Re: MIDI dynamics using velocity

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Monday 27 December 2004 05:01 am, Darius Blasband wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm not a specialist about these issues, so please feel free to
> contradict if I'm talking nonsense...
>
> I use the MIDI files generated by Lilypond to produce demos of my music;
> I plug them into CUBASE
> which, together with Sampletank, allows for an amazing level of realism
> when rendering instruments.
> This works, except for the fact that as it stands now, this scheme does
> not take advantage of the sampling
> in multiple velocities. Dynamics are represented by volume changes in
> MIDI files as generated by
> Lilypond, and while acceptable, it is kind of
> a frustration to me because I'm convinced the result would be much
> better if the samples in the various
> velocities were used. \ff is not just an amplified, \pp, nor if \pp a
> damped \ff. Depending on the instrument
> (think of staccato violins, for instance) the sound is intrinsically
> very different.The sampler supports this,
> bu my MIDI files don't...
>
> Besides, using velocities would make stuff such as :
>
> <<
> { a1 \f b c }
> \\
> { c8 \p d e f g h}
>
>
> sound better as well.
>
> So I though, it should not be much of an issue, to use a single midi
> event with velocity, rather than
> two events, one for the note (with maximal velocity 127) followed by a
> volume change. I checked the
> source - not to correct it myself, but at least, to see how this would
> be possible - and it soon appeared
> that it would be a non-trivial task, as notes and dynamic changes are
> just considered events, and the
> fact that they ought to be connected together does not appear explicitly
> - as far as I could gather....
>
> A sort of hack in the serialization procedure could do the job (keep the
> last note in cache, and if followed
> by a volume change, change the velocity instead...) but I'm not quite
> sure of the implications...
>
> Any advice, idea, suggestion, welcome ....

I really doubt if you are going to get anything like that in
lilypond.  There is zero interest in doing it.  If I were you,
I would take that midi file made by lilypond and convert it
to a midge file.  Midge is a GNU text-based midi program.
The syntax is unfortunately not similar, but I'm
sure that would give you all the control you can stand, and
who knows, it may even be a decently efficient way of working.
Let us know how it works out.  daveA