5 ms·

Yes, a MIDI synthesizer can take the score and convert it to audio. (The discerning ear—or even an untrained one, if it's a poor quality sythesizer—could tell t

Yes, a MIDI synthesizer can take the score and convert it to audio. (The discerning ear—or even an untrained one, if it's a poor quality sythesizer—could tell the difference between that and a live orchestra, of course, but that may not be a concern for you.) However, unless you transcribed the original sheet music to MIDI yourself, the file may constitute an “original work” for which there is a separate copyright[0], in which case you'd still need an appropriate license for that. You'd also want to make sure that the sound fonts the synthesizer is using are OK as well. Now that the original work is in the public domain, though, I would expect that sooner or later there will be a CC-licensed version of it on Wikimedia Commons or the YouTube Audio Library, and you may want to just wait for that. [0]: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/MIDI_Files https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikilegal/MIDI_Files

daniel_iversen 7y ago
You can apparently use real recorded instrument sounds with midi and music software, it’s used for professional artists too and some of the “instruments” are many GBs in size - don’t think a living soul could tell the difference.
- squeaky-clean 7y ago
  It depends on how much effort you put into the midi transcription, but a trained musician could probably still tell the difference, especially during the transitions in between notes, and certain dynamics. Some sample libraries go as far as to record entire phrases played by a musician but then you're limited to what musical phrases those recordings include and how they were played (pitch shifting has gotten very good, but let's say you want a violin melody to sound softer, or plucked instead of bowed). Instruments where notes/hits are isolated from other notes/hits like a piano or drumkit work wonderfully with sample libraries. But things like a guitar, violin, or trombone are still challenges. Even the orchestral libraries that are hundreds of gigs and thousands of dollars don't get it perfectly on their own. You definitely can make recordings that trick a trained musician, but not without tons of effort customizing your midi transcription to that specific sample library and you may have to compromise and avoid certain techniques that still don't translate to sampling well. This is just talking about trained musicians though. Taking a midi transcription of something, spending 10 minutes adjusting velocity, and then loading up some EastWest samples would probably fool the average person. Also quick edit but many people would consider something using samples of recorded instruments to still be a midi synthesizer because you're synthesizing a performance from samples, as opposed to recording entire phrases or even longer sections with a real musician and then arranging samples to create a recording. Not everyone would agree, but I'd guess the original commenter also had sample software in mind along with more traditional electronic synthesizers.
  - derekp7 7y ago
    Even on a piano, two notes that are played independently, then later mixed, sound different than if those same two notes are played together on the piano. Something to do with the sound from one note affecting the string vibrations on the second note, and vice versa.
    - squeaky-clean 7y ago
      Very true, me saying they're totally isolated isn't 100% correct. That's sympathetic resonance, and other details like the pedals also slightly affects the resonance and pressing the pedals may be audible in a quiet/intimate recording. It's very subtle though and probably not noticeable by anyone who doesn't have lots of experience with a real piano. Many modern piano libraries actually do model/sample those properties though (I have no idea how). While we're on it, drums aren't totally isolated either, they affect themselves. A snare roll is slightly different than just playing many snare samples rapidly because of the chains on the drum, and heavy cymbals also take some time to build up momentum so the first hit and tenth hit will sound different if it has not settled. These are all very subtle though compared to something like a guitar or violin or trombone where transitioning from one note sample to another sample digitally can be very obvious.
      - filoleg 7y ago
        On the topic of how those modern libraries manage to reproduce those effects, couldn’t they have used either pure bruteforce (i.e., recording and sampling every combination of notes hit together) or some advanced modeling of physical properties of pianos to recreate how the sounds coming from piano strings would interact simultaneously? Or even better, some combination of those two approaches (modeling and extensive sampling)? Disclaimer: i by no means have any expertise on the topic and am just as curious about figuring out how it actually works as the parent comment.
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
On a fairly serious note, how would I find out more of "how to" nature - if for example I wanted to have a project with my kids RaspberryPis and making music ?
- wolfgang42 7y ago
  Depends on what you're trying to do. If all you want is to play back MIDI files adequately, Firefox or VLC can do that just fine (I'm sure there are better dedicated software synths as well). For making music on the computer, I know there's a lot of software with different interfaces like virtual keyboards, trackers, and programs where you can drag-and-drop notes on a staff. Since you're talking about the Raspberry Pi, maybe you're looking for a hardware. In this case, you can get MIDI piano keyboards that plug into the computer over USB (or can be used standalone). These can both send MIDI data to the computer and also receive it and play it with their internal synthesizer. (If you go really expensive, you can get actual grand pianos with sensors and actuators under each key, along with a subscription service that gives you access to recordings by professional piano players, replayable at your whim with exact dynamics so it's like they're in your living room.) You can also build your own hardware and hook it up with a microcontroller; I've had good experiences with the Teensy, which is similar to an Arduino but can present itself to the computer as a USB MIDI device so you can build whatever creative/crazy instruments you want. Should you come across a device with an actual MIDI port (a big round DIN socket with 5 pins), it's just a serial connection; you can get adaptors to convert them to USB.
crazygringo 7y ago
Indeed -- transcribing sheet music into MIDI is generally not going to be 100% automatic, whoever is doing it is going to have necessary artistic choices to make -- what metronome speeds do tempo descriptions convert to, how much longer will a fermata hold, what levels of volume the different dynamic markings will hold. You could take a "pure" mapping of just the notes and relative durations... but then you'd wind up with what would essentially sound like a weird robotic "player piano" version of the music at strange speeds that would be, well... pretty bad.
- Eric_WVGG 7y ago
  A player piano doesn’t necessarily have to sound bad. Back in 1993 Yamaha built a device that could read piano rolls personally “recorded” by Gershwin by hand (he would hammer them out for money in his spare time), and then played back on a modern player piano. The resulting album is one of my all-time favorite albums. Yamaha still sells these “scans” (on 3.5” floppy!) for their player pianos, and they could certainly be reverse engineered, but I imagine they are considered derivative works and covered by their own copyright. https://apnews.com/fb3f8c3bc3305506f57120df0755f9d8 https://apnews.com/fb3f8c3bc3305506f57120df0755f9d8 https://youtu.be/_kIpr6nSvjI https://youtu.be/_kIpr6nSvjI
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    Interesting! Well, if you perform intentionally without dynamics, the player piano is certainly a valuable artistic choice in its own right. More like a harpsichord, in a way. But I'll point out that the YouTube performance you linked to isn't a player piano at all -- it's an actual recording, which Gershwin overdubbed to be two pianos. While player pianos that could incorporate dynamics existed, I'm not sure they were common, and I'm also not clear if there were any that incorporated playtime "per note" dynamics as opposed to generally "overall" dynamics that were added in via a separate mechanism. But nevertheless yes -- there did exist some player pianos that had the capability of being more expressive than the normal single-volume ones!
    - yesenadam 7y ago

