The job of making MIDI sound like another instrument is only part tone. The majority of the job is to emulate the nuances of the instrument you are portraying.

When you hear a comedian 'doing' a famous person, does the comedian have an identical voice? Impossible. But what they do have is an ability to hear and reproduce the nuances of the famous person's speech. So you hear Palin, Trump, Clinton or whoever the impressionist has studied and can emulate.

MIDI musicians must do the same thing with any instrument we emulate. You don't have to have identical tone -- you need good emulation.

This starts with understanding the physical limitations and advantages of the instrument you are emulating.

For example of the physical: A glissando on a trumpet sounds nothing like a slide on a guitar, even though they are basically the same thing. There are plenty of others, pianos don't bend notes, guitars usually vibrato from pitch to above pitch and back unless using a whammy bar, etc.

Then the listening comes in. Sax players often scoop up to notes, delay vibrato and change both speed and intensity. We sometimes do some throat growl of flutter tongue. We do sub-tones and overblow, and sometimes even change our mouth shape to get different 'vowel' like tones out of the horn.

Every instrument has its own way of expressing itself.

Charlie Parker is quoted, "You don't pay the sax, you let the sax play you." Same goes for every instrument. What will the physical instrument do? Exploit it.

Keep this in mind when you are emulating that instrument. Exploit the similar things your MIDI instrument can emulate, and don't do things that the MIDI instrument does.

Here is an example of a MIDI sax. Keep in mind a few things:

1) It was recorded on the job over 15 years ago using the internal mic of a portable mp3 "juke box" hanging out a few feet away from a PA speaker

2) It was recorded in a low 56kbps mp3 format because the memory was so limited in order to get a whole set on the drive, low bitrate was necessary

So the tone of everything is rather tinny. The idea is not to listen to the tone, but the way the nuances of sax playing are reproduced.

The background is close to 100% Band-in-a-Box and at the time probably through a hardware Roland SC55 Sound Canvas. It was a good sound module in its day but there are much better out there. I still use it for some sounds though.

The sax uses wind for volume, and pitch bend for all vibrato and other pitch effects. There are places where the sax plays with and varies from pitch (mostly but not exclusively sharp on some high notes for emphasis). I do this for expression. Vocalists do this and I want to put vox humana in all my solos. Again, these are some of the nuances.

The MIDI controller is a Yamaha WX5 and the synth is a Yamaha VL70m. The patch number was 68 making it a General MIDI sax. (I changed patch numbers since then when I got a footswitch for changing patches. I put them in more logical banks for quick switching of instruments.)

All the instruments except for Leilani's voice are MIDI.

Leilani's voice and the entire performance sounds much richer live, but the combination of the tinny mic and low bitrate thinned it out.

But that's a good thing, because even with lousy tone, it still sounds like a saxophone. This demonstrates that it's more about expression than tone.

Link: Sax emulation on the gig

Insights and incites by Notes

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

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