So finally tried making a classical piano song. . .

[emjay]

I'm no expert on classical music... my musical tastes are pretty much pick 'n' mix but I do like some of it, and where piano music is concerned I like Richard Clayderman and Rachmaninov... but that's about all I know. I thought your piece was pretty cool and reminds me much more of Rachmaninov than Clayderman... not just cos it's fast but also had a Rach feel about it at points. That's about all a philistine like me can say really ... well done for doing it anyway

To me, the Rach 2 and Rach 3 concertos are the pinnacle of piano writing.  You might get different, but I can't conceive of anything being better!

I'm glad you feel that way cos it's the Rach 3 that I had in mind for my comparison, since it's the only one I know from Rachmaninov IOW what I was saying was that some of your twiddly bits ™ lol, as well as the general speed of it, reminded me of the Rach 3 That film I mentioned as having got me interested in it, was basically all about the Rach 3... and portrayed it in the same light as you did... as the pinnacle of piano writing; that not every piano player could even play it... given how fast and complicated it was, let alone compose it... so the film was about a piano genius pressured by his father to do well in a competition playing that piece, and then his subsequent adult life in the aftermath of that. It was a very good film, and made me want to hear the whole Rach 3 as I'd never heard that sort of piano playing before. Richard Clayderman is something I grew up with, so is very nostaligic to me but tbh I don't even know if he does actually compose anything, cos he just plays piano versions of popular songs as far as I know, like Andrew Lloyd Webber or whatever... I like it, but nothing he's done as far as I've heard has even approached the speed and intricacy of the Rach 3. And someone remarked that to me before... that they didn't like Clayderman specifically because his piano playing didn't use so many notes... saying basically that it lacked spirit on account of that... I don't necessarily agree on the spirit part... but anyway, between the two I've got both angles covered... frantic and less so

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Right, well I get what you're saying and I'm sorry it is ruined for you. But just saying that sometimes a more modern style acts as a gateway into classical music for anyone approaching from that modern direction. For instance, back in the day Robert Miles was very popular with young people... me included... a mixture of dance music and piano that has gone on to become standard 'lift music' fare in shopping centres ever since But from the perspective of a classical music only fan, like you, I doubt that would be appealing from what you've said... it certainly was repetitive... as dance music tends to be... so not a patch 'real' compositions... but still nonetheless a gateway into piano music. But at the end of the day, I don't know what else I can say other than you can't please everyone at the same time... but I get that if you've paid to see a show, and have certain expectations about it, then it makes sense that you should have 'right of way' as it were, and get what you've paid for... leaving anything experimental to perhaps free radio stations or whatever... so still a means to hook new listeners but not at the cost of whatever you pay to see a show.

Well, anyway.... what you wrote was far superior to Finding Rothko.  And to think it was your first try!






I could be wrong but it sounds as if the Kansas City Symphony is 3 morons with kazoos farting through them!

I have to say, that does sound pretty crap... very random... not like benny's piece at all, which was structured and had melodies.

[Homeless Nutter]

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.

Yeah the actual performance is actually a WIP.  I'm pretty good at hand-editing notes to sound natural.  But this song has a LOT of notes!  I think it would take me about as much time to learn to play the piece, as to program it to sound played.  That doesn't mean it would be worth trying-- but yeah. . . it could very easily take more time to sequence it as it took me to write it.

Yes, sorry - I didn't mean to lecture you on the basics of MIDI editing. I was bored and in the mood for reminiscing about the times when I could be bothered to do sh*t.

I've done it in the past with violin, and it was MUCH easier just because of the reduced volume of notes you have to deal with.

Interesting. I always found solo fret-less string instruments to be some of the most difficult ones to emulate - perhaps second to only slide/blues acoustic guitars, sitar and maybe jazz saxes - due to their wide range of articulation and modulation techniques available. Glissandos, legato and vibrato are especially tough and sound notoriously fake and cheesy on pretty much all MIDI instruments I've ever heard. Then again - perhaps there are some so convincing, I heard them without even knowing they were their "fake"?

Anyway, for what little experience I have imitating acoustic instruments with MIDI - I'd rather go through black pages of piano notes, than try to pull off a convincing violin sound. Especially solo, when I can't just drawn out the questionable bits with noise...

Luckily for me, I live in Korea right now, and a local piano school director has found a top-notch student who wants to try and play it.  Hopefully in a couple months, I'll have a live concert performance to link, and then I can die happy!

Well - sounds like you're all set, then. Good luck and have fun... errr... dying happy, I suppose.

