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OK, so here it is:
http://download.orphi.me.uk/Music/G3/WidorToccata.ogg
The toccata from Widor's Symphonie No. 5 in F major. As played by *me*.
What you're hearing here is literally me sitting at my keyboard, playing
in realtime. No editing, no corrections, no dubbing, just recorded live.
(Hence the dropped notes, dud timing and embarrasing pauses as I attempt
to remember which notes come next, and snap bones and tendons to fit my
fingers into the required positions!)
The sound is provided by Native Instrument's Kontakt 3 product, which
has a vast ( = 3 DVDs! ) sample library which includes (amoung many
other things) a pipe organ. It has 3 settings: "Fonds + Quint", "Vox
Humaine 8'" and "Pos-Scharff", which is the one I'm using here. For no
particular reason. It just has a faster attack to it, that's all. I have
no idea which organ stops you're actually *supposed* to use for this work...
My synthesizer does in fact have a fairly good pipe organ simulation,
but it doesn't really compare to recordings of the real thing. I think
you'll agree, this sounds pretty damned impressive! Somehow, playing
with a sound like this, I find myself taking the playing that much more
seriously... as if it really were a giant pipe organ or something.
Anyway, enough of that - what do you guys thing of my playing skills?
(Yes, I admit it, I'm only playing two thirds of the toccata. And yes,
some of the bass notes are in the wrong octave. My keyboard is quite
small compared to a real organ, and I don't have any pedals!)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> http://download.orphi.me.uk/Music/G3/WidorToccata.ogg
...so clearly you're going to need something capable of decoding and
playing Ogg Vorbis audio files. If you're on Linux, good luck finding a
music player that *can't* do this! ;-) If you're on Windoze, either
install WinAmp, or go here
http://www.xiph.org/dshow/
and grab the latest DirectShow filters. That should make Windows Media
Player play it without issue.
> Anyway, enough of that - what do you guys thing of my playing skills?
Hey, c'mon - 2:30 of continuous playing with hardly any wrong notes,
missed notes or even pauses. It's one thing to be able to play a tune.
It's another thing to actually sit down and play a complex piece of
music for several minutes without stopping or lifting. Anybody who's
tried to do this for real will tell you that! ;-) This is about the 12th
take or something. All the prior takes I made a mistake somewhere in the
tune. This was the most flawless take I could manage.
(Now if I *wanted* to edit, I could take several imperfect takes and
merge the best bits. But I wanted to present something "live".)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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That sounds good!
It's noticeable that you are reading though,
especially the pauses. It probably would
sound better to keep the rhythm going even
if you hit the wrong chords.
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Tim Attwood wrote:
> That sounds good!
Yay! Recognition! :-D
> It's noticeable that you are reading though,
> especially the pauses.
Um... no. Didn't even have the sheet music out while I was playing. I
can't read anywhere near that fast. It takes me a minute or two to
decode each note by counting up or down from the A-line.
As an aside, the top line alone has 32 notes per bar. Surely no human
being can actually *read* that fast. Indeed, just glancing at your
fingers to check they're in the right place would take several notes'
duration. So I'm not sure how it's physically possible to read this
music at the same time as playing it.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this piece of music is only
playable at all because it's quite repetative and structured...
> It probably would
> sound better to keep the rhythm going even
> if you hit the wrong chords.
You're probably right about that.
There are some amazing key changes in the latter parts of the tune; I
just wish I hadn't got such big pauses in there. (It's HARD though!) On
some of the takes, those pauses are almost non-existent (but I stuffed
up somewhere else instead). Ho hum!
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> and grab the latest DirectShow filters. That should make Windows Media
> Player play it without issue.
Weirdly enough, my Windows doesn't recognise the .ogg extension, but if
I rename it to .mp3, it plays. Clearly I have a codec set up that didn't
put the right extensions on or something. Good to know.
> Hey, c'mon - 2:30 of continuous playing with hardly any wrong notes,
> missed notes or even pauses.
If that was 12 takes, I'm quite impressed.
> As an aside, the top line alone has 32 notes per bar. Surely no human being can
actually *read* that fast.
Well, if you've been a professional musician for a dozen years, yes, you
can do that. I heard (on a CD) the very first take of the Star Wars
theme music. It sounded perfect to me. Of course, the conductor refined
it repeatedly, but *I* couldn't hear any flaws in the first time it was
played. It's kind of like reading out loud, or typing what you're
reading without looking - once you've done it enough, it goes right from
eyes to fingers without conscious interpretation.
But for someone who doesn't practice at least 3 hours a day for several
years, it's pretty impressive what you've got there with that little bit
of work.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Darren New wrote:
> Weirdly enough, my Windows doesn't recognise the .ogg extension, but if
> I rename it to .mp3, it plays. Clearly I have a codec set up that didn't
> put the right extensions on or something. Good to know.
Oh...kay then, that's pretty random!
