On Dec 31, 2006, at 1:20 AM, Carl Dershem wrote:
I played a big band rehearsal a few months back where the leader
had brought in some new music that was written by a neighbor. The
music was brought in as a favor, and the composer was completely
self-trained, and had bought Finale as a help, and had used the
"Rhythm section generator" to create much of the rhythm section
parts (and much of the harmonization in the horn sections, or at
least it souded like it to me). The drum parts were, to say the
least, vastly overwritten.
The composer had obviously misunderstood the purpose of the Rhythm
Section Generator plugin. The plugin is supposed to take a normally-
written part (with slashes, chord symbols and rhythmic cues) and
"realize" it in a way that a player might, FOR PLAYBACK PURPOSES. You
aren't supposed to hand these parts to a player.
I have tried out the plugin, and it is fine for what it is supposed
to do. It creates new staves at the bottom of the score that I can
optimise out for printing purposes, and I mute playback of my
original staves, and I get a reasonable realisation of the rhythm
section parts. I don't need playback so much, but my clients do, and
this helps them to understand what the final product is going to be.
I think Band in a Box does a better job, but hey, we don't live in a
perfect world. As for block harmonisation, my colleague Richard
Ferland's program Harmonis does a much better job than the BIAB
harmonisation plugin, but then again, it's free, so what do you want?
Just tell your leader's neighbour to write the slashes and plenty of
cues (both rhythmic and English), and keep the darned plugin-
generated parts at home.
Christopher
(funny quote from a colleague, I think I have quoted it on this list
before; "Now that technology has made it so that any idiot can press
a button, he does, and quite frequently.")
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