Guitar strumming

[herbert]

Hi Paolo,

To get reasonable sounds, you need to do a lot of midi editing. There are several good books available on this subject. Percussive and strummed or plucked string instruments need attention at the very least, to spread out the instruments’ attacks of each note.

When you play several percussive instruments (strings) with the attack of each note not exactly at the same time, most people hear distinctive separate notes, if they are played more than 5 msec apart. If you play a chord on the guitar, you are likely to play first the lowest note, followed by the higher notes in sequence. Separating notes slightly in time, will give you a full round sound. Separating the notes much further apart will give you an arpeggioated chord.

The smallest amount of time you can vary a note is one tick. Composer has 480 ticks for each beat. If you play a song at 100 beats per minute, each beat is .6 seconds long. This amounts to 1.25 msec per tick. If I separate the attack of notes by one or several ticks, I will get a fairly round sound.

I use frequently a double bass and an acoustic guitar as part of the rhythm section. I set the double bass in this case to -4 ticks (-5 msec), The lowest string of the guitar remains at 0 time. The next higher string is set to +4 ticks and the next one to +8 ticks or 10 msec. You can change the timing to your preference.

Midi editing is very time consuming. Perhaps Composer will have some functions in the Future, to reduce the work load.


Best Wishes,

Herbert

[Sherry C]

Hi guys,

David and Herbert (good to see you here!) have both made some excellent points about editing for a good performance. It does take time to do it well, and Notation Composer does provide a lot of tools to help with that.

One way that you could speed up the task a bit is to create a "library file" of chord types (eg. Maj, min, 7, etc), which you can then simply pull up and copy/paste into a new file that you're working on. In other words, you could create a library of the chords you most commonly use, and tweak the performance of those chords in the library file (as David and Herbert have both expounded on). Then whenever you are working on a new file, have that "library" file open in a second window (you can use the Window menu to put them side-by-side either horizontally or vertically), and copy/paste chord "blocks" (with their performance already tweaked) from the library to the song file. It's then easy to quickly adjust the pitch of the chord (say from "C" to "D" chord) just by holding the "P" key and pressing the Up/Down arrow key as needed to adjust pitches up/down a half-step at a time.

Granted this method gives the same duration adjustments for each time you use a particular chord type, but it's a way to save time editing for quick composition.

Some years ago we had a member (Fred Winterling) who used to collect pitch bends in such a library file, for use in his other compositions, so my idea isn't exactly original

ttfn,
Sherry

[dj]

Hi, Paolo:

As Herbert said, midi editing is time consuming. On the other hand, far less so than learning and recording a new instrument, so there is a trade-off.

To edit attack and release of notes, go to Piano Roll, type "ep" to enter "Edit As Performed" and select the notes you want to edit by click-dragging.

When notes are selected, the sub-pallete of 9 icons will become active, letting you shift the "attack" (i.e. when the note begins to sound), the "release" (i.e. when the note stops sounding), and the overall duration of the note. You can also snap selected notes to the nominal default attack/release/duration.

By judicious editing, you can shift notes slightly before and after the beat.

If the built-in arpeggio "strum" is too much, you can also edit the attack and release of the arpeggiated notes with the method described above.

One important thing for realism is to figure out the actual rhythm pattern of your "strum" and alternate up and down arpeggios (arpeggii?). You can then copy and paste those into the appropriate bars to minimize editing.

Here's another piece where I used the techniques above. "I Remember Friday Nights (In '71)" is from my musical The Day We Flipped Mike's Chev. An old timey rock-y roll-y thing-y.

David