Re: Bug in articulate.ly

[Flaming Hakama by Elaine]

From: Simon Albrecht <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug in articulate.ly

> Another example is that you could indicate "tempo rubato" and then
> specify as interpretation one of the many possible actual tempo(s) that
> would be used for rendering the MIDI.
If I may chime in with my opinion on this: there may be some point in
translating articulations into midi, but tempo rubato is in itself meant
to be subjective and thus marks the point where a human performer cannot
and must not be replaced by a machine. Thus I find the sketched approach
more than a little absurd, if you permit the remark.

Permit me to suggest that you lower your standards.

The practical reality is that, even in a human performance, a passage marked "rubato" will actually take a specific, measurable amount of time. 

If one's purpose is to render MIDI that approximates such a performance, you can choose, as an editor/interpreter, to instruct the MIDI output to consume that amount of time.  I agree that adding randomness into this definition probably does not achieve much.

But it is absolutely useful to tweak MIDI output.  There is a great deal of useful difference between some control and none, even if the results are far from passing a Turing test.

 

It?s neither
possible, nor rewarding, nor even desirable to substitute real music
making by electronic simulation, (at least for most kinds of music, and
certainly every music which can be reasonably typeset with lilypond
belongs in this category).

Well, in the 21st century, computers have pretty much become instruments in their own right.

Which is to say, lilypond can be a way to control such an instrument.

It is probably the case the vast majority of the music people hear in film & tv scores with orchestral instruments is "played" on virtual instruments.  Composers end up actually writing more for those instruments (playing to their strengths, avoiding their weaknesses) than with actual acoustic instruments and performers in mind.

So, I think that lilypond being able to control virtual instruments is a pretty practical goal.

Yours,

David Elaine Alt

415 . 341 .4954                                           "Confusion is highly underrated"

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self-immolation.info
skype: flaming_hakama
Producer ~ Composer ~ Instrumentalist
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