daniel_iversen 7y ago

You can apparently use real recorded instrument sounds with midi and music software, it’s used for professional artists too and some of the “instruments” are many GBs in size - don’t think a living soul could tell the difference.

squeaky-clean 7y ago
It depends on how much effort you put into the midi transcription, but a trained musician could probably still tell the difference, especially during the transitions in between notes, and certain dynamics. Some sample libraries go as far as to record entire phrases played by a musician but then you're limited to what musical phrases those recordings include and how they were played (pitch shifting has gotten very good, but let's say you want a violin melody to sound softer, or plucked instead of bowed). Instruments where notes/hits are isolated from other notes/hits like a piano or drumkit work wonderfully with sample libraries. But things like a guitar, violin, or trombone are still challenges. Even the orchestral libraries that are hundreds of gigs and thousands of dollars don't get it perfectly on their own. You definitely can make recordings that trick a trained musician, but not without tons of effort customizing your midi transcription to that specific sample library and you may have to compromise and avoid certain techniques that still don't translate to sampling well. This is just talking about trained musicians though. Taking a midi transcription of something, spending 10 minutes adjusting velocity, and then loading up some EastWest samples would probably fool the average person. Also quick edit but many people would consider something using samples of recorded instruments to still be a midi synthesizer because you're synthesizing a performance from samples, as opposed to recording entire phrases or even longer sections with a real musician and then arranging samples to create a recording. Not everyone would agree, but I'd guess the original commenter also had sample software in mind along with more traditional electronic synthesizers.
- derekp7 7y ago
  Even on a piano, two notes that are played independently, then later mixed, sound different than if those same two notes are played together on the piano. Something to do with the sound from one note affecting the string vibrations on the second note, and vice versa.
  - squeaky-clean 7y ago
    Very true, me saying they're totally isolated isn't 100% correct. That's sympathetic resonance, and other details like the pedals also slightly affects the resonance and pressing the pedals may be audible in a quiet/intimate recording. It's very subtle though and probably not noticeable by anyone who doesn't have lots of experience with a real piano. Many modern piano libraries actually do model/sample those properties though (I have no idea how). While we're on it, drums aren't totally isolated either, they affect themselves. A snare roll is slightly different than just playing many snare samples rapidly because of the chains on the drum, and heavy cymbals also take some time to build up momentum so the first hit and tenth hit will sound different if it has not settled. These are all very subtle though compared to something like a guitar or violin or trombone where transitioning from one note sample to another sample digitally can be very obvious.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      On the topic of how those modern libraries manage to reproduce those effects, couldn’t they have used either pure bruteforce (i.e., recording and sampling every combination of notes hit together) or some advanced modeling of physical properties of pianos to recreate how the sounds coming from piano strings would interact simultaneously? Or even better, some combination of those two approaches (modeling and extensive sampling)? Disclaimer: i by no means have any expertise on the topic and am just as curious about figuring out how it actually works as the parent comment.

