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Insurrection / Aparillo!

The hearings distracted me from my Beethoven project. There is no better synth, IMO for dystopian horrors than Aparillo. I always use it when i’m traveling off the grid.

PurePiano, 4x Aparillo and a great KASPAR sound design by @Spidericemidas.

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Comments

  • Can I request another mix where you dial back the dystopian horror? I think there’s some beauty going on in that Pure Piano track. The pathos of your statement for the demise of democracy will ring out for anyone interesting in true musical values, IMHO: Truth Matters. The obfuscation and alternate facts of the Aparillo tracks can be dialed way back please to let me enjoy a little sunlight on a terrible conspiracy to subvert constitutional norms.

    I don’t ask for much and it will only take a bit. I’d also love to hear your piano work rendering with Staffpad strings if you’d like to share it… I suspect the lack of MIDI clock will make the score look weird but the resulting sound should work well. I’ll make it work or explain why I can’t just email me the MIDI of just the piano track or the whole Cubasis project and leave it to the Democrats in this house.

  • @McD said:
    Can I request another mix where you dial back the dystopian horror? I think there’s some beauty going on in that Pure Piano track. The pathos of your statement for the demise of democracy will ring out for anyone interesting in true musical values, IMHO: Truth Matters. The obfuscation and alternate facts of the Aparillo tracks can be dialed way back please to let me enjoy a little sunlight on a terrible conspiracy to subvert constitutional norms.

    I don’t ask for much and it will only take a bit. I’d also love to hear your piano work rendering with Staffpad strings if you’d like to share it… I suspect the lack of MIDI clock will make the score look weird but the resulting sound should work well. I’ll make it work or explain why I can’t just email me the MIDI of just the piano track or the whole Cubasis project and leave it to the Democrats in this house.

    +1 for beauty and StaffPad strings. So +2

  • @LinearLineman said:
    The hearings distracted me from my Beethoven project. There is no better synth, IMO for dystopian horrors than Aparillo. I always use it when i’m traveling off the grid.


    Very peaceful and serene music.
    The piano composition is lovely.
    Thanks for sharing this recording.
    Rene

  • edited June 2022

    @McD @mjcouche @ReneAsologuitar thx for the listen. Rene, all my music is improvised although it can seem compositional. It seems we are all over the board here between peaceful and horrific. Beauty is in the ear of the beholder. I can see it both ways, but I prefer this to a straight piano version (which I will post today).

  • I didn’t get any horror from this at all. I found it very peaceful and reflective overall. Parts of it suggested sadness and regret. Other parts felt optimistic, positive, uplifting and grand. It’s a very nice and relaxing piece. The piano parts are real sweet.

  • Thanks @Spidericemidas. Hmmm, no horror for you. I don’t know. I like the track and I wouldn’t describe it as peaceful. Lol, it’s a mystery.

  • @McD here’s just the piano.

  • Both are beautiful versions that can stand on their own.

  • That truly is a pure piano. Both versions are great.
    I've never found a place for Aparillo in my own compositions yet and the first version was a great example of how to work it.
    Then I listened to the piano only version and forgot there was even any synth backings in the original piece.
    Thank you.

  • McDMcD
    edited June 2022

    I have rendered Michael's MIDI performance from Cubasis in Staffpad using Spitfire Chamber Strings.

  • It takes less work to import MIDI than to render the notes with a pencil but composers do learn to
    think in notation and many are not great keyboardists: Certainly not on Mike's level.

    Some of the notation is overly fussy but that's what you get when a live performance is measured
    by a very strict clock.

  • Interesting interpretation with the MIDI rendering. I feel it just became a little more random in it's expression. It didn't have the expressive feel of the original. What would be interesting though would be to put the piano and the strings together. Could work a treat.

  • McDMcD
    edited June 2022

    @Mountain_Hamlet said:
    Interesting interpretation with the MIDI rendering. I feel it just became a little more random in it's expression. It didn't have the expressive feel of the original. What would be interesting though would be to put the piano and the strings together. Could work a treat.

    I agree... I had Staffpad rendering a Piano Track but I decided to video the strings only so @Linearlineman could hear his work played by strings which has to be a treat even if the
    playback is a little off. A string library with ADSR controls would be really useful to improve the precision.

    Still for $80 the StaffPad audio engine is truly amazing. They merged recently with MuseScore. Users think it's so MuseScore could make their playback this good. It might take a another year to bolt the two together if it's true or have 2 products based on the same audio engine.

