Re: [Denemo-devel] midi input

[Richard Shann]

On Wed, 2008-11-05 at 20:44 +0100, Till Hartmann wrote:
> > > it makes. Things like eighth-note sixteenth-note sixteenth-note would
> > > make a little tune which you would recognise as you played it
> > > (rhythmically) in on the music-keyboard.
> > >     
> > 
> > What would these little sounds sound like? sound effects? 
> > 
> > Jeremiah
'''
> >   
> What I think Richard is thinking of is a combination of e.g. "CDD" for
> "quarter eighth eighth", so you're able to "visualize" (well, in this
> case "audiolize") the rhythm you played on the keyboard. That is, if
> you're using the different notes for different durations of a note.
> However, it might be a nice idea or a feature to have, but I think
> it's the wrong approach. The explanation is simple: it is for both -
> the user and the dev - easier to tap in a rhythm with one single key
> of the keyboard, and to recognize the duration of that tap and the
> silence between the current tap and the next (pause), than to learn
> how to input a rhythm with many-many-many keyboard-keys.
> But nevertheless, a nice feature to have. 

Till is quite right about what I meant. But I fear quite wrong about how
easy it would be for the program to recognize the duration of a tap and
the silence between the current tap and the next. No program yet
developed (to my knowledge) has achived a useful implementation of this
disarmingly simple sounding idea. I do have ideas how it might be
accomplished - you would input a repertoire of rhythms that the program
should expect, and perhaps signal to the program separately where the
barlines come. Or perhaps you might have a neural net learning the
rhythms to expect by what has gone before.
But that is a project in itself.
What I think I have stumbled on is the enormous difference it makes to
have *musical* ways of entering music. Tapping rhythms in rhythmically
is a satisfying activity (for a musician), whereas typing in numbers
that denote the rhythm is not. The difference is that in tapping
rhythmically you are going through the music as music, you have a sense
of it as music. Typing in note names and switching duration key requires
your attention in a way that stops you experiencing the piece as music.

That you are required to tap a different note for a different duration
is bizarre in musical terms, but (in my experience doing it on the
numeric keypad) an ok one. What this midi keyboard has triggered in my
mind is the thought that you could give audible feedback so that the
different note lengths would sound different. With a midi keyboard the
obvious feedback is just the note that you have hijacked to mean a
duration - it would happen for free. But, yes, if you provided them in
rhythm mode for the keys doing durations on the computer keyboard they
could be anything.

Richard



Richard