Re: Better Midi!

[Trevor Daniels]

Peter Chubb wrote Thursday, August 07, 2008 10:37 PM
> Trevor> Hi Peter
>
> Trevor> Just tried your articulate.ly.  Looks really promising!  A
> Trevor> couple of early comments.  It may be obvious, but \articulate
> Trevor> should only be used in a \score block with just \midi {} - it
> Trevor> mucks up the printed output if used with \layout { }.  And
> Trevor> dynamics in the midi score block must be applied to all voices
> Trevor> to be effective.
>
> Peter> Yes, it does muck up the printed code.
> Peter> I'm not sure about the dynamics issue.  There are lots of pieces I
> Peter> have where the dynamics for each voice are independent --- so for
> Peter> example, the voice is marked `sempre forte' while the piano part is
> Peter> `decrescendo' then `pp' in Bizet's Toreador's song.
>
> Oh, I know what you mean now.  It's a `feature' of Lilypond's midi
> output: volume control is done with global control events that set the
> master volume, instead of using velocity (at the start of each note)
> and aftertouch (during each note).  Thus midi volume is global,
> instead of per-voice.
No, it's not quite that bad.  It's true it does not use velocity
and aftertouch, but the volume of the 16 channels, which are
allocated one per staff, are varied independently according to
the dynamics associated with the voices on that staff.

There is also a basic equaliser to control the relative volumes
of some of the midi instruments which can be adjusted.

What I meant in my previous note was this:

A single line of dynamics often applies to more than one staff in
the printed output but this will affect only one midi channel.
So the dynamics must be included in every staff, even if they are
the same, within the score block which controls the midi output.

I should add the caveat that this understaning is based on a little
experimentation and a bit of code browsing, carried out before
writing the midi sections in the 2.11 Notation Reference.  Some
of it may contain inaccuracies.  If you, or any one else, spots
any errors in this (section 3.5 MIDI output) please let me know
so I can fix the manual.

> Peter C
Trevor