    Staffpad color codes different "voices" and in the "coloring" mode these chords are Black, Green Red and Orange. I turned that mode off for the video so it looks more like printed music. But the distinct 4 voices is why the notation it littered with excessive "rests" that make no sense. One or more of the voices is producing sound while another voice is resting. That would be driven by the MIDI "Note Off" events I imagine in the import analysis. This is a situation where MPE would be really helpful to split out the voices for
    orchestration but I wonder how MPE controllers determine which note belongs on which MIDI channel anyway... it's got to be time-based and some of the "colors" in the Staffpad color mode seem to swap positions between red and orange which someone thinking of voice leading might not do following conventional practice. I read that Duke Ellington would break all these rules in his orchestrations and have the voices cross over each other a lot.

    NOTE: I don't think Staffpad would have been able to import this MIDI file in the previous
    version... it used to crash like crazy so this was a good test of MIDI import. I have been pulling in John William's Cinema Scores to Staffpad and looking how a lot of those themes are constructed. Of course, the free MIDI files are created by fans so they are guesses but still there's a lot of useful clues for various historical styles since John William's steals from the best and rarely invents something totally new. His themes are often Pastiches of great orchestral works like Holst's "The Planets" for Star Wars themes. Artistically, it's pleasant wall paper art. But there's great wall paper and there's floral crap. He serves the Film Director... Spielberg made him inject "When You Wish Upon a Star" (the Disney Logo theme) into "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" Mothership moment. You have to know it's there and listen for it.

  • edited June 2022

    @McD @mjcouche @rs2000 @Mountain_Hamlet @JudasZimmerman here is my string take…
    ModulePro. ISymphonic and BeatHawk strings.

  • Well that took it all to another place again. Do we start making the movie for this now? It's amazing what a change in instrumentation can do. My personal preference is for the first two versions, but I will say that the capabilities of the iPad for sound still amazes me.

  • McDMcD
    edited June 2022

    One more take... I created an audio mixdown of Micheal's original Cubasis Project (but with Colossus Piano swapped in for Pure Piano just to see how it compares). Cubasis 3 created the mixdown without needing to freeze tracks which is a first with Colossus... this is due to the upgrade to a new M1 iPad Pro I'm sure.

    Then I added this audio track to the Staffpad score and rendered this composite StaffPad orchestral strings + Cubasis audio and uploaded it to SoundCloud to save the hour of video uploading. I also turned on Chordal analysis in Staffpad which is interesting to watch and help for anyone that doesn't get much from the notation scrolling by. If there's much interest I'll make a video with chords displayed too.

  • @McD could you make a version just with Colossus? That’s awesome that you not only can have the gbs (how many is it?) on your M1 but that it works in Cubasis. That’s impressive.

    Didn’t quite get what you were after with the strings. Often sounded very unstringlike. @Mountain_Hamlet, indeed, we’re fortunate to live in the AU iPad Age.

  • Nice track Mike, I settled with the first original piece. :)

  • @LinearLineman said:
    @McD could you make a version just with Colossus?

    Sure.

    That’s awesome that you not only can have the gbs (how many is it?) on your M1 but that it works in Cubasis. That’s impressive.

    I went “all in” and got the 16GB model. It’s times like this that I’m glad I just went for it.

    Didn’t quite get what you were after with the strings. Often sounded very unstringlike.

    Converting piano voicing to strings makes for some pretty dense orchestration. If this was serious film work
    And I was orchestrating your composition I’d use the chords but open up the voicings in ways that you might never play… 3rds would be converted to 10ths to add more sonic clarity, etc. But that’s work.

    Off to make a Colossus version.

  • Here's a "Colossus Piano" only version:

  • Thanks for commenting @Pxlhg. I agree with you, the first is my favorite.

    @McD first, that scoring is interesting. All those hemidemisemiquaver rests! Surely there’s a better way. Could you quantize it to 1/8ths? The bpm was also faster. The splits were odd. I’d like to see just a full piano bass and treble.

    The Colossus sounds interesting. I like some aspects very much about it. I think my use of sustain does not translate, tho. The Collosus sustains a lot more. If it went on sale, which it never does, I’d consider it… except for always having to freeze it with my 4gb pro How big is that piano?

  • Wow this is absolutely fantastic. Seriously. Great work as always!

  • @LinearLineman said:
    @McD first, that scoring is interesting. All those hemidemisemiquaver rests! Surely there’s a better way.

    Staffpad assumes extremely accurate MIDI. When you play a chord we think of that as one event. In MIDI that's an event per note... with each note having "Note on" and "Note Off"
    timing. Staffpad notates as multiple "lines" and colors each line of input (Black, Green, Red, Orange). For more than 4 notes I red multiple Red's most often. So most of the extra rests are also colored to show how that voice is to be played.

    As you can tell this is NOT a great model for loosely timed improvised MIDI notation. In fact it's a total mess.

    The bpm was also faster.

