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Tag: Orchestral

Orchestra seen from above.

Orchestral Articulation Profile NAMM 2024

Written by Athan Billias on .

There are many orchestral sample libraries in the market, and they are essential for film scoring, game audio, studio, and live MIDI applications. These orchestral libraries have many kinds of articulations.  

For example, a string library might have a different set of samples for every articulation including marcato, staccato, pizzicato, etc.

However, there is no industry standard method-the method for selecting these different articulations has been different for each developer.  Many developers use notes at the lower end of the MIDI note range for “key switching”, but the actual keys used are different between different developers. Some developers use CC messages to switch between articulations, but again there is no industry wide consistency. Some plugin formats now have the ability for per note selection of articulations, but again the method for inputting that data is different for different applications. 

It is the goal of the MIDI-CI Profile for Note On Orchestral Articulation to provide a consistent way to encode articulation information directly in the MIDI 2.0 Note On message, using the Attribute Type and Attribute Data fields.

In arriving at this Profile, a study was made of orchestral instrument families, choir, big band instruments, guitar, keyboard instruments, and various non-western instruments to evaluate the degree to which they share common performance attributes and sound production techniques. Notation symbols and performance indications were also considered to determine, for example, how successfully a violin note marked with a trill might result in a musically meaningful or analogous articulation when the part is copied to an instrument as far afield as timpani—all without the composer having to re-articulate the timpani part, at least initially.

The Profile provides a comprehensive yet concise system of articulation mapping that includes a wide palette of articulation types and supports articulation equivalence across eight instrument categories.

The Profile was designed to offer articulation equivalence — a system of articulation mapping that allows a passage articulated for one instrument to be copied to another track and playedplay back with an equivalent or analogous articulation, regardless of the target instrument type.

When implemented by sample library developers, the Profile will greatly aid composers in highly significant ways.

First, it will simplify the process of substituting or layering sounds from the same or different sample libraries; Second, it will allow composers to quickly audition and orchestrate unison passages by copying an articulated part to other tracks and hear them to play back with equivalent or analogous articulations.

Join us on Youtube for The Orchestral Articulation Profile at NAMM 2024.

A person plays a yellow keyboard in front of two large screens displaying vibrant, colorful flower patterns. A microphone stand and audio equipment are nearby in a modern indoor setting.

Casio’s Music Tapestry

Written by Athan Billias on .

Music Tapestry is a technology that creates pictures out of musical performances.

The technology references musical elements such as pitches and touch to generate evolving imagery in real time, which ultimately forms a single still image when the performer stops playing. Using musical performance analytics based on music theory,

Music Tapestry parses the subtleties of piano performances for tonality, beat/rhythm, chord, and chord progression and immediately translates these into colors and shapes such as flowers and leaves that match the feel of the music. Fun-spirited playing yields bright, cheery results, while chic approaches produce artwork with an accordingly refined ambiance.

Since it is impossible to play the same piece in the same way twice, the result is different with every performance, never generating exactly the same artwork.