[bennyboy]

I'm glad you feel that way cos it's the Rach 3 that I had in mind for my comparison, since it's the only one I know from Rachmaninov IOW what I was saying was that some of your twiddly bits ™ lol, as well as the general speed of it, reminded me of the Rach 3 That film I mentioned as having got me interested in it, was basically all about the Rach 3... and portrayed it in the same light as you did... as the pinnacle of piano writing; that not every piano player could even play it... given how fast and complicated it was, let alone compose it... so the film was about a piano genius pressured by his father to do well in a competition playing that piece, and then his subsequent adult life in the aftermath of that. It was a very good film, and made me want to hear the whole Rach 3 as I'd never heard that sort of piano playing before. Richard Clayderman is something I grew up with, so is very nostaligic to me but tbh I don't even know if he does actually compose anything, cos he just plays piano versions of popular songs as far as I know, like Andrew Lloyd Webber or whatever... I like it, but nothing he's done as far as I've heard has even approached the speed and intricacy of the Rach 3. And someone remarked that to me before... that they didn't like Clayderman specifically because his piano playing didn't use so many notes... saying basically that it lacked spirit on account of that... I don't necessarily agree on the spirit part... but anyway, between the two I've got both angles covered... frantic and less so

If you are talking about the movie Shine, it's one of my favorite movies! I'm fairly sure you are.

Just near the end of my song, there are a lot of big, fast chords (just for a few seconds) and then some twiddly bits. Some of my references (like to Debussy) were in there deliberately. But I didn't consciously think how much that part sounded like Rach until you mentioned it. Good ear!

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Yes, sorry - I didn't mean to lecture you on the basics of MIDI editing. I was bored and in the mood for reminiscing about the times when I could be bothered to do sh*t.

lol not at all. As a hobby game programmer as well, MIDI is right up my alley. I'm happy talking about it.

Interesting. I always found solo fret-less string instruments to be some of the most difficult ones to emulate - perhaps second to only slide/blues acoustic guitars, sitar and maybe jazz saxes - due to their wide range of articulation and modulation techniques available. Glissandos, legato and vibrato are especially tough and sound notoriously fake and cheesy on pretty much all MIDI instruments I've ever heard. Then again - perhaps there are some so convincing, I heard them without even knowing they were their "fake"?

It may be that since I don't play the violin, I just don't know how a violin properly sounds. Here's something I did a few years ago-- not really a full piece, but more like trying to see if I could get MIDI strings to sound like real strings. There's a fairly virtuosic violin solo at 1:07 that I perhaps flatter myself to think sounds fairly real. Anyone play violin and have an opinion on that?

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I have to say, that does sound pretty crap... very random... not like benny's piece at all, which was structured and had melodies.

The irony here is that I actually quite like that piece that everyone is trashing! :

But yeah, I really understand that modern music is so abstract that it's hard for many to enjoy. TBH, I feel that way about modern jazz. To me, it sounds like a systematized arrangement of high-velocity bee farts and train whistles.

[emjay]

I'm glad you feel that way cos it's the Rach 3 that I had in mind for my comparison, since it's the only one I know from Rachmaninov IOW what I was saying was that some of your twiddly bits ™ lol, as well as the general speed of it, reminded me of the Rach 3 That film I mentioned as having got me interested in it, was basically all about the Rach 3... and portrayed it in the same light as you did... as the pinnacle of piano writing; that not every piano player could even play it... given how fast and complicated it was, let alone compose it... so the film was about a piano genius pressured by his father to do well in a competition playing that piece, and then his subsequent adult life in the aftermath of that. It was a very good film, and made me want to hear the whole Rach 3 as I'd never heard that sort of piano playing before. Richard Clayderman is something I grew up with, so is very nostaligic to me but tbh I don't even know if he does actually compose anything, cos he just plays piano versions of popular songs as far as I know, like Andrew Lloyd Webber or whatever... I like it, but nothing he's done as far as I've heard has even approached the speed and intricacy of the Rach 3. And someone remarked that to me before... that they didn't like Clayderman specifically because his piano playing didn't use so many notes... saying basically that it lacked spirit on account of that... I don't necessarily agree on the spirit part... but anyway, between the two I've got both angles covered... frantic and less so

If you are talking about the movie Shine, it's one of my favorite movies!  I'm fairly sure you are.

Just near the end of my song, there are a lot of big, fast chords (just for a few seconds) and then some twiddly bits.  Some of my references (like to Debussy) were in there deliberately.  But I didn't consciously think how much that part sounded like Rach until you mentioned it.  Good ear!

Yeah, I was talking about Shine... I mentioned it earlier in this thread in a post to Min... that's what I meant. I think it's a great film as well, though I haven't seen it in quite a while... the last time when I did it was on VHS... so a good ten-fifteen years ago. But it was a very sad film as I remember it, and has thus infused by association a very sad character/feel to the Rach 3 for me... which also I haven't heard in quite a while, but not as long as that.

