Any chance of micro tunning in Big band?

[jcn7]

Hi Gary and Tom, Just wondering if micro tunning can or will be included on the new jazz library? I'd love to emulate Don Ellis' Quarter Valve Holton Trp...not that I have the chops to sound like him, but it would be nice none the less. Also, since many of these instruments are wind intruments, will we be able to assign breath control to them and actually "play" them in real time like I do with my Yamaha VL? Also, can we route aftertouch to vibrato (Pitch LFO) both amount and speed. How about real time activation of Portamento on lead Trps to get that wonderful "Maynard" sound doing lip trills and glissing into that lead Trp stratosphere... Thanks for any answers! Take Care!

[Jeff Turner]

jcn7,

I don't have an answer about quarter-tones, but it's good to know that other people remember Don Ellis too.

For what it's worth, I've just begun collaborating on an Ellis project with Nick DiScala. Nick works closely with the Ellis estate and is instrumental in getting many of the Ellis albums released on CD. I learned from Nick that one of Ellis' last major works was a piece written for symphony orchestra in three movements. It was performed only once. The only recording of this piece was made during that performance, and it's not very good. Because of those facts this piece has never been performed again.

Nick has assumed the task of inputting this work into Finale, getting a clean score and parts. He has given me his files and I am using GPO to bring this piece back to life. I have a feeling I'm going to be needing the GPO advanced collection to accurately render this piece. After I've finished, the estate will use this recording to try and obtain future performances of this missing work. This is truly a labor of love for me.

Jeff

(By the way: TEARS OF JOY & CONNECTION have just been released on CD)

[jcn7]

Hi Jeff! Wow that really interests me a great deal! Please let us all know when that GPO version of Ellis' work is ready. I noticed on an "Ellis" web site that someone was going to do a documentary, but that was some time ago, and last time I checked nothing seemed to come of it. Also, saw your last note about Tears of Joy and Connection out on CD...I'll plan on picking those 2 up, but I'd really like to see Live at filmore on CD! Anyway, thanks again!

[FredProgGH]

You know, just had a thought- the tuning really would probably be more of an issue for the sequncer/control program. The sound module just plays whatever pitch it is told to. I have never checked to see if Sonar supports microtuning but I bet it does.

But anyway it occured to me you have an easy worst-case-scenario alternative for quarter tones. Just put the same instrument on two channels. Tune the second up (or down) a quarter tone. Then use it to fill in the notes between the intervals of the first one. More channels, closer intervals. You just wouldn't have real time control.

But I bet you can get the job done from your sequencer.

[Garritan]

http://www.microtuning.net/images/logo.gif



We'll see what we can do to provide the tools to make microtuning possible.

Gary Garritan

[Markleford]

The sound module just plays whatever pitch it is told to.Unfortunately, the sound module (more precisely) plays whatever MIDI Note it is told to. Most sequencers (including Sonar) know nothing about alternate tuning systems, so it's up to your brain to do the translation when you're laying down notes in the piano-roll or actually playing on a keyboard.

That being said, it's up to the sound module to know that MIDI Note #36 is a "C1" or not. It has the prerogative to map it to whatever frequency it would like.


But anyway it occured to me you have an easy worst-case-scenario alternative for quarter tones. Just put the same instrument on two channels. Tune the second up (or down) a quarter tone. Then use it to fill in the notes between the intervals of the first one. More channels, closer intervals. You just wouldn't have real time control.You know, I'd never thought of doing it like that, but you're absolutely right! Mind you, your piano-roll and playing it live on a keyboard would still require your brain to do the mapping. And this would only allow for mathematically regular microtuning like quarter-tones, and not funky scales like Balinese pelog or whatnot...

Though I suppose with enough detunes sets on separate channels, why not? In fact, I could write an MFX plugin to do the mapping automatically, including the live keyboard input. (Why, oh why, do I always volunteer *more* work for myself?)

Of course there's a hitch in doing this: many sound modules (including GPO) only allow you to transpose by semitones (coarse tuning), rather than any number of cents of fine tuning. One could probably get around that by touching the Pitch Wheel just a smidge up. ;)

Oh heck, why don't we all just wait and see if Kontakt 2 does this for us automatically? :p

- m

[FredProgGH]

Huh, I always just assumed Sonar could handle alternate tunings but, not using them, I never looked. And I also never noticed that GPO doesn't fine tune. (Are you *sure* about that?? I could swear it did...) Arrrggh!

