Jack Baker

3-12-2013
MUS 495
Sam Kincaid
Project Paper
495 30 Minutes of Music:
This project for thirty minutes of music has been a long and frustrating learning
experience. My original proposal outlined eight of my favorite classical guitar pieces that I
planned to transpose into MIDI and write additional harmonic and rhythmic parts for. In this
project I ended up with multiple renditions of 5 different classical songs along with more
modern pop and lyrical pieces.
My biggest setback in this project was a hard drive failure about halfway through the
term which destroyed about 10 minutes worth of music. This meant the loss of two classical
songs which I had painfully transposed into MIDI. This paper will first describe my learning
process throughout the term of controlling and transcribing MIDI information, and secondly
provide some information on each songs background and summarize my experience while
creating them.
MIDI Manipulation Learning Process:

One of the biggest production advantages I learned from this project was the chord
form feature within pro-tools. I find that for all these songs, taking the notes from the staff
and transferring them into MIDI turns out to be one of the most time consuming, tedious, and
totally uncreative aspect of the creation process. This term I spent a significant amount of my
time trying to think of new ways in which I could efficiently get notes from the paper staff to
the digital MIDI and I think it deserves a section of this paper to expand on.
The first method I used to create Spanish Dance was to read the note from the staff
(A, E, Gb, etc.) and then find the piano note on ProTools MIDI editor. This also involved
setting the tempo and time signature so that the Bars+Beats reference ruler could be used
when articulating note duration. This was way too slow.
The second method I attempted would be the ideal method for this process but
unfortunately I was unable to successfully carry it out. I found some software online that is
advertised to be able to export Sibelius or finale note values by analyzing the staff of a
scanned piece of music. I spent much time with this software but was unable to get an
accurate scan and found myself spending more time fiddling then I would have before.
The third method was one that I found to be absolutely the most valuable. Ive known
that its possible to download songs that people have transcribed into MIDI from the internet
so you could mess with them yourself, but the idea of doing this with classical songs eluded
me until I came to the song Prelude in D. I think because of this songs renown I thought to
explore the internet banks. I was able to download this part after spending several hours
transcribing about 30% of the song. Through this I found many classical music MIDI sites which
acted as archives for copyrighted classical music.
The fourth method I discovered more concerned the
harmony transcription than the melody. For these songs I would
often write chords on the actual paper while figuring out the
harmonies in the music
building before transcribing
them into MIDI. This was an
equally tedious process that I
was sure could be done much
more quickly to shorten the
non-creative process. I found Protools score editor to be
very useful but Im not nearly as efficient with it as on Sibelius so I often found myself
switching between Sibelius and ProTools for the initial MIDI writing. I didnt want to use
Sibelius because I like to see the MIDI parts in context of protools without having to deal with
reorganization of tracks, tempo, time and key signature markers, and timeline organization
every time I import or export parts. Using the chord marker track I was able to enter very
specific guitar chords using very convenient fret diagrams but was unable to get the MIDI
values from the guitar chord forms.
By searching forums online I learned to export
these markers into Sibelius, and then using a realize
chord forms plug-in from Sibelius, convert these
chord form images to note values, which could finally
be exported as MIDI and imported to ProTools.

Spanish Ballad:
Spanish Ballad is a classical guitar piece written by an anonymous composer. I learned
to play this song throughout high school and took it to state solo competition for guitar only
to find out that in 2011 guitar was taken out of the
state solo bracket because of a lack of participants.
My guitar teacher told me it is one of the most famous
classical pieces ever written. I really like this song as
material for my own renditions because of its lack of
copyright from being written so long ago. The MIDI for
this particular song has been finessed and nuanced to
a degree Ive never explored with MIDI. With only using basic music manipulation techniques
such as panning, reverb, and combining instrument sounds on Xpand2 I was able to a level of
clarity I didnt think was possible with MIDI.
Maleguena:
Maleguena is a famous Spanish tune whos renditions can be heard across many places
and time spans. This particular version is the second one I learned to play with guitar and
featured more of a bass part. Though I wasnt able to include it due to time constraints, this
is a perfect example of how I might very easily add another instrument to the texture by
taking the bass part from the solo guitar piece and making it a stand-alone MIDI instrument.
This song, like Spanish Ballad, also doesnt have any copyright protection which makes it an
ideal piece for manipulation.
Study in Am:
Study in Am was born from the guitar piece, Study in Am, written by Matteo Carcassi
somewhere around 1840. This also is very desirable as a piece to base music on because of its
lack of copyright. This song in particular I made 4 separate renditions of. The first one
involved recording a lot of live piano for
the bass parts and some acoustic guitar for
the melody. This unfortunately was lost
when about halfway through the term the
plants on my desk drained so much they
overflowed onto my desk and destroyed all
data on my harddrive which had the audio
parts. I eventually just transcribed this into
MIDI.
Spanish Dance:
Spanish Dance is also born from a guitar piece I used to play when I was younger.
Spanish Dance, like Spanish Ballad and Maleguena, is too old to attribute any individual
composer. It is by far the most complex in terms of the harmonic and rhythmic
accompaniment I wrote for the original guitar piece. This song alone had twelve tracks of
individual midi instruments ranging from harp and guitar to congas and accordion.
Prelude in D:
Prelude in D is based off of the piece written by Bach and was introduced to me by
YoYoMa on Cello. After painstakingly transcribing about 1/3 of this song into the MIDI editor I
was able to find it online which opened a whole new approach to making MIDI renditions.
After finishing the MIDI of the original
piece I then began to harmonize chords
with the piece and enter them into
MIDI. This song was by far the most
musically complex in terms of harmony
between only two instruments.
Silver Sun Brothers:
Silver Sun Brothers was the only
primarily acoustically recorded song for this thirty minute set. The lyrics were a collaboration
between my old roommate and I written last spring. The Drum set was recorded in the second
story Benton practice drum set room using only a single behringer C-1 condenser mic as an
overhead. I tried various ways to address the large amount of noise from the microphone but
wasnt able to do so with much success. In addition to the singing, piano, and drums, I also
added MIDI instruments later on. I think it is my best mix of both MIDI and recorded sound so
far.
Rihannas Fat Cousin:
Rihannas Fat Cousin was given its name because of my silly and uncharacteristic
approach to the music. This song was made using a chord plugin on Cubase, a small amount of
recorded audio in my room, and just some velocity articulated MIDI parts. This song isnt that
complex but its one that was more fun to make and allowed me to explore rhythms and
techniques which made me feel a dance vibe.