A singer/guitarist wants a live string ensemble as backing for one of
his songs; he currently uses a synthesizer.
A professional musician has written a number of alternative arrangements
for up to 8 instruments. The singer and his producer want to hear how
each of these will work before spending real money on the musicians and
a few hours of recording studio time.
Currently, the singer has a partial recording, with drums, guitar and
the vocal track.
The string ensemble music has been written using Finale (running under
Wine), to produce printed output for the musicians. It can also generate
a MIDI file, and audio as either WAV or MP3.
Problem: On a Linux system, what options are there for combining the two
so that the musician and producer can get some idea of how the whole lot
will sound.
The obvious thing is to just play the two at the same time, using a
media player (eg Rhythmbox) for the recording and a MIDI player for the
string ensemble. However, they are certain to drift apart over the 6
minutes duration of the song.
Alternatively, spend some time adjusting the overall duration of the
string part to match the overall duration of the recording. They will
then start and end together, and we can hope that the drummer kept going
at a constant speed.
Ideally, something would identify beats in the recording, and spit out
some sort of MIDI synchronisation signal that the MIDI player will use.
Any suggestions? Or is this still pie-in-the-sky?
Stephen Irons
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