Fanatic's MIDI Music Class #3

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  | Started 6/24/2001, ended 6/30/2001
  | Goal: anything goes, try to use artificial delay effects and
  |       and use only these four instruments:
  |	1. Warm Pad
  |	2. Shamisen
  |	3. Koto
  |	4. Power Drum Kit
  | 
  | Musicians that contributed (in order of the show playlist):
  |     Nick Baker         - "Surreal Reality"
  |     Andrew (Team Kill) - "Sylia Hits The Town"
  |     Tim Lyons          - untitled
  | 	Fanatic            - "Supposedly Innocent"
  | 	David Olofson (#1) - untitled
  | 	David Olofson (#2) - untitled
  | 	David Olofson (#3) - "China Moon"
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  There are two ZIP files in this package as well.

  gm_songs.zip     -contains all songs set to use GM instruments
  custom_songs.zip -contains all songs set to use the custom instruments

  The custom_songs.zip requires that you have the "Fanatic Set 03.sf2" loaded
  into memory on your sound card or system memory (for Live! cards). All the
  songs in midi_class_03.mp3 use these custom instruments, so you don't have
  to download the bank.

  To get the custom Sound Font bank or instructions on how to load them, go to my website:

	http://www.doomworld.com/fanatic

  Just click on the MIDI CLASS page. Instructions for drivers and loading the bank
  into memory are there, as well as the classes and links to the custom banks.

  Below are what all the musicians that conitributed had to say about
  what they learned. Enjoy the show!

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  | Nick Baker says:
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I had tried creating a number of new midis for this class, but I just
couldn't seem to get the Shamisen instrument to sound right, no matter how
hard I tried.  In desperation, I began messing around with some of my old (1
year plus+) uncompleted midis, and was very suprised how well it seems to
work in this one, especially as the original midi used guitars and 'tech'
type instruments.

As I said, I originally started working on this midi well over a year ago,
but it was stuck at 48 seconds long as I just couldn't seem to finish it.
Luckily this class gave me the inspiration I needed to finally complete it..

Asides from finding it difficult to use this instrument, the only other real
problem I had was finding the right volume for each instrument; for example,
the drums were way too quiet at first, then they were too loud, etc.  I
think (hope) they're at just the right level now.

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  | Andrew (Team Kill) says:
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Basicly, this "lesson" (is that what these are called?) helped reinforce the 
fact that it's easier to cut-n-paste BEFORE you put the delays in.  And that 
the AWE64 can't handle more than 1 drum track :-(.
I also learned how to use the Merge and Extract functions in CakeWalk 
ProAudio 5.0.

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  | Tim Lyons says:
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Hey...  I got the drums to work right this time
around...  however, something funky happens with the
warm pad...  right around the 54 second mark, the
little warm pad progression (e, f, e, a#, repeat)
changes to Koto, and I don't know why or how to fix
it...  The instruments all around should be right this
time, too.  Should be being the operative phrase.

Anyway, thanks for running the class.  It's fun. :c)

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  | Fanatic says:
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After hearing David's songs, I want to toss mine in the trash and start all over. :)

I got to use some echo effects that made me happy, overall a somewhat descent tune.

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  | David Olofson says:
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Back again - this time with two songs. I don't think there's any 
particularly strong melodies or anything in these songs, but they're 
still basically constructed and arranged like the average pop song, 
rather than a game soundtrack.

The first one, "david-class03-2" is the result of my second attempt 
with this SoundFont, and is quite a bit inspired by some David 
Whittaker songs back from the C64, Amiga and Atari ST days. The most 
interesting detail is probably the rhythm. Hard shuffle, right? No! 
It's 16'th triplets, which have the advantage of working a lot better 
with appregios than shuffle beats. (This could also be described as a 
12:16'ths beat or something, but using triplets doesn't affect all 
other note durations; it simply replaces the usual 16ths.)

The second song "david-class03-3" was the third song I wrote for this 
class, and it's probably the one which sounds closest to what one 
would expect from this SoundFont. Not authentic japaneze music by 
far, but it has some "oriental" scales in it, and the Koto and 
Shamisen sounds are occasionally played somewhere near their natural 
range. If it's inspired by anything, that would be the International 
Karate + music by Rob Hubbard (C64 and Amiga), but the similarities 
don't go much beyond than the rhytm, if even that far.

Problems? Well, it wasn't too hard to get started with these sounds - 
apart from the pad and the oriental sounds making a good background, 
the complete drum kit opens up tons of possibilities.

However, it was a great deal harder to move forward from any basic 
idea. The instruments one would use to construct themes, melodies, 
loops and other stuff were missing.

The lesson one can learn from "abusing" percusive sounding ethnic 
instruments for lead is how to avoid burrying those weak instruments 
in the arrangement. Any rhytmic + harmonic constructs in the 
arrangement have to be very soft not to mask the attacks of the lead 
instruments. (Which is pretty much all you can hear from them unless 
they play solo!)

Here's that third song; the one based on my first attempt with the 
Class03 SoundFont. Nothing special, really; just lost of MIDI panning 
delays, some pitch bends and the usual stuff.

One technically interesting thing might be the subtle slow down right 
after the first chorus, which is meant to emphasize the break a 
little. Normally, one would do that by just drawing some in the tempo 
view (applies to most serious sequencers), and that would be it.

In this case, however, changing the tempo would interfere with the 
delay effects playing during the break! (Subtle as well, but I could 
hear the difference, so it didn't pass my QC. :-)

What I did instead was to change from 4:4th to 33:32rds for the break 
bar. That is, I effectively made the break one 32nd note longer than 
the average bar. Then I just tweaked the timing of the drum fill to 
achieve the desired effect.

// end of expierences

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  | All songs are copyrighted by the respective author (c) 2001
  | The show is copyright (c) 2001 Marc A. Pullen.
  |
  | If you are interested in using any of these songs or the show
  | itself for any reason, contact marcpullen@mindspring.com for
  | permissions. I'll get you in contact with the respecive author.
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