I've just listened to your piece a few more times, just to check what you were talking about, and yeah I think I see the bit you mean, and agree that bit sounds the most Rach-ish... but I'd say basically everything from the end of the last 'repetitive' bit... whatever you'd call it... chorus... whatever... to the end is the most Rach-ish to me, but there were earlier bits as well. But the more I look at it closely, the less I'm able to see whatever I saw in my first impressions, which necessarily aren't looking closely, just getting a feel for something. Anyway, I've never known what a 'good ear' is tbh; in Amadeus, Salieri said "actually the man had no ear at all, but what did it matter?... he absolutely loved my music"... which I took to basically mean he thought the guy was a musical pleb like me ... so I'm pretty sure I haven't got one, just a good ability to recognise things by sound to the annoyance of anyone watching TV with me... when no matter what we're watching I'm always calling out often obscure or aged actors by voices (or faces) and stopping to check on imdb... you know 'wasn't he the guy on x'... pause... find phone, look up... correct... continue

I have to say, that does sound pretty crap... very random... not like benny's piece at all, which was structured and had melodies.

The irony here is that I actually quite like that piece that everyone is trashing! :

But yeah, I really understand that modern music is so abstract that it's hard for many to enjoy.  TBH, I feel that way about modern jazz.  To me, it sounds like a systematized arrangement of high-velocity bee farts and train whistles.  

Maybe it's a grower not a shower? Yours was definitely a shower... that is I think it's definitely the mark of a good piece of music if you can get into it, to some degree at least, on your very first listening. But that other one looks like it would be a very slow grower, since it is a less familiar type of music. That said, my first impression of it was that it reminded me of the soundtrack to the film Hostel... in terms of the effects and instruments used, near the beginning at least... and that I do like. But the Hostel soundtrack was telling a story and I have to assume this is as well, so without knowing what story it's telling... what horror film this is the score of (j/k)... it's necessarily random and unfamiliar to listen to, and thus less appealing. But that's the key really isn't it... maybe? The more similar something is to what you've heard before... as in the types of music you're used to... the more of a shower it will be... and conversely the more novel it is in comparison to that, the more it will necessarily be a grower (or at least a non-shower)... so in other words, everything's abstract until you get used to it and when you get used to it, it integrates with what you already know and sets a new baseline for future comparison of familiar with unfamiliar.

Anyway, what do you think about Vangelis? That's a type all it's own, and I bet between you and Min, will be described by at least one of you in terms relating to bodily gaseous emissions I love the Bounty soundtrack... which is by Vangelis.

[Rev. Rye]

Well, anyway.... what you wrote was far superior to Finding Rothko.  And to think it was your first try!






I could be wrong but it sounds as if the Kansas City Symphony is 3 morons with kazoos farting through them!

I'll stick with real 20th Century Classical related to Mark Rothko like Morton Feldman's "Rothko Cathedral," thank you very much.

[Minimalist]

He was a shitty fucking painter, too.

[Rev. Rye]

Yeah, I could never get art that was this fucking abstract. Maybe if it's just an illustration of the artist's inner turmoil, or maybe if it's trolling, or maybe if the artist has explained the nature of the work and makes an interesting point with it (or maybe makes it a pile of free candy; no joke, the artist intends for the artwork to be slowly eaten to mirror his boyfriend wasting away from AIDS), but I have never understood the point of filling a canvas with just one color (except maybe Yves Klein, but that's mostly because he managed to actually invent an entire new pigment to create this specific shade of blue and milked the shit out of this invention).)

Then again, there's even more idiotic names in Art. For instance, once, when in the Art Institute, I saw this. As much of a cliche as it is to say "my four year old could do this" at modern art, this looks like something I could have done when I was in preschool. I could probably go down to the ECE center at the college where my Dad works, select the kids whose art looks the worst, recruit them in creating these "masterpieces" and have them take part in an art hoax if I actually had the sort of pull in the Art World to get into the Art Institute.

[bennyboy]

Yeah the thing with both music and art is that everything's a kind of meta-commentary about 3 times removed. For example, the historical fame of OTHER simple stripes on simple backgrounds might lead an art critic to proclaim: "It's a perfect complement to 'Green stripe on white cardboard, but the ragged edge evokes Boodledyboo's middle period, and it's HORIZONTAL.'" The horizontal bit will turn out to make it a revolutionary new direction in blah blah blah.

If you know about all those things, it might seem terribly clever. But if you don't-- it's just a goddamned striped of red on a black background.

In music, I do know about some of those things, so I can enjoy the piece posted here. But that's just cuz I'm geeky like that.