Guitar strumming
 

I have a question for MIDI experts ...
Is it possible to "tweak" in some way the guitar part of a ready made midi file to make the chirds sound "strummed" and not played as a "block"? I am thinking about a sort of "arpeggiator", maybe. I have searched a lot around, but, with no results.
Thank you for your advices.

Paolo

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi Paolo,

Yes - in both Notation Musician and Notation Composer (see the website at www.notation.com) you can use the Arpeggio ornament to change the performance of "block" chords to sound strummed.
You can find that feature in the Notes palette, Ornaments button, Upward Arpeggio button (there is also a Downward Arpeggio).

Enjoy :)
Sherry

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi,

You can use the Arpeggio ornaments in the Trills submenu (TR with a tilde under it) of the Notes And Rests menu.

"au" adds an upward "strum" to a group of 3 or more notes. "ad" adds a downward strum.

You can also use the "Edit as performed notes" section of the Piano Roll view to edit the attack and release of selected notes, moving them around in time.

After that, you can edit individual note velocities under the Note Velocity view to bring out different notes in the strum -- remembering that no two notes are ever struck exactly the same.

If you want to have some real fun, clone your guitar track and pan the original and the cloned track to opposite sides, then shift the cloned track about 6 or 7 ticks right. Instant double tracked echo. You might want to decrease the volume of the cloned track a bit.

Add some fret noise with General Midi Instrument #121 and you can get very realistic.

Here's a .not file of a piece of mine that uses these techniques, called I Remember The Setting Sun. Watch it in Page view rather than Window view. Enjoy.

David

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Dear David,
thank you very much for your attention.
The arpeggio seems to be too slow to imitate guitar strumming. Editing all the guitar part chord by chord would be an enormous effort. I think that the cloned part would be the best compromise. I have not understood how to move the part right 6-7 ticks. Could you explain me, please?

Thank you

Paolo

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi Paolo,

To get reasonable sounds, you need to do a lot of midi editing. There are several good books available on this subject. Percussive and strummed or plucked string instruments need attention at the very least, to spread out the instruments’ attacks of each note.

When you play several percussive instruments (strings) with the attack of each note not exactly at the same time, most people hear distinctive separate notes, if they are played more than 5 msec apart. If you play a chord on the guitar, you are likely to play first the lowest note, followed by the higher notes in sequence. Separating notes slightly in time, will give you a full round sound. Separating the notes much further apart will give you an arpeggioated chord.

The smallest amount of time you can vary a note is one tick. Composer has 480 ticks for each beat. If you play a song at 100 beats per minute, each beat is .6 seconds long. This amounts to 1.25 msec per tick. If I separate the attack of notes by one or several ticks, I will get a fairly round sound.

I use frequently a double bass and an acoustic guitar as part of the rhythm section. I set the double bass in this case to -4 ticks (-5 msec), The lowest string of the guitar remains at 0 time. The next higher string is set to +4 ticks and the next one to +8 ticks or 10 msec. You can change the timing to your preference.

Midi editing is very time consuming. Perhaps Composer will have some functions in the Future, to reduce the work load.


Best Wishes,

Herbert

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi guys,

David and Herbert (good to see you here!) have both made some excellent points about editing for a good performance. It does take time to do it well, and Notation Composer does provide a lot of tools to help with that.

One way that you could speed up the task a bit is to create a "library file" of chord types (eg. Maj, min, 7, etc), which you can then simply pull up and copy/paste into a new file that you're working on. In other words, you could create a library of the chords you most commonly use, and tweak the performance of those chords in the library file (as David and Herbert have both expounded on). Then whenever you are working on a new file, have that "library" file open in a second window (you can use the Window menu to put them side-by-side either horizontally or vertically), and copy/paste chord "blocks" (with their performance already tweaked) from the library to the song file. It's then easy to quickly adjust the pitch of the chord (say from "C" to "D" chord) just by holding the "P" key and pressing the Up/Down arrow key as needed to adjust pitches up/down a half-step at a time.

Granted this method gives the same duration adjustments for each time you use a particular chord type, but it's a way to save time editing for quick composition.

Some years ago we had a member (Fred Winterling) who used to collect pitch bends in such a library file, for use in his other compositions, so my idea isn't exactly original :)

ttfn,
Sherry

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi, Paolo:

As Herbert said, midi editing is time consuming. On the other hand, far less so than learning and recording a new instrument, so there is a trade-off. :D

To edit attack and release of notes, go to Piano Roll, type "ep" to enter "Edit As Performed" and select the notes you want to edit by click-dragging.

When notes are selected, the sub-pallete of 9 icons will become active, letting you shift the "attack" (i.e. when the note begins to sound), the "release" (i.e. when the note stops sounding), and the overall duration of the note. You can also snap selected notes to the nominal default attack/release/duration.

By judicious editing, you can shift notes slightly before and after the beat.

If the built-in arpeggio "strum" is too much, you can also edit the attack and release of the arpeggiated notes with the method described above.

One important thing for realism is to figure out the actual rhythm pattern of your "strum" and alternate up and down arpeggios (arpeggii?). You can then copy and paste those into the appropriate bars to minimize editing.

Here's another piece where I used the techniques above. "I Remember Friday Nights (In '71)" is from my musical The Day We Flipped Mike's Chev. An old timey rock-y roll-y thing-y.