But yeah, you could use a wheel message as a workaround if there was just no other way.

[efreitag]

Huh, I always just assumed Sonar could handle alternate tunings but, not using them, I never looked. And I also never noticed that GPO doesn't fine tune. (Are you *sure* about that?? I could swear it did...) Arrrggh!

But yeah, you could use a wheel message as a workaround if there was just no other way.

GPO positively does not fine tune! , which gave me quite a hard time, where GPO sounded like an amateur orchestra...

I have more or less successfully worked around it with pitch wheel messages here and there....

[Markleford]

Was thinking a bit more about this. Which would be more useful?

1) Viewing a piano-roll where 12 lines still equal one octave, but entering the same note on a second channel plays a quarter-tone up, such that the pitch value is immediately obvious.

2) Viewing a piano-roll where 24 lines is equal to one octave, such that all notes are entered on the same channel, making the relationship of intervals are more directly obvious.

I can see advantages on both sides (particularly #2, where you could play quartertone scales on the keyboard live), but figured I'd ask about the perspective of others before trying to make this happen.

I suppose much of it is up to how you're applying this: if you just want a soloist to be able to go microtonal, then #1 is probably the right choice, whereas if you're getting heavy into alternate scaling for the entire ensemble then #2 might be better.

- m

[Jeff Turner]

1) Viewing a piano-roll where 12 lines still equal one octave, but entering the same note on a second channel plays a quarter-tone up, such that the pitch value is immediately obvious.


#1 makes more sense to me. For me, If I saw a piano roll with 24 notes to the octave my frame of reference would be completely off. I'd prefer to keep a 12 note octave, and have a second layer for the notes that are in the cracks.

As far as playing live with the #2 setup, that would really be weird. With a 24 note octave mapped on a keyboard, to play a C major triad, you'd play: C - Ab - D. :eek:

Jeff

[Markleford]

Here's a quartertone MIDI file setup:

http://www.markleford.com/music/tmp/quartertone.mid

Hook it up to an instance of GPO with Xylophone sounds in slots 1 and 2. Track 2 has a pitch wheel command at the beginning of the track shifting it up a quarter step. Playing the sequence should give a quartertone scale up and down two octaves.

Since the chromatic notes and the quartertone notes are on different tracks, you can use the piano roll in Sonar to edit both at once, such that the quartertone-sharp notes appear in a different color than the chromatic tones. Visually convenient! I imagine other sequencers have similar coloring features for notes on separate tracks/channels.

I'll save the "live quartertone keyboard" experiment for later, as it requires coding on my part. ;) I have played on such a "stretched" keyboard before, as my Kawai K1 allows you to change keyboard scaling arbitrarily. It's a nice exercise to free your brain up from tired patterns.

- m

[tradivoro]

Yeah, thanks for reminding me about Don Ellis... I remember hearing Electric Bath when it first came out and being blown away by all the odd timing stuff which still grooved... A unique artist..

[thesoundsmith]

I'd like to state at this time that this project is a big band library. I have never heard a big band playing in pelog or slendro tuning. (And when I have, it's ALWAYS by accident!) The more unrelated instruments, techniques and oddball instrument are included, the longer it takes to get out the product, and the more CPU and HD resources it requires.

Why not ask for an Instrumental Oddities plugin, that has non-traditional instruments? That way, you've got something tailored to the needs of those instruments, instead of trying to sandwich in all the poor homeless instruments that Ellington or Whiteman wrote a four-bar part for once...

Clarinet: of course, lots of precedent. Fluegelhorn, ditto. Contrabass sax is not something I've ever seen in a 'standard' big band, nor is bass clarinet, hecklephone, euphonium, banjo, tuba or celeste. These can be obtained in other libraries just like we do now, and added in as required.But personally, I'd MUCH rather have more brass and sax articulations than a euphonium, and a brush kit rather than pelog tuning. Save the low-priority instruments for another type of lib, please.