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

On a fairly serious note, how would I find out more of "how to" nature - if for example I wanted to have a project with my kids RaspberryPis and making music ?

wolfgang42 7y ago
Depends on what you're trying to do. If all you want is to play back MIDI files adequately, Firefox or VLC can do that just fine (I'm sure there are better dedicated software synths as well). For making music on the computer, I know there's a lot of software with different interfaces like virtual keyboards, trackers, and programs where you can drag-and-drop notes on a staff. Since you're talking about the Raspberry Pi, maybe you're looking for a hardware. In this case, you can get MIDI piano keyboards that plug into the computer over USB (or can be used standalone). These can both send MIDI data to the computer and also receive it and play it with their internal synthesizer. (If you go really expensive, you can get actual grand pianos with sensors and actuators under each key, along with a subscription service that gives you access to recordings by professional piano players, replayable at your whim with exact dynamics so it's like they're in your living room.) You can also build your own hardware and hook it up with a microcontroller; I've had good experiences with the Teensy, which is similar to an Arduino but can present itself to the computer as a USB MIDI device so you can build whatever creative/crazy instruments you want. Should you come across a device with an actual MIDI port (a big round DIN socket with 5 pins), it's just a serial connection; you can get adaptors to convert them to USB.

crazygringo 7y ago

Indeed -- transcribing sheet music into MIDI is generally not going to be 100% automatic, whoever is doing it is going to have necessary artistic choices to make -- what metronome speeds do tempo descriptions convert to, how much longer will a fermata hold, what levels of volume the different dynamic markings will hold. You could take a "pure" mapping of just the notes and relative durations... but then you'd wind up with what would essentially sound like a weird robotic "player piano" version of the music at strange speeds that would be, well... pretty bad.

Eric_WVGG 7y ago
A player piano doesn’t necessarily have to sound bad. Back in 1993 Yamaha built a device that could read piano rolls personally “recorded” by Gershwin by hand (he would hammer them out for money in his spare time), and then played back on a modern player piano. The resulting album is one of my all-time favorite albums. Yamaha still sells these “scans” (on 3.5” floppy!) for their player pianos, and they could certainly be reverse engineered, but I imagine they are considered derivative works and covered by their own copyright. https://apnews.com/fb3f8c3bc3305506f57120df0755f9d8 https://apnews.com/fb3f8c3bc3305506f57120df0755f9d8 https://youtu.be/_kIpr6nSvjI https://youtu.be/_kIpr6nSvjI
- crazygringo 7y ago
  Interesting! Well, if you perform intentionally without dynamics, the player piano is certainly a valuable artistic choice in its own right. More like a harpsichord, in a way. But I'll point out that the YouTube performance you linked to isn't a player piano at all -- it's an actual recording, which Gershwin overdubbed to be two pianos. While player pianos that could incorporate dynamics existed, I'm not sure they were common, and I'm also not clear if there were any that incorporated playtime "per note" dynamics as opposed to generally "overall" dynamics that were added in via a separate mechanism. But nevertheless yes -- there did exist some player pianos that had the capability of being more expressive than the normal single-volume ones!
  - yesenadam 7y ago