>> Hey, c'mon - 2:30 of continuous playing with hardly any wrong notes,
>> missed notes or even pauses.
>
> If that was 12 takes, I'm quite impressed.
This was roughly the 12th take or so, yes. (I deleted all of the
previous ones.)
It's strange - I can sit down and play the music endlessly for 2 days
straight, but as soon as I hit the record button, I start making
mistakes all over the place. :-S Most irritating!
>> As an aside, the top line alone has 32 notes per bar. Surely no human
>> being can actually *read* that fast.
>
> It's kind of like reading out loud, or typing what you're
> reading without looking - once you've done it enough, it goes right from
> eyes to fingers without conscious interpretation.
Heh. When I was at school, one night I was in the chappel playing Bach's
Toccata & Fugue in D minor. Some twat decided to run past and turn off
the lights. Everybody was astonished when I continued playing without so
much as missing a beat.
However... this only works if one note is near another. My hands "know"
how wide the keys are. But if I need to move my whole hand to a
different part of the keyboard, I still need to be able to see where I'm
going. If that makes sense...
> But for someone who doesn't practice at least 3 hours a day for several
> years, it's pretty impressive what you've got there with that little bit
> of work.
Thanks! I spent literally *days* decoding the score and rehersing the
playing. ;-)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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48d73e98$1@news.povray.org...
>
> It's strange - I can sit down and play the music endlessly for 2 days
> straight, but as soon as I hit the record button, I start making mistakes
> all over the place. :-S Most irritating!
Common it is .Stress and adrenalin, to deal with you'll have. ;-)
Sometimes in studio, the sound engineer lets the performer play as if it was
rehearsal or a level check but actually recording.
Of course you need a partner for that... oh and you can't tell him "please
record but don't let me know"
> However... this only works if one note is near another. My hands "know"
> how wide the keys are. But if I need to move my whole hand to a different
> part of the keyboard, I still need to be able to see where I'm going. If
> that makes sense...
That makes sense but with further practice (I mean without looking at your
hands at all) your arms and shoulders can learn the keyboard span as if they
came with a GPS (oh err bad example).
>
>> But for someone who doesn't practice at least 3 hours a day for several
>> years, it's pretty impressive what you've got there with that little bit
>> of work.
>
> Thanks! I spent literally *days* decoding the score and rehersing the
> playing. ;-)
That's a pretty good result :-)
Next stage the 16th notes arpeggio? >:-)
Marc
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m_a_r_c wrote:
> Common it is .Stress and adrenalin, to deal with you'll have. ;-)
Wise words from Master Coda. (Get it??)
> Sometimes in studio, the sound engineer lets the performer play as if it was
> rehearsal or a level check but actually recording.
> Of course you need a partner for that... oh and you can't tell him "please
> record but don't let me know"
Heh. That's just mean!
Mind you, I'm recording a MIDI file. It would be fairly trivial to go
back and edit it to make it sound perfect. But all that really does is
demonstrate that *the machine* can play it OK, which we already know! ;-)
>> However... this only works if one note is near another. My hands "know"
>> how wide the keys are. But if I need to move my whole hand to a different
>> part of the keyboard, I still need to be able to see where I'm going. If
>> that makes sense...
>
> That makes sense but with further practice (I mean without looking at your
> hands at all) your arms and shoulders can learn the keyboard span as if they
> came with a GPS (oh err bad example).
When I'm giving a recital, I like to stare the audience in the eye, and
optionally gave them my best psychotic smile. It usually makes an
impression.
>>> But for someone who doesn't practice at least 3 hours a day for several
>>> years, it's pretty impressive what you've got there with that little bit
>>> of work.
>> Thanks! I spent literally *days* decoding the score and rehersing the
>> playing. ;-)
>
> That's a pretty good result :-)
Why thank you. :-)
> Next stage the 16th notes arpeggio? >:-)
Hey, I can do that too... just... not at the same time! :-}
The music you heard is already using both of my hands! (Remember, I
don't have a set of pedals to use.) I could try using my computer to
composite the parts together, but I rather suspect I'm going to run out
of octaves.
(Regardless of how many octaves my keyboard has, the computer only has
samples for 5 octaves. It seems silly to speak of "only" 5 octaves, but
this *is* organ music...)
Anybody have any bright ideas about how I get my hands on a real pipe
organ to try this stuff out?
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On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:05:07 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>
>Anybody have any bright ideas about how I get my hands on a real pipe
>organ to try this stuff out?
Join a church. A neighbour of mine used to play in the Sunday service just to
keep his hand in. He was not religious at all but it gave him the opportunity to
practice whilst still remaining a good neighbour ;)
--
Regards
Stephen
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> (Regardless of how many octaves my keyboard has, the computer only has
> samples for 5 octaves. It seems silly to speak of "only" 5 octaves, but
> this *is* organ music...)
Write some code to generate the organ sounds algorithmically ;-)
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