Midi Composing

[lowdown]

I would like to post a link for a guy called Carles Piles (New Zealand).
His superb use of articulations and dynamics in his midi scores are pretty stunning,
and his Orchestal composing technique is just...well.. superb, lots of ideas.
A great knowledge of what the Instruments do and there place within
an arrangement.

https://soundcloud.com/carles-piles/sets/greenstonekingdom-wip

Yep folks, all midi composed and sequenced.

Edited October 26, 2014 by lowdown

[JapanAxe]

Although I only came here because I thought the thread title said 'composting', I have to say those pieces sound utterly lifelike and involving. Carles has paid attention to the details of timbre and dynamics. So many online MIDI files are recorded with crude dynamics, or none at all.

[EBS_freak]

Stunning!

[Bilbo]

I cannot listen to them here but will do.

The whole midi composing thing is something I wish I had time to explore more thoroughly. I have heard several incredibly convincing pieces using these methods and am astonished at what you can achieve with a good orchestral VST. I use Miroslav Philharmonik a lot (and many of my Composition Challenge pieces are entirely midi-based) but get frustrated by the apparent conflicts between the software and my Cubase SX platform. It always seems like the orchestration and levels etc I engineer are 'tweaked' during the exporting process and that some of the details in the audio mixdown are not as they were when I locked the recording. It's these sorts of things that I would love to get to the botton of but never have more than an hour or two twice a week to spend on it.

The articulartion thing is very sophisticated, though. I find I often go into the midi editor to try and make things more 'real'. It's a laborious process but worth it in the end.

[Skol303]

[quote name='Bilbo' timestamp='1414495989' post='2589777']
I... get frustrated by the apparent conflicts between the software and my Cubase SX platform. It always seems like the orchestration and levels etc I engineer are 'tweaked' during the exporting process and that some of the details in the audio mixdown are not as they were when I locked the recording.
[/quote]

Hi Rob,

One thing to check: have a look in the Cubase ‘Preferences’ menu [i](I don’t use Cubase myself, but it must have a preferences or perhaps ‘Options’ menu).[/i] Under ‘Audio’, or similar, check the Sample Rate and Bit Depth - these determine the resolution or quality of any exported audio.

It might be that these settings are set fairly low by default, especially if you’re using an ageing computer (my own is no spring chicken!).

MP3 quality (i.e. fairly crude) is usually set to 44kHz (sample rate) and 16 bit (bit depth).

I’d recommend a minimum of 48kHz/24-bit.

SoundCloud then applies its own compression whenever an audio track is played. So if you’re uploading low quality audio in the first instance, it will only sound worse when played back via SoundCloud (so it’s best to upload to SoundCloud using the highest resolution that your computer can muster).

These issues might not be the cause of what you’re describing, but it’s where I’d start looking to a find fix myself.

Also, check whether you have something called [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither"]‘Dithering’[/url] enabled in your audio output settings. You want to switch this off when saving files above 44kHz/16-bit resolution (as it can sometimes have an adverse effect on the sound).

I’m sure Garry and other Cubase gurus can chip in here with more useful advice!

Paul

[Bilbo]

Will certainly start there, Skol. Solutions are rarely more than a couple of clicks away!!