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Notes, I have great respect for you as a person and as a musician. Please hear what I'm about to say in that context. Some of what's being said here doesn't jive with what's been said before

I seem to recall you saying on more than one occasion that you have been playing along with MP3s for quite some time. If there is a difference between the raw punch of a MIDI module and that of an audio file, both played through the same PA... by going to the MP3s, you've put yourself in the same place as the guy using real tracks. Once you've ended up with audio, the punch is in the mixing and mastering



There is a lot of difference between playing for a LP/Tape/CD/DVD than for playing for a live audience. I've done both, and what I play and the way I play my sax for a record is way different for the way I play my sax for a live audience.

There is a world of difference in how musicians approach playing in a studio. This is why so many great bands use studio musicians for their recordings while they play their own instruments live. Studio people know how to make a good recording, live people know how to play to an audience. Of course there are many who can change proverbial hats and do both.

Plus when recording for a CD/LP/Tape the recording engineer and later the mastering engineer use a good deal of compression, equalization and other FX to 'smooth out' (for lack of a better term) the recording. Everything seems to blend.

The main difference might be that I am not using any compression (other than the slight compression of a high bit rate mp3 file), another difference is that I have the parts mixed for a live performance, another difference is I have exaggerated the groove for live performance, another difference is I have different amounts of reverb and other FX on my MIDI instruments so that they don't blend and sound more separate (the acoustics of the room will take care of that) just like live musicians do, another difference is that I am recording the MIDI parts as if I might play them live, not as a studio session. I'm not sure as I let my ears be the judge as I play the music and play with the computer apps.

I do know that when I played my MIDI file of the Etta James version of "Shakey Ground" and followed it with the recording of Etta James singing it for a musician friend who happened to be there, his first comment was that my backing track has a lot more punch than the recording. He wasn't listening to evaluate our performance, he had never heard the song by Etta James before so after we rehearsed it, we played the Etta version for him.

Those musicians on the Etta James' "7 Year Itch" LP/CD are monsters, and I don't consider myself to be better than them by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, my backing track is an approximation, as close as I could get to the recording for the basic parts that I wanted to cover, leaving out parts for us to play live. The difference is that the recording was played, mixed and mastered for a recording, and my backing track was played, mixed and mastered for a live performance.

If I were playing to a karaoke track of the same song, it would sound like karaoke and wouldn't have the punch of my present backing track.

It's also why many of our audience members come up to us and tell us they appreciate the fact that we aren't doing karaoke like _________ (here they name some of our competitors). The audience members can tell the difference, even if they can't put their finger on why.

Again I'm not dissing RTs, I think they sound great, and I think PG Music has worked their usual magic with them. There are pros and cons to everything. If you have a car that gives you great performance, you have to sacrifice fuel efficiency. When using MIDI you sacrifice a little tone (depending on your synth) but you gain the ability to manipulate the sounds and therefore the expression of the track(s).

And for those of you who think MIDI cannot be as expressive as a 'real' instrument, remember virtually every modern synthesizer has MIDI 'under the hood'. Try telling Keith Emerson, Stevie Wonder, Rick Wakeman, and thousands of other synth players both on stage and in the studio that, and I think they will respectfully disagree.

I posted the solo of me playing synth guitar on this page http://www.nortonmusic.com/clips.html on a major guitar forum. I played it on a wind MIDI controller and a Yamaha VL70m synth module with the "turbo" chip in it. I asked the guitarists to evaluate my guitar playing, not telling them it was done on a synth. I got loads of compliments, one even told me that the guitar playing was "Jeff Beck like" (wow! that blew me away, I love Jeff's playing) and after the thread ran a few pages I admitted that I wasn't playing a guitar at all. The comments after that were still favorable with comments like "amazing", and only one person posted that there was something about it that sounded like it wasn't a real guitar, but he wasn't sure about that.

MIDI like any other instrument takes time and practice to learn. I didn't play the sax, flute, guitar, bass, drums, wind synth, or MIDI sequencer well the first time I picked each on of them up. It took practice and time to develop my hand/ear coordination. And while some people may think of it as work, I think of it as play. It is simply a matter of putting the time in it while you strive to improve your skills. The rest takes care of itself while you are playing. And I mean playing.

I call all these instruments toys until it's time to do my income taxes for the year, then they suddenly become tax deductible tools.

So for me, any compromise in tonal quality of MIDI tracks is more than compensated by the ability to manipulate the MIDI tracks, to play with them until I get something better than the original (at least to my ears). If I want that guitar to play a song specific lick at the end of the phrase, I can do it ... if I want to change a few bass notes to complement the rest of the song, I can do it ... if I want to create an accent and then a swell on the string line in a particular place, I can do it ... if I want to change that electric piano part to an 'attack clav', I can do it ... if I want to change those brass licks to piano or organ parts, I can do it ... if I want to change the 'leslie' speed on the organ from slow to fast on a particular chord, I can do it ... if I want to add a lot of chorus to that Rhodes part, I can do it ... if I want to scoop a sax note on the attack of a note, I can do it ... if I want to change that picked bass to a synth bass, I can do it ... if I want the entire 'band' to play a rhythmic 'kick', I can do it ... if I want to change the intro or the ending, I can do it ... if I want more snare drum on the 2nd and 4th beat of each measure, I can do it ... if I want a drum accent to help kick the attack of that horn line, I can do it ... the possibilities are only limited by my imagination and the MIDI tools at my disposal. I can't do any of that with pre-recorded loops.

I repeat: So for me, any compromise in tonal quality of MIDI tracks is more than compensated by the ability to manipulate the MIDI tracks. Of course, as always YMMV. There is more than one right way to make music.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

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