More personally, I'd rather have a modern big band sound than a 1930s effect, after all, it IS 2005, not 1935. I know some of you will disagree with this, but I play and write contemporary jazz for a living, and consider 'jazz' as a living, growing music. Jazz history is a wonderful classroom exercise, but to work and compose today we need the sounds of today. Even writing new arrangements for songs of the thirties and forties, today's big bands just don't sound like that, they're way more present and dynamic. The sounds of the thirties are not invalid, but they ARE the sounds of the thirties.

Anyone else agree, or am I being too critical? (I admit a large degree of boredom with 'old' jazz - I don't even like the idea of playing Bb again, I did that once tonight! ;) )

[efreitag]

I'd like to state at this time that this project is a big band library. I have never heard a big band playing in pelog or slendro tuning. (And when I have, it's ALWAYS by accident!) The more unrelated instruments, techniques and oddball instrument are included, the longer it takes to get out the product, and the more CPU and HD resources it requires.

Why not ask for an Instrumental Oddities plugin, that has non-traditional instruments? That way, you've got something tailored to the needs of those instruments, instead of trying to sandwich in all the poor homeless instruments that Ellington or Whiteman wrote a four-bar part for once...

Clarinet: of course, lots of precedent. Fluegelhorn, ditto. Contrabass sax is not something I've ever seen in a 'standard' big band, nor is bass clarinet, hecklephone, euphonium, banjo, tuba or celeste. These can be obtained in other libraries just like we do now, and added in as required.But personally, I'd MUCH rather have more brass and sax articulations than a euphonium, and a brush kit rather than pelog tuning. Save the low-priority instruments for another type of lib, please.

More personally, I'd rather have a modern big band sound than a 1930s effect, after all, it IS 2005, not 1935. I know some of you will disagree with this, but I play and write contemporary jazz for a living, and consider 'jazz' as a living, growing music. Jazz history is a wonderful classroom exercise, but to work and compose today we need the sounds of today. Even writing new arrangements for songs of the thirties and forties, today's big bands just don't sound like that, they're way more present and dynamic. The sounds of the thirties are not invalid, but they ARE the sounds of the thirties.

Anyone else agree, or am I being too critical? (I admit a large degree of boredom with 'old' jazz - I don't even like the idea of playing Bb again, I did that once tonight! ;) )


I strongly support your point! [just deleted a demagogic paragraph addressing "classical" composers asking for more "I love that Bix Beiderbecke" sounds ;) ]. I just hope I can make the library sound like a modern big band. If I need a bass clarinet (which is not at all improbable), I can still take that from other libraries (GPO!) and live with the somewhat stripped articulations, because these instruments are mainly used for purposes of sound and are, unlike the "standard" bigband instruments, played in more or less the same manner as in a classical ensemble. The sound and, before all, the elaborated articulations of those standard instruments (alto, tenor and baritone sax, trumpets, trombones and bass trombone) account for most of the difference between the sound of conventional "classical" orchestras and ensembles playing in jazz and jazz-related idioms.

My 2cents, sorry for my english! :D

[Markleford]

Anyone else agree, or am I being too critical? (I admit a large degree of boredom with 'old' jazz - I don't even like the idea of playing Bb again, I did that once tonight! ;) )Perhaps it's not that 'old' jazz is boring, but that the common ear has changed. Big Band used to be "pop" music, after all: composers had to "write down" to the average person's taste most of the time, not that many timeless melodies didn't come from that process...

I agree that articulations and effects for the "standard" instruments should remain the focus, and a separate Instrumental Oddities plugin would be a fun idea (there was the Garritan Avant-Garde Orchestra joke a while back). But contrary to your point of view, on a philosophical basis, I think a diversity of instruments is a perfectly contemporary thing to consider.

While you might not sell many jazz charts featuring an electrified oboe, metal grinder, and turntables, there's no real reason not to consider them fully permissible (nor impossible) in contemporary jazz. ;)

Of course, then we get to argue where the line between a "jazz ensemble" and a "big band" is! :D I suppose that's an important thing to keep in mind: though big band is *part* of jazz, this library does not have to cover the *gamut* of jazz! So if that means no banjo for Dixieland or Bela Fleck, then so be it.

(though I'd say some Latin percussion wouldn't hurt... :p)

But to reiterate, you are entirely correct: give us the bread and butter that will allow us to write for your typical sax/bone/trumpet/rhythm band. Anything more exotic will just be a novelty that could likely be added from another library anyway.