David

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Dear David & other friends,
thank you very much for your attention and your valuable suggestions. Now I understand tha "tweaking" a given midi guitar track is almost an impossible job, especially when the part is many dozens of bars long ... It would be probably quickerto play it again or buildin it from scratch using the clever tricks you were talking about. Nevertheless, I guess that it should not be so difficult to produce a bit of software able to "read" a midi track and "translate" all the block chords into tight ARPEGGI (since arpeggio is an italian word, the plural is that, no excuses ...), maybe with the possibility of adding some casual disorders in velocity. This would suit a decent result in 90% of cases, I am sure!
Thank you again, God bless

Paolo

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi Paolo,
Most music for motion picture and TV drama is now produced at the computer, using sample libraries and advanced software. Some programs have a humanizing function built in. However, for realistic results, you do not get away from extensive midi editing. For any project to be successful, you need to put the work in. It is not impossible. As a rule of thumb, you will spend an hour for each minute of music produced. Wagner needed 20 years to create the “Ring” and he truly was a genius. If he had a computer, he may have spend another 20 years to do away with the orchestra.

Best wishes,
Herbert
PS The last sentence above should read: If he had a computer and “Notation Composer”, ...

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Dear Herbert,
one hour of midi editing for a minute of music is for sure a professional approach to the job. An amateur would not afford this in most cases, I think, unless your hobby is midi intself and not the joy of playing music with your fingers!
Thank you again for your kind interest!

Paolo

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Quite so, David. - Let me also commend you on your near perfect German. Could be useful with the new German owner of "Notation Software Germany UG"
Best wishes,

Herbert

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Dear Herbert,
one more detail. In a previous message you told ... <<< To get reasonable sounds, you need to do a lot of midi editing. There are several good books available on this subject.>>> Could you suggest me just a pair of these titles suitable for a 54 years old dummy?
Thank you very much!

Paolo

MIDI Guitar (was Re: Guitar strumming)
 

Hi Paulo,

One other way to get realistic MIDI files is to record them "live". There are a variety of ways to do this with guitar. You can buy a MIDI/acoustic/electric guitar such as Godin and Parker make, or get a MIDI pickup to put on an existing guitar (Fishman, Roland, and Axon make some fine ones) or on the less expensive end there is the Sonuus unit (which I have the first version which isn't so hot except on single notes, but I hear that they have improved tremendously). There is also a unit called the "You Rock Guitar", which is guitar-shaped, but uses what looks like fence wire for the strings, but is purported to allow a guitarist to do some pretty nifty MIDI work at a fairly minimal price point.

You can use any of these MIDI inputs with Notation Composer, and come out with a live sound AND sheet music. Composer keeps the actual recorded MIDI information, so all the little "humanized" factors are still there, while giving you a good clean piece of sheet music to go with it (provided you've stayed within some reasonable coherence with the metronome ;) If you didn't, you can use the ReBar feature to clean it up.)

Just another thought :)

ttfn,
Sherry

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi Paolo,

“54 years old dummy?” - Music and music production is just the thing that will keep your brain in best shape, well into the future. They say, physical exercise is an important ingredient.

I have used two books:

1. Acoustic and midi orchestration for the contemporary composer.
Andrea Pejrolo and Richard DeRosa.

2. The Guide to Midi Orchestration.
Paul Gilreath

It depends on your aim. To get a good midi track for just a guitar, Sherry’s method is best.
If you want to create orchestral sound tracks, the above books could give you a start. No doubt you would agree, that training your ear to musical but also general acoustic events, is important.


Best wishes,

Herbert

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Thank you to all of you for your advices.
Not being a guitar player, the only chance to record midi guitar parts would be: 1) learn to play the guitar (fascinating but time consuming) or 2) use the old balck&white friends (good technique needed for complicated parts). This is why the "tweaking idea" seems so interesting for me.
This 54 years old dummy is a surgeon that about 20 years ago truncated his promising musical career ... :):):):) for professional reasons and therefore is now a little bit out of order in the midi knowledge!
I shall try to find the books, the titles sound very promising to me.

All the best

Paolo

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi Paolo,

If you want to just spread out each note in a chord by a fixed amount for all chords, here is a fast way to do it:
1. Select your guitar staff and split melody and accompaniment in the staff menu to get a single staff for each string.
2. Select all notes for one string in all of the song by selecting the staff of one string in the region menu and convert region to selection of notes. You can now shift all notes of the staff at the same time by the same amount. Continue for all strings.
3. Merge staves for the guitar.
4. Rename the combined staff “Guitar” again and make sure to use the proper channel for the guitar.
You will now get a better sound from your guitar. Depending on your sample library, the sound of the guitar will sound warmer by lowering velocity but increasing volume to the right value.

Best wishes,

Herbert

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Dear Herbert,
I should send you a barrel of italian wine to be grateful enough.
<<<You can now shift all notes of the staff at the same time by the same amount>>>
Could you plese explain how this is done step by ste on the Piano Roll page?

Thank you, God bless

Paolo :)

Re: Guitar strumming
 

So sorry ... Done, it works ... I am slowly getting proficient in this job, hoping that Mr. Martin Barre guitarist of Jethro Tull would not blame too much for corrupting his marvellous playing ... :p

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Hi all,

I read all your discussions and need to say that I am not even close to the expertise which you guys have how to best use Notation Composer. :)
Thanks for your contributions which will help others for sure.

So, given my limited experience ;) I unfortunately can only comment to what Beethoven would have said: "Nein, ich benutze lieber Feder und Tinte.". (No, I prefer quill and ink). In his days paper was well developed and in German language "Feder und Tinte" still today has a well accepted meaning and reflects the high level of German quality
(I would kindly refer to http://www.federundtinte.com for more)

Again, thank you very much for your contributions and believe me, I read them carefully.

Best,

Reinhold

Re: Guitar strumming
 

Yes, but Beethoven was such a curmudgeon he probably would have insisted on parchment just to be cantankerous. :D

I noted a while back that handwriting experts have analyzed the urtext of Für Elise and decided that it was not for Elise after all, but for Alice.

Next they'll tell us that the Mona Lisa is actually the Minnie Lena.

David