Music Technology

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The True Story of a Magic Flute

This is a happy story about the kind of magic that can happen when the worldwide web is used in the way the early developers envisaged – a great antidote to all those poisons injected into the system by spammers, hackers and crooks! It is a story of love, creativity, generosity and determination facilitated by the internet.

A little over a year ago, Ruud van der Wel, a musician and therapist from Holland, set up a website, “mybreathmymusic.com” to showcase the music made by disabled children at the rehabilitation centre in which he was working, to create a dialogue with like-minded musicians and to attract sponsorship to develop the centre’s music resources.

One of the first people to contact Ruud online was David Whalen, a quadriplegic living in New York. David was looking for a way to play a wind controller that didn’t involve finger movements. Working together by means of email, internet phone and e-conferencing, they drew up ideas for a simple slide-flute that would change pitch with head movements.

Their search for a developer led them to Brian Dillon of Unique Perspectives, an imaginative Irish firm, manufacturing technological aids for disabled people and providing a prototyping design service. Now there were three ‘dreamers’ in three different lands inspiring and encouraging one another and, in no time at all, Brian had created an instrument that went beyond their dreams!

It certainly added ‘magic’ to my Christmas, 2006, when Karin wished me a “Merry Christmas!” with her video of “Jingle Bells” performed on the new instrument! You can watch this and lots of other clips of Ruud’s young musicians in action on The Magic Flute User Pages. For full details of the instrument , see The Magic Flute Homepage.

The Magic Flute goes on sale this year and will, no doubt, be the magic password opening the door to music for many would-be instrumentalists. Today, my love-hate relationship with technology is in love mode!

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MIDI Connections

Question:
I was very interested in your “Have Fun with MIDI” posting and I’ve started using some of this music in my classroom. The school has a music keyboard and, on the back, there are two sockets marked “MIDI IN” and “MIDI OUT”. Does that mean I could connect it to the computer and play the music with the, much nicer, sounds on the keyboard. If so, how do I do this?

Answer:
Yes, you can connect the keyboard to your computer. The simplest way to do this is with a USB MIDI Interface with in-built cables, 1-in/1-out. This will come with software to install the drivers. You must plug the “Out” cable into the “In” socket on the keyboard and the “In” cable to the “Out” socket. Once the drivers are installed, your computer will detect when you’ve got the interface connected. If you are using vanBasco’s Karaoke Player, right click anywhere on the player and select the “MIDI” Tab. Set the Output Device to “USB Audio Device”

If you are using Windows Media Player, Windows will probably set the MIDI output automatically. If it doesn’t, go to Control Panel> Sound & Audio Devices> Audio and set the MIDI player to your device. If you’re using simple music software like GridPlay, Music Box or Compose World, you will be able to set the MIDI output device from the, user-friendly, onscreen menus.

Of course, when you have an external MIDI instrument, the fun really starts when you use it to input what you are playing on the keyboard into your computer software, but we’ll save that for another day!

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More About MIDI

I promised a link to more beginners’ information on downloading and playing MIDI music and here it is: mididownloading .

Although MIDI is used a great deal by pop musicians, there are plenty of classical sites around. The Classical Archives is a brilliant resource for music teachers. In addition to thousands of classical music titles, it has biographies of composers, a ‘History Tour’ and lots of useful MIDI information.


Classical Music Archives

Classical Music Archives

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Have Fun With MIDI!

With so much emphasis on downloading audio to play on iPods, mp3 players, etc., many people who have discovered online music only recently are unaware of the fun and usefulness that can be derived from the many free MIDI resources available.

In order to play music in MIDI format or to use simple music software, most basic users have no more need to know anything about the technicalities of MIDI than Internet Explorer users have to grasp internet protocols befiore they can go browsing. Suffice it to say that MIDI is a ‘language’ in which music instruments and devices which control them can communicate. Very often, this communication takes place without the user being aware that the sounds emerging from the computer are in this format. Games and music played by simple software send MIDI messages to the soundcard, which automatically interprets and performs them, through its in-built sounds. Since midifiles (they have the .mid extension) only contain instructions for playing the music, not the sounds themselves, they are very small. Even if you only have a tiny hard drive, you will be able to save thousands of them!

Nearly all computer operating systems have a default media player installed which plays any midifile you click on. There are hundreds of sites where you can play, or download, files in practically any genre. (If you’d like more information about playing/downloading, Check back -I’ll post a link when I get an opportunity to upload the relevant article.)

Probably the best, and most useful, player for beginners is VanBasco’s Karaoke Player. This plays .mid and .kar files. The .kar files have lyrics which can be displayed by the player. Volume, key and speed of playback can be adjusted and playlists created. This has lots of potential, both for home use and for use in community/classroom situations. On the VanBasco site, there is lots of helpful information, including how to combine playback with live recording of a vocal. It is a great place to begin an exploration of MIDI on the web. www.vanbasco.com


Click here for a free download!

Get vanBasco’s Karaoke Player NOW – totally FREE!

If you’re feeling more adventurous and you’d like to get into creating your own MIDI or Karaoke files, the free Anvil Studio software looks user-friendly. there are several ways of inputting music. Notes can be entered on a stave, by means of an onscreen music keyboard or guitar frets. It allows the mixing of MIDI and audio tracks. You can download it at www.AnvilStudio.com.

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Virtual Instruments

I bought myself a great Christmas present – a copy of Garritan’s ‘Personal Orchestra’. The sounds of each instrument of the orchestra, plus a Steinway piano, have been sampled for this software, which can be used to play the music recorded into sequencers and notation programs. It’s great to hear my music for violin and piano played on a Stradivarius and a Steinway!

With a MIDI keyboard, or other MIDI-enabled controller connected, ‘Personal Orchestra’ can also be played ‘live’ and it’s really motivating to explore ideas when the auditory feedback is so good! It’s reminded me of the importance of putting good quality, and well-tuned,  instruments into the hands of beginners.

I’d be the last person to suggest that a prospective instrumentalist should play at a computer if they have access to a real instrument of appropriate quality and have some realistic prospect of learning to play it. I’m sure, though, that many would achieve greater musical satisfaction and development by by working with virtual instruments. Never having played the violin, to date, I’m too old, and have too little available time, to have any real hope of becoming the violinist I can hear playing in my imagination but, with this software, it wouldn’t seem such an outlandish idea.

Computer-based resources can often be accessed by disabled people using special access systems. On the Garritan website, there are examples of ways in which the, Edinburgh-based,  Drake Music Project is using Garritan virtual instruments with disabled players ( http://garritan.com/drake.html ). One is a recording of an 18-year old woman with cerebral palsy realising her dream to play Massenet’s “Meditation”. She is using the Garritan Stradivari Solo Violin with E-Scape software developed by the Drake Music Project. (http://www.garritan.com/mp3/Rhona-Massenet.mp3).