RE: So finally tried making a classical piano song. . .
July 28, 2018 at 4:04 am
(This post was last modified: July 28, 2018 at 4:06 am by Homeless Nutter.)
(July 22, 2018 at 6:32 am)bennyboy Wrote: I actually have a music degree, but I haven't really tried to write serious piano music since college. To be honest, it was a LOT harder than I thought, both the composing and getting the darned composing software to look right (almost there) and sound right (MIDI will probably never be satisfying, I guess). I think I'll have to pay some 10 year-old Korean kid to learn it, because it's a little too hard for me![...]
Getting natural piano sound while using MIDI is quite tricky - any "real" instrument, really. It's almost impossible when using notation, which is designed to be interpreted and "humanized" by the performer. I imagine there might be plugins, which add some variation in velocity and timing, but I don't know for sure, especially that I have virtually no knowledge of Sibelius. I do know, however, that most modern sequencers have some options for adding human feel to programmed parts, as do some virtual instruments.
There are ways to do it manually - other than actually play it (perhaps at a lower speed and/or in small bits). It mainly comes down to using a good quality piano patch, with a lot of dynamic sample layers per key, and then slightly varying velocity of each note, in piano roll editor, so that consecutive notes don't play the exact same sample, at the exact same level, every time. Shifting the timing of each note by a small, but varied number of ticks (so that it's almost imperceivable) also helps to hide the machine-like feel.
It can be a lot of work, though, especially with classical music (or any music with lots of notes, as opposed to pop, or dance music, where most instrumental parts are a few bars long), unless you use randomization algorythms available in sequencers, which can often yield unpredictable (though - luckily - reversable) results. Either way - it needs a good ear and some practice. And at the end of the day - if you can get someone to play it on a MIDI keyboard, or better yet - record a performance on an accoustic instrument, it's usually preferable.
The tune itself sounds good to me, although I'm far from an expert on this kind of music.
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