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The Place Of Modern MIDI Music?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Nov 12, 2005 03:52 AM
from the cue-zelda-theme dept.
from the cue-zelda-theme dept.
-1-Lone_Eagle writes "With the free availability of literally thousands of MIDI files on the Internet, and increasingly powerful home desktop systems and software, virtually anyone can take a MIDI file and using a program such as GarageBand or Reason create a near-studio-quality rendition of their favorite song. This opens up an interesting discussion, is a remixed MIDI file an original creation? Or is it simply a copied work with the rights belonging to the original author? Is it piracy? What do you think?"
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56k Modem (Score:2, Funny)
The Real Advantage to MIDI (Score:5, Insightful)
Notation software takes the MIDI file and displays it as sheet music. If you can read music (and anyone who can learn C can learn to read music) then you can learn how to play really complicated songs this way. Guitar Tab text files usually only give you simple and often wrong chord changes. Anything beyond G-Em-C-D (I-VIm-IV-V - the progression used in thousands of 1950s-1970s songs) is going to be hard to figure out for non-professionals just sitting down with a guitar and a recording. Almost all older songs have their most complicated chord structures and arpeggios mapped out into MIDI by musically-proficient fans. All the songs played on 'classic rock' FM stations can be learned this way. This is also a great way to learn big-band era stuff from the 1940s and even how older European classical music works. Mozart and Tchaikovsky (the Nutcracker Suite, etc...) can be learned even if you don't have access to the sheet music scores from a library or music store.
MIDI files played into synthesizers, even newer GM synths, don't sound very good even when they have been expertly constructed. It's a fact. There are too many nuances to the playing technique that don't get encoded into the MIDI file. The synths aren't really all that great either. Purely electronic ambient music works like Brian Eno and Steve Roach have a much better chance of being recreated from MIDI files fed into advanced synths. But the idea that a modern pop song can be recreated by MIDI should not be taken seriously. Synths can't reproduce standard instruments like electric guitars and saxophones realistically.
A number of sheet music publishers are trying to get all MIDI files removed from the web. This is short-sighted and cruel on their part. MIDI files encourage people to learn to read and play music far more better than anything that the music publishers could do to develop this market. With music classes being dropped extensively from American public schools, anything that teaches people to interact with printed music scores is a positive thing.
It just sucks that music classes are being dropped by stupid uncultured brain-dead public school administrators (is there any other type?). And to drop music classes for more algebra? Insane. Most people listen to music every single day; very few people ever use algebra after high school. The priorities of the public schools are completely wrong. It's a tragedy.
Parent
Is there an free or open source version of (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be nice to know of equivalents that you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for.
Well, sorta (Score:5, Informative)
Free samples that are any good are much harder to come by. There are plenty of free soundfounts, but many are quite bad and non I've seen are near what you get with good ample packs. Also, a large number out there that are free did no checking on the legality of what they are using. So you may get a free sample you like, but it may actually be ripped off from somewhere else and not legit.
Unfortunately in the good sample arena, I'm not aware of any non arm n' leg solutions. You just seem to get what you pay for. If you pay $200 for an orchestral set, it'll be pretty good. If you pay $2000 for one, it'll sound almost perfect. If you pay nothing for it, it'll sound fake and may not even be legit.
Parent
Re:Well, sorta (Score:2)
But if you put the two together - great composer and great patch sets - you'll quickly believe that MIDI is still alive and strong. Not to mention it's uses as a controller bus.
Depends on what you aim is (Score:5, Informative)
However it's one thing to be doing an orignal work, it's another to try and do a "studio quality" rendition of an existing peice. No matter how good a composer you are, a little 1MB piano sample is going to sound, well, fake. You aren't going to fool anyone for the real thing. without a couple hundred MB sample at least.
Both are laudable goals. I am a huge fan of music done on older technologies (espically game music, hence the remasters I do) and I have a big collection of MOD (and derivitive) files. However it's a real different challenge to try and make a rendition of a MIDI that sounds like it was done with real isntruments than to compose an orignal MIDI to sound cool using a given sample set.
