Stephen Irons wrote:
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
I should have mentioned that I am familiar with Ardour, but I don't
think it can generate or synchronise to MIDI time code, although it does
generate and obey MIDI transport (start, stop, fwd, etc) controls.
I think something like Rosegarden might do the job, though I don't know
if it can AUTOMATICALLY find beats in recorded music.
I am happy to help MARKING the beats, but I don't want to spend time
manually adjusting the MIDI tracks to match -- there are at least three
alternatives, and more will come after the musician and producer have
heard the result.
Stephen Irons
=======================================================================
This email, including any attachments, is only for the intended
addressee. It is subject to copyright, is confidential and may be
the subject of legal or other privilege, none of which is waived or
lost by reason of this transmission.
If the receiver is not the intended addressee, please accept our
apologies, notify us by return, delete all copies and perform no
other act on the email.
Unfortunately, we cannot warrant that the email has not been
altered or corrupted during transmission.
=======================================================================