- m

[Jerry W.]

Labor of love for me

Jeff!! That is FANTSTIC!! Congratulations on that project. Let me know if you need any help there, OK??? ha ha ;)

Jerry

[thesoundsmith]

I strongly support your point! Thanks. :)


[just deleted a demagogic paragraph addressing "classical" composers asking for more "I love that Bix Beiderbecke" sounds ]. Sort of my point. These are all empirically valid requests, and Bix was a fine musician, but the big band of today sounds quite different.


If I need a bass clarinet <snip> these instruments are mainly used for purposes of sound and are, unlike the "standard" bigband instruments, played in more or less the same manner as in a classical ensemble. I'm not sure I agree; while some charts are written that way, I used to rehearse with a Don Ellis 'test' band (the composer/arranger wrote for Don, and tested the charts out on us before he sent them off) and he frequently would write something for bass clarinet or french horn and was very insistent that the articulation match the other brass. But I agree that it's infrequent to come across this - and anyway, you're supporting my point, so why am I kvetching? :p


The sound and, before all, the elaborated articulations of those standard instruments (alto, tenor and baritone sax, trumpets, trombones and bass trombone) account for most of the difference between the sound of conventional "classical" orchestras and ensembles playing in jazz and jazz-related idioms. And attitude... :cool:


My 2cents, sorry for my english!
efreitag, don't apologise, your English is excellent (and certainly better than my German. Or French. Or Spanish. Or... :rolleyes: )



Perhaps it's not that 'old' jazz is boring, but that the common ear has changed. Big Band used to be "pop" music, after all: composers had to "write down" to the average person's taste most of the time, not that many timeless melodies didn't come from that process...


Markleford, I'm not saying old style jazz is boring. For ME it mostly is, because I grew up playing those songs and arrangements at commercial dance gigs rather than jazz conterts where they could act more as improvisitory vehicles. But there's a woman in Monterey who plays drums like it's 1932 and sings like Billie Holiday. And every time she sings, it's just absolute truth, and I'm never bored listening to her.

My personal musical truth tends to be less genteel and more edgy and funky, more Basie than Bix, more Ellis than Ellington. But bottom line - I WANT MY GPO... :D

[Ray Lindsley]

I would like to take this opportunity, while people are talking about what they would like to see in the jazz library, to air out a pet peeve of mine. Why is it, whenever a drum kit is described as a jazz kit, it is always a brush kit? Since when did jazz drummers only use brushes? In my 20 years of listening to and playing jazz, I would say brushes are used in like 20% of the jazz performances that I have experienced. They are typically only used for ballads and slower softer tunes. I could not imagine Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, or Buddy Rich playing brushes on most of their tunes.

Tirade over. :o IMHO the most important part of a jazz drum sound is a nice jazz ride cymbal played with a jazz STICK. I have just about every drum library out their going back to Clearmountain (including SID, DKFH Superior, and Purrrfect Drums) and have yet to hear a really, really good jazz ride. Hopefully GPO Big Band will remedy this.

[Markleford]

Why is it, whenever a drum kit is described as a jazz kit, it is always a brush kit? Since when did jazz drummers only use brushes?Possibly because to the uninitiated, seeing a drummer use brushes for the first time really leaves an impression, and brushes are almost exclusive to jazz.

At least that's a likely origin for the perception. Not saying that it's true.


In my 20 years of listening to and playing jazz, I would say brushes are used in like 20% of the jazz performances that I have experienced. They are typically only used for ballads and slower softer tunes.And typically for smaller groups, I'd say! You'd be drowned out by a big band


Tirade over. :o IMHO the most important part of a jazz drum sound is a nice jazz ride cymbal played with a jazz STICK.Yeah, that's a pretty sweet sound. Like a flat-top ride with a nylon-tip, I'd prefer: a little bit of clicky sticking sound with mostly wash and little fundamental. (forgot the terminology, actually...)


I have just about every drum library out their going back to Clearmountain (including SID, DKFH Superior, and Purrrfect Drums) and have yet to hear a really, really good jazz ride. Hopefully GPO Big Band will remedy this.This is the ride sound I've developed for my jazz tunes:

Madcap Vegas Caper (http://www.markleford.com/music/files/04_01_markleford_madcapvegascaper.mp3)

I'm quite happy with it!

- m