It's a different kind of MIDI programming even. I find that often, some of the best sounding MIDIs on my SoundCanvas translate the worst when played with higher grade samples. They are designed with certian assumptions in mind that just aren't valid and would need ot be redone. However some of the ones that come of as cheesy end up sound pretty damn good when you throw a few GB of samples at them.
A lot of it depends how close your samples are to the ones the composer used. For example the Edirol songs sound the very best on my SoundCanvas. No supprise, that was the hardware they were composed on.
Parent
MIDI vs. General MIDI (Score:5, Informative)
First, a couple things to get cleared up:
MIDI is just a serial protocol, nothing more. It's been around since the early 80's. The protocol defines 128 MIDI notes, on 16 channels, and 128 controllers that have values of 0 - 127. That's basically it, along with a few other things like channel change and bank change messages. MIDI itself does not define any instruments, because MIDI is used to control non-instrument devices like effects boxes too.
Now, when most normal computer people think of MIDI, what they are actually thinking of is GM or "General MIDI." GM defines a standard set of instruments, for example instrument 1 is always a piano, instrument 74 is always a flute, etc.
It's up to the hardware or software to actually implement these instruments, usually done with wavetable samples. The idea is that a MIDI file played through any "GM compatible" device will sound roughly the same on any other GM device, although the quality of the samples varies widely. Roland's GS is an extension of GM.
GM used to be used for games primarily (think Doom1 and Doom2!) but has fallen by the wayside now that everybody is using full audio tracks for music.
But most of the music created for video games these stays was still created using MIDI! The file format is specific to the studio application, but MIDI is still used internally to communicate with various synthesizers and samplers including virtual synths that run on the local machine.
So if you were to get the original data files, you would need to also have the sample libraries-- which are VERY high quality, and can cost several thousand dollars. And you need to be using software that works with these libraries, which rules out free/OSS software-- you're gonna NEED something like Sonar, Logic Audio, etc.
Almost all video games and most TV shows that have symphonic music are actually MIDI based, but use enormous sample libraries like EastWest [soundsonline.com] symphony orchestra. In fact I believe that the Return to Castle Wolfenstein soundtrack was created mostly with that sample library.
Other examples, the "fire baby" sequence in The Incredibles is created with Voices of the Apocalypse [soundsonline.com] so even realistic choirs can be created using MIDI.
You don't have to spend THAT much though-- the libraries I use the most are Storm Drum [soundsonline.com] and Garritan Personal Orchestra [garritan.com], both of which are very affordable but good enough that they are often used in hollywood. All of these are plugins that can be used in many different software packages on both OSX and Windows, but not linux that I'm aware of.
So, nowadays MIDI is still an integral part of even the most modern studios, but General MIDI is nowhere in sight. GM still has a place in cell phone ringers.
Parent
Re:Depends on what you aim is (Score:3, Informative)
Wavetable synthesis, however, you don't.
The idea behind wavetable synthesis is to take short samples- one cycle of the waveform- for different stages of the sound. Loop and manipulate them appropriately.
The reason for this form of synthesis is to conserve memory.
These days, every sampler that I know of is capable of this form of wavetable synthesis. It's standard. There will be an attack sample, a sustain sample (which can be looped), and a relea
Re:Is there an free or open source version of (Score:2)
Re:Is there an free or open source version of (Score:3, Informative)
You might want to look at DSSI [sourceforge.net], the Disposable Soft Synth Interface, which is kind of the Linux version of VST. It doesn't do quite as much as VST does but the programming interface is not quite as Byzantine and perverse.
Shameless plug: I've written a couple of DSSI synths, based on Xsynth-DSSI [sourceforge.net]. One is a kind of wavetable synth, and one is a TB303-style monosynth. You can get them
Re:Is there an free or open source version of (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
not piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not piracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that I think MIDI is particularly worrying to music publishers... Presumably it's in the same legal area as guitar tabs (eg OLGA) and other music transcriptions? What about transcribing lyrics?
Re:not piracy (Score:2)
"No longer the same song"? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, all it takes is a few modifications to sheet music and it's no longer the same song
Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's a wrong reading of music plagiarism case law [columbia.edu]. The real case law is worrisome [slashdot.org].
