Eden - Lawrence D. wrote:
Listers,
I am sure that many of you have done it...and I am hoping that you can help me learn how to create an organ part to an existing arrangement, by having the organist play his improvisation.
I work with an organist who has a MIDI IN/OUT on the sanctuary organ in his church. How can I get his improvised organ part into my arrangement?
Do I need to bring my computer to the church? Ouch!
Suggestions, please, and many thanks.
If the organ has a disk drive in it and can record performances as midi sequences, you only need to have him record it and then bring the floppy disk to your computer.
If the organ doesn't have a disk drive, you'll need to have some sort of device to record the midi data, either your computer, or a notebook computer with a midi interface and sequencer software, or a midi recorder such as the Yamaha MDF3 or the QY100 or some such portable device.
HOWEVER, before thinking you'll be able to magically get his improvisation into Finale for neat printing, you need to take some things into account:
1) the beat source will need to be rock steady (no romantic ebbing and flowing of the tempo) or Finale won't interpret it correctly;
2) Finale's midi import isn't very good at complex rhythms such as nested tuplets;
3) Finale won't necessarily interpret the staff breaks as the organist wants them to be, unless the organ outputs the midi data from the various manuals and pedals to different midi tracks. But even then, if the organist is playing with both hands on the same manual, sometimes middle C may be played as part of a left-hand passage and sometimes as part of a right hand passage and Finale won't be able to differentiate, so it will always appear on whichever staff you determine by where you set the staff-break-point;
4) Finale's quantization routine (as most quantization routines are) is very strict -- if you set it to recognize nothing smaller than 16th notes, that's what you'll get, even if the organist plays a 32nd-note run. On the other hand, if you set it to recognize 32nd notes, it may well interpret 8ths as dotted-16th-note/32nd-rest combinations if the organist plays staccato.
Best will be if you can bring a computer that has Finale installed on it to church and experiment with all of this to find what combination of settings will work best for your situation.
It probably can be done with experimentation, but success is not guaranteed. Be willing to spend a lot of time to get things just right, and realize that you may never get them right.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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