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Category: "Announcements"
Last night I watched one of my favorite music-themed movies—“Mr. Holland’s Opus” with Richard Dreyfus. He’s a composer who supliments his income by teaching high school music classes in the mid-60s. In one scene he plays a piece on the school piano and asks if any student can name it. All hands shoot up and a dozen voices answer, “Lover’s Concerto” by The Toys. To which Mr. Holland answers, “Wrong! That was “Minuet In G Minor” by Johann Sebastian Bach and it was written in 1725.” Their mouths drop open as Mr. Holland plays the minuet version and explains that the original was written in 3/4 time while the pop version was converted to 4/4 time. This scene got me to thinking about how many other so-called contemporary tunes are actually the product of a much older beginning.
Since Cybermidi's inception more than seven years ago, I've been contributing not only this column, but a lot of the song/artist facts you see when you click on the latest demo on the home page. I've been too busy lately with the column and my own musical career to contribute to demo descriptions of late, but perhaps this column will make up for my absence. Here are some more behind-the-scenes facts about some of Flash's sequences.
You might wonder how some of those famous bands came to be known by the names they chose. Well, I’m here to enlighten you with just a few. For example, the Swedish band, ABBA is nothing more than an acronym using the first letters of the first names of its members. Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny & Anni-Frid. Nothing more, nothing less.
A lot has been written about the music of The Beatles. Critics and fans alike have analyzed and interpreted and picked apart every note they ever recorded until there’s nothing left to say, nothing new to learn about the music that changed the rock world beginning in the early 60s. However, in order to make that incredible music, The Beatles relied on four instruments that became the voice of the their music. Let’s take a little look into the background of the four most famous guitars in the world, shall we?
Last year I submitted this column to Vin (some of you know him as Flash) for his input and he reminded me that the Cybermidi site has a forum for this sort of thing. Is this a case of Cybermidi's forum not being utilized to its full advantage or could there be a better format for us MIDI file users to interact with each other? At any rate, what follows is the original column as written. Let's hear some opinions from the rest of you out there in MIDI land.
Over the years I’ve been involved with several recording projects that resulted in commercial CDs that were eventually offered to the public for sale. I know what steps the project had to take before it was all over. With those experiences in my resume’ I believe I can tell you how I’d personally tackle this same task today—MIDI.
Aside from the examples I’ve already talked about in the first three columns, there is another aspect of MIDI that can be very useful in your musical career. Not only are these files handy during your live performances, they are also a life saver when it comes to putting out that CD you’ve always wanted to do.
When I broke away from my duo act nine years ago I figured that since I had the backing of many fine MIDI files, that I could do the job myself. And for the most part, I did. However, MIDI files did not provide actual vocal backings for the harmony parts that some of my songs required so I turned to MP3 backing tracks. They served the purpose nicely for a long time until I realized that all I could do with them in the way of editing was to change the pitch up or down or alter their tempos. But even that proved difficult, since changing the key up or down more than 3 half steps would distort the final product.
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