Re:not piracy (Score:2, Informative)
There are two distinct sets of rights - publishing rights and mechanical rights.
Whoever writes the song owns the publishing rights until such time as they sign their rights away to the publishing arm of a label (which is required for most deals for a limited time, e.g. 3-5 years, or life, or beyond the grave, or whatever). These rights cover the song itself, and includes the melody and lyrics, but does not include the chord progression. The publishing rights prohibit pretty much a
Re:not piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, then, he sure was quick to make millions and millions of dollars off of "everybody's" possesion. That luxury apartment in New York wasn't free, and Yoko Ono is pretty high-maintenance.
For a guy that sang "imagine no possessions," it's hard not to notice that he retained his IP rights and the cash.
Parent
Studio Quality? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe I've missed something big, but I didn't know such amazing vocal support was built into MIDI formats. I guess I could always put the lyrics in and let Microsoft Sam (tm) sing it for me, but I'd rather die a horrible, horrible death.
Instrumental Music (Score:5, Insightful)
Just FYI.
Parent
Re:Instrumental Music (Score:2)
Re:Studio Quality? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.dictionaraoke.org/ [dictionaraoke.org]
You can do better than you'd think (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Copyright gets confusing... (Score:3, Informative)
It is copyright infrigement (Score:2)
Re:It is copyright infrigement (Score:3, Informative)
The RIAA doesn't own all music, you know...
It's ambiguous enough for them to sue you (Score:2)
Isn't it obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the original work is out of copyright, for example Beethoven's works, the rights to the "notation or manuscript" is owned by whoever printed or published it, since classical music can be notated in different ways according to different interpretations. This goes for any piece of music. Also, the midi file, even of an out of copyright piece of music is the intellectual property of the author. I've created my own versions of several pieces of classical music, made them available on the internet and I've noticed in the years since I've come across those files under different names. It's the same midi I made, just someone has put their own name as author\tracker in the file. It's not cool.
a few thoughts (Score:3, Informative)
Two kinds of copyright. (Score:5, Informative)
This would clearly be infringing on the second copyright (on the song), but not the first (on the recording).
MIDI is akin to printed music (Score:5, Interesting)
It all depends on the level of art and interpretation in the work (think about Cage [wikipedia.org], for instance, and his work in creating scores from astronomical maps) and the legalities. I cannot comment on the legalities of rewriting music, as I am just a musician and an engineer, not a lawyer.
As far as I know, it is not illegal to transcribe audio into sheet music, which is basically what one does when creating a MIDI file from digital (or analog) audio.
Re:MIDI is akin to printed music (Score:5, Insightful)
Midi files are like player piano rolls, which are publications of performances and copyrightable. (Some of the arcane ways used to delineate the available copyrights for music makes more sense when one realizes that at the time pop music took off, the late 19th century and early 20th, it was the quantity of sheet music and player piano rolls sold which made a song a "hit.")
As for doing transcriptions, fair use allows one to do that for personal use, but xeroxing sheet music or scores and/or selling your transcription infringes on rights held by the publisher for works still in copyright. Remember getting "Real Books," which were sold under the counter to working musicians who needed an inexpensive, publisher agnostic collection of standards for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and casual gigs? There was a reason it was under the counter.
Incorporating significant portions of someone else's midi-transcribed performance would make one's work a derivative work, and licensing of the midi information from its rights holder would be required. Now, doing a live peformance which incorprated a pc playing someone else's midi files -- I would guess that requires a license. But a lot of this stuff is overlooked until someone starts making money from someone else's work. And no, I am not a lawyer.
Parent
Why not... (Score:5, Insightful)
[v]irtually anyone can take a midi file and using a program such as Garage Band or Reason create a near studio quality rendition of their favorite song
Technically, that's true. If it's going to be any good, however, *still* depends on talent, sensitivity and hard work. Never mind great soundfonts, and great software, if you don't know how to use them or lack the patience to endlessly tweak things until they sound just right, it's never going to sound as good as the original.
