Space adventure sort of piece

P.S. Sherry,

If you can get this piece to sound right on GPO Studio, feel free to explore adding some meat in the bass. We could make this piece a collaborative effort. I don't have any strong feelings about ownership of this piece.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi Sherry,

Could you email me a WAV or MP3 of the GPO version of Stars? I'd like to hear whether my GPO Studio setup somehow is producing a different sound.

That will be fun if you add some bass to this Stars piece.

When you first invited us to contribute to Dadzilla, I tried out some harmonica licks. The task was problematic because the MIDI version of Dadzilla doesn't have the vocals. I didn't want a secondary harmonica part interfering with the vocals, and definitely not interfere with the delightful giggles of your kids.

When you're exploring touch sensitivity with your keyboard, try using GPO sounds, as they are generally do more than loud/soft; they also add more expression by changing the shape of the sound envelop.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi Sherry,

Thanks for experimenting with the volume level and preparing the MP3 of the GPO version of this piece. Indeed, that got a rid of a lot of the distortion, but there is still a lot in the last third of the piece.

Decreasing the volume level in Composer (Pro) had some unwanted effects, that I'll need to think about when further designing Composer Pro to work well with GPO. The volume slider in all versions of MidiNotate does something a little curious: it changes both the MIDI note velocities and the MIDI track channel volume level. I did this so that there would be a blend of increasing/decreasing loudness at the same time that there might be also a change in the texture of the sound if the sound driver does more with MIDI velocity than just change the amplitude of the sound waves. This has generally worked quite well for many years in MidiNotate.

As I pointed out about your touch sensitivity explorations, GPO is more sensitive about MIDI velocities. When you move Composer's slider to the left, you can particularly hear a muffling of the brass. A loud brass note comes out with a big punch. A software brass note eases out with much less punch (although still much more than some other instruments). Thus, the 1/3rd rather than 1/2 volume level you used when recording the GPO version of this piece, tended to drain the life out of the brass. The articulations have mostly disappeared.

For use with GPO, I think Composer Pro may need to blend MIDI velocities a little bit different with volume levels. And the volume slider will need to be connected to GPO's volume controller instead of (or in addition to?) the MIDI track channel volume level.

This problem might be able to be solved by going back to the original 1/2 volume level in Composer, and then using GPO's special controller (I forget which one right now) to reduce the volume level. I'll try that, unless you want to take a shot at it.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi Sherry,

I sent an email to Gary Garritan to get some advice about fixing the distortion. He phoned me and suggested that I might try using GPO Studio's ambience panel to use more dryness (which I had already done some). He also reminded me that it is MIDI controller #1 (Mod Wheel) that controls volume level. With this advice, I might be able to clean up the distortion. If not, Gary offered to take a look at this for me.

Gary's Group Buy promotion has been so successful that the group price reached the best bottom price of $139. That is a super deal! The promotion is about to end, but he offered to extend it for MidiNotate customers. See Gary's post in the GPO section of this forum.

Yes, Gary has visited our forum! That's cool.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi,
I've been listening to the sample submitted (and suggested websites), and have been amazed at the quantum quality different between the 'sound card' version and the Garritan sound system.

So good is it, I've actually parted with the money to purchase. Got in time with the bulk buy (which ends today - I think).

Have no idea how it all works, how it interfaces to Composer etc, or even if it will run on my XP system with 256kb RAM - but that is all part of what promises to be an enjoyable learning curve.

I have enjoyed listening to the samples submitted, and am constantly fascinated by what people do - the imagination, variety, and also the technical performance skills . Not all the music is my preference (Prokofieff style chords aren't 'my cup of tea'), but I can apprecaite it none the less.

Cheers ... Clyde

Hello Clyde,

That's great that you purchased GPO. You'll need a 1Gb of RAM at a minimum, but you were looking for an excuse to get more memory, right? I have 1.5Gb of RAM on the machine I use with GPO and Composer, and it does pretty well. When you buy RAM, be sure to leave options open for getting even more RAM later without losing too much of your previous investment in RAM.

By the way, I don't blame you for not preferring Prokofieff sounds. Some of Prokofieff sounds somewhat random to me, even though the right notes are being playing. I most enjoy Prokofieff when it goes back and forth between "comfortable" chord sounds and dissonant sounds-- a very exaggerated version of going in the key of C from a C chord to a G7 chord, where the G7 has just a twinge of dissonance compared to the home base of C, such that the G7 wants to take you back to the calmer C.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi Sherry,

Would you like to take a shot at trimming some of the timpani?

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi Sherry,

If you might work with it tomorrow, that will be sooner than I'll be able to.

Cheers
-- Mark

Hi Sherry,

Excellent composition. I enjoyed it very much! You are most of the way there because you are starting out with a good piece compositionally.

The clipping can be the result of a few things and there are some suggestions.

First, make sure you use only dry instruments which don't take up as much CPU. Next, the ambience reverb in GPO Studio there is a CPU/Quality knob that you could turn down. This will free up resources. Next, check your soundcard settings and raise the buffers as high as thet can go. Make sure you adjust the wet/dry sliders in the ambience reverb - if they are too high this can produce distortion.

Hope this helps and keep up the good work!

Gary Garritan

FYI, I believe I found one of the reasons for the distortion I was having with Composer playing GPO. In GPO Studio's Settings / Preferences, I had Buffer Size set to 256, but I had the Settings / Preferences / ASIO Control Panel inconsistently set to a 512 buffer size. This was probably asking for trouble.

Cheers
-- Mark

Howdy Mark,

I meant to mention above that if you'd rather not take up space on your server with mp3 files, I'd be glad to post an mp3 on my SoundClick site, complete with description and credit to you, of course. Just let me which method you'd prefer, especially since you're using the piece (sans my "extra stuff") for the new GPO Tutorial.

ttfn,
Sherry

Hi Sherry,

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Very cool! I like being able to have the notes (your written annotations, that is) right in the score - kind of like having hand-written notes and thoughts right where they are needed!<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>I started to enter the comments as lyrics, but found that it was easier to use free text. That should have been obvious to me from the start.

I forgot to save the .gpo file. I used solo tuba 1; set the Kontakt volume level about abou 80%; and in Composer as the Mod Wheel for the whole track at 10,000 if I remember correctly.

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

Perhaps you could enter an alternate "Mark's tuba interpretation" staff above the one I entered to demonstrate how you might make the tuba line more in step (pun intended) with what you're thinking. That could be instructive for those of us following this little saga.<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>I could do that, and perhaps will later. But I'm interested in hearing what you might do. It would be sort of like how my piano teacher, Althea, taught me. She was my first and only piano teacher from age 8 to 18. She never showed me how to interpret music by playing it herself. She just gave me suggestions, and left it to me to put my own personal touch on the music. It became my music instead of hers. Althea wasn't very strong on teaching piano technique; but she taught her students to love music. So, I'm thinking here the way Althea would by offering some suggestions but leaving it to you to put your own personal touch on the piece. If I've left you enough room ... :-)

Cheers
-- Mark