    But when I adding the original audio to the MIDI interpreted Staffpad strings the alignment was pretty close except for those first few bars so the BPM must be close or the combination wold get out of sync dramatically by the end of the combined audio.

    Could you quantize it to 1/8ths?

    That could be done in Cubasis. I could try it and see if I get a better notation but I suspect this is not the right tool for this problem. It assume you're writing in the rhythmic notation you want. It's focus is on handwritten recognition of notation and NOT as a MIDI tool but I'm glad they have better MIDI recognition.

    The splits were odd.

    I took the keyboard treble for the violins and the bass for the cellos. I think the split is around middle C with some consideration for the "colors/lines" being able to flow across the split which would mean the split is fluid like a human hand might behave.

    I’d like to see just a full piano bass and treble.

    That's not the goal I started with but I can render the keyboard part but the 4 line overlay on a single treble staff makes it pretty useless except for the the cases when all the melodies are interpreted exactly the same.

    I'll consider making a video of the piano solo with the chord notation (Cm Cm/Eb and so on) added.

    The Colossus sounds interesting. I like some aspects very much about it. I think my use of sustain does not translate, tho. The Collosus sustains a lot more.

    I think the "sympathetic resonance" might be extreme. I wonder if it's something I can adjust. I happen to like it as a simulation of a concert/stage performance.

    If it went on sale, which it never does, I’d consider it… except for always having to freeze it with my 4gb pro How big is that piano?

    My old iPad was 2GB so 4GB might work a lot better than it did. It's a 12GB model. There's a cheaper Yamaha model I could use for the next round and it's smaller.

  • McDMcD
    edited June 2022

    Here's the keyboard notation with chord detection turned on. The piano used is the default piano as assigned by Staffpad. No hand editing was used just to show how the conversion appears as a starting point.

    I find the Chord symbols to be helpful to understand the harmony as a listener or if I wanted to learn the music as a performer. Obviously, the notation is less than helpful rhythmically due to these errors.

    Hand editing would take a lot less time than writing in all the notes using the pencil. For these steps I haven't needed the pencil at all... finger input was enough to set the options and enter the text labeling.

  • edited June 2022

    That’s really interesting. Way off the mark, of course. Your piano and piano/strings was much closer.
    Staffpad may be better on the importing, but it still needs a bunch of AI algorithms to make sense of the midi, ikm guessing. Thx for doing that.

    The chords also seem pretty out of whack. That first Gm6 for example. No way that’s the case (I think). The Cm s, too. I mean, it’s not a minor piece. Still, fascinating.

    Thanks for listening and commenting @HotStrange. Very appreciative.

  • There is a lot of Bb's in the music and Staffpad has assigned the score 2 flats. I'm thinking it might be F Mixolydian since there are all these Bb to F cadences. The G sections seem to be some form of major but loaded with sus 4's to avoid taking a string stance. Overall there seem to be more Bb's than B naturals but it's a mix.

    It does feel like F is the root at various points just playing along... the Cm's and Eb majors fit in the F mixolydian but you still feel like your in a major key. Anyway it's modal and shifts around in 2 scales. I like the churchy plagal cadence modal styles: like Coplands americana works (Fanfare for the Common Cold, Rodeo, etc).

    The chord analysis is seems useful to me. It saves a lot of time looking for harmonic structures. I wish I could just hear chords but that takes a lot of ear training effort or
    keyboard mastery. It's like a super power to me.

  • @LinearLineman said:
    The hearings distracted me from my Beethoven project. There is no better synth, IMO for dystopian horrors than Aparillo. I always use it when i’m traveling off the grid.

    PurePiano, 4x Aparillo and a great KASPAR sound design by @Spidericemidas.

    Excellent! I like the way that you used the synth as texture to complement the piano.

  • Thanks very much for listening @espiegel123 .Appreciated.

  • The feeling I get from your piece is that the noble cause (democracy) can be overshadowed and subsumed. So I agree, that your first version is the best because the lurking synth sends a creepy chill that the purely orchestral versions can’t easily reproduce.
    On the other hand, I appreciate @McD ’s efforts with orchestration because that is something I really like to do myself. It was interesting to see how Staffpad deals with the notation. My experience using the DAW on desktop, is that if I haven’t quantized the midi, the notation is a mess to untangle. Also on the desktop I can use a lot of “articulations” for the strings that help with realism but needs a lot of tweaking to sound right.

  • Thanks @Stochastically. I always name my tracks after they’re done, but Jan 6 was on my mind, I guess. What you describe is exactly how I respond to it as well. I'm sorry no one is brave enough to start a thread about individual men who grift their supporters and try to overturn democracy simultaneously. While across the globe another individual sets out to single-handedly starve a good part of the globe. It’s always been this way since Alexander, but somehow, we remain as incredibly stupid.

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