The people at (formerly) Media Ventures do some absolutely stunning stuff with MIDI, software and synthesizers. Ever listened to the soundtrack of "The Thin Red Line"? Some parts are MIDI/synthesizers. Some are real orchestra. Can you tell the difference? Hint: no. Can you reproduce it in equal quality? Sure, if you have the correct soundfonts, enough sensitivity, stacks of equipment and a lot of time on your hands. But it won't make you the composer of the work.
That said, unless planning to unjustly rip off the hard work of other people, I don't see why one would want to call a MIDI rendition of an original work "their own composition". Why not simply give credit where credit is due?
Open Source Music software (Score:4, Informative)
- ardour, Digital Audio workstation / http://ardour.org/ [ardour.org]
- Rosegarden, audio and MIDI sequencer, score editor, and general-purpose music composition and editing environment / http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/ [rosegardenmusic.com]
- LilyPond, music notation / http://lilypond.org/web/ [lilypond.org]
- MusE MIDI/Audio sequencer / http://muse.serverkommune.de/ [serverkommune.de]
- Audacity, music editing station / http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
- Music Theory (free, not oss): http://www.musictheory.net/ [musictheory.net] and http://andyvn.ath.cx/Software-Aquallegro.php [andyvn.ath.cx]
- general link: http://linux-sound.org/ [linux-sound.org]
Cheers
Yes, it's a copied work (Score:2)
I couldn't, for example, pick a Radiohead track then release my smash-hit ukulele'n'kazoo remix without expecting Radiohead's label to come knocking on the door*. It's just an arrangement of someone else's idea.
(*or hordes of music fans to come baying for my blood...)
Cheers,
Ian
clippy mix (Score:5, Funny)
\ ____
\ / __ \
\ O| |O|
|| | |
|| | |
|| |
|___/
% Y
/ There she was just a-shouting to the street \
| Singing: I want Word from Office from Microsoft |
| Snapping her keyboard and shuffling her mouse |
| Singing: I want Word from Office from Microsoft |
| |
\ Want more?
\ ____
\ / __ \
\ O| |O|
|| | |
|| | |
|| |
|___/
% No, kthx.
Re:clippy mix (Score:2)
Question is hardly new... (Score:2)
Publishing (Score:3, Insightful)
Legal (Score:3, Interesting)
If creating your own midi files/ringtones was illegal then companies such as handy.de, musiwave and WES would not have been able to start out.
(probably worth pointing out for the pedants that handy.de was bought by one of the big producers a couple of years ago and renamed to Arvato)
Samplers for Linux? (Score:2)
Let's apply this to karaoke. (Score:2)
Our bar pays Ascap/BMI/Sesac for the right to use backing tracks in a public/business enviroment. It's not just backing tracks we're paying for, we're paying for the rights to the composition.
These 3 licensing agencies started years and years ago during the advent of the player piano. A player p
IANAL (Score:2)
Midi is essentially sheet music (Score:3, Insightful)
Midi is definately copyrighted because its the same as sheet music. Whatever laws apply to sheet music apply to midi files because they are interchangable. Just because windows midi players suck and most people ignore these music files doesn't mean they can't be made to sound righteous and that they shouldn't be subject to the same copyright laws as written music. Thats all it is is sheet music and your midi synth is the orchestra that is playing the music for you. The better your synth the better the overall result.
legal advice (Score:2, Funny)
Near studio quality rendition? (Score:2)
It's probably important to point out that while this holds true for songs that use 'real' instrument sounds - such as piano, strings, brass etc. - that are found in the General MIDI (GM) music set, it can't be said of music that primarily uses synthesized sounds as it's basis. So while you can churn out a reasonably passable rendition of Coldplay's 'Yellow', something like The Prodigy's 'Girls' end
Piano Roll (Score:5, Informative)
The original composer of the music holds all rights to the music until he signs it away to a music publisher. The original composer is important because copyright lasts for the entire life of the composer plus an additional 70 years. (Thanks to Disney and Sonny Bono)
At this stage the Piano Roll maker is not allowed to transcribe it into mechanical (digital) form until he gets permission from the publisher - or - someone else performs it first.
