your adjustment and which of the drum effects did you change? Or are you talking throughout the score? I am keenly interested in developing balance in this digital music media, and as I mentioned, I'm now trying to learn how to write effective drum parts. Those subtilties were usually left to our drummers, as for the most part, they knew best.

Sherry has offered me some sample sound fonts for my PC and perhaps I should look into this, even though my Clavinova is my final target. A sound font addition might help me to hear what you're hearing. After all, my first "listen" is happening on the PC.

I appreciate hearing your perspectives and your kind words on the instrumentation and the harmonies.

Ralph