Once the copyright owner of a musical composition records and distributes the work to the public, or allows someone else to do so, anyone that wishes to record and distribute that same work may do so without permission (subject to certain limitations) by issuing the copyright owner a notice of intention to obtain a compulsory license. After that the only legal requirement is to pay a compulsory mechanical reproduction fee of 6.95 cents per copy to the publisher or their agent (Harry Fox - who license from 1,000 copies upwards).
So, how does this apply to MIDI? Those "free" MIDI files you can download off the internet are only legal if someone else performed them first and if the creator of the MIDI file pays 6.95 cents for every download made.
Not the same. (Score:3, Informative)
Besides, an artist, as I recall from a IP class I took (IANAL), has first recording rights to whatever they write. I write a song, I have all rights to it. As I recall, Bob Dylan once used this to deny himself permission to record a song of his. He was in a dispute with his record company, and this was the only way he could get around their demands legally - they could make him produce a record, but not one with content he did not have permission to use, and the songs had not yet been recorded by him or anyone else. Once recorded, however, anyone can cover the song - you can sell tickets to a performance by your band, "Metallica-Lite" and play all Metallicas songs, and sell CDs of your band doing so, but you can't represent yourselves to be Metallica.
If you distribute commercially, you may have to pay royalties, and that seems kinda crappy, but I would think it would be 'a piece of the action' rather than a fixed amount - so if your Metallica tribute album sells 4 copies, you owe a percent of those four sales. I'd get a lawyer if you go that route...
Short answer - replicate/remix/reproduce all you like - derivative works are just that - the property of the creator, unless they are so close to the original that they are identical, in which case, it is a replica and (as of now) illegal to sell/distribute without permission.
My $.025 (inflation, y'know...)
TFA's argument proceeds from false assumption (Score:3, Informative)
MIDI data - at its most basic - records that a note is played (note on) the note location (pitch), the duration of said note, and the volume (often expressed in terms of note velocity) and that the note has stopped playing (note off). However, there are other pieces of data that can be transmitted, such as patch change up, patch change down, pitchbend, and data generated from continuous controllers such as modulation wheels.
If you take a typical and ordinary piece of MIDI data, it only has detectible relation to a given piece of music if the note data is matched to tones produced by a synthesizer or sampler (or a computer program that functions as such) that permit the possibility of melody and harmony. If the tones are, for instance, Latin Percussion, and their is a different non-pitched tone for each note on the keyboard, one would be extremely hard pressed to detect that the MIDI data making it happen was derived of a particular song.
MIDI note data, in point of fact, has NOTHING to do with the timbres generated by the end device, be it synth, sampler, and computer. Also, MIDI note data is easily dislodged from time, and it can be cut up, pasted, and used to trigger other MIDI generators (such as arpeggiators), and can also be subjected to randomisation and processing schemes.
So, one could easily take some drippy POS tune from the likes of Celine Dion, delete entire ranges of its data, take a section that might be too slow but is interesting, loop it and play it at 400 beats per minute, and then have the remainder trigger an arpeggiator that then triggers some Big Beat Drum machine sounds or a selection of machine . I seriously doubt anyone would be able to tell whether it was pulled from Celine Dion or Britney Spears or Claude Debussey, because:
Data that is used for pitch is not inherently tied to a pitched tone.
MIDI can functionally resemble a piano roll, but only if a player piano plays it. If you remove the pitched instrument (the player piano) the data of the "piano roll" can be used to trigger other kinds of nonpitched events (a drum, an explosion, a "thwip", a car engine, a generator, or whatever sample you assign to a given key position, etc. etc. etc.) and thusly make a lot of interesting sounds. Also, the piano roll can be played backwards (i.e., MIDI data is easily processed.)
Hence: the relationship between MIDI data and a given stream of MIDI data's copyright is actually rather problematic. Recreating a track by Celine Dion (or any other pointless musical product puked out by the music industry's star system) is an interesting academic exercise in MIDI programming, but it's not terribly creative. It would be much more interesting to mulch her MIDI data and make something interesting out of it.
RS
Re:hm? (Score:2)
Let's ask what the they think....
MODERN Midi Music??? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.motu.com/products/software/msi/mp3.htm
This sounds pretty real, and I think is sort of what this article was after.