MIDI / Technology in recording

[SaucyJackBass]

I have created a few songs now with MIDI and virtual instruments. Although I write and figure out parts with actual instruments (in some cases) everything here is 100% Midi.

Ableton Live as the DAW with virtual instruments from several vendors.

Its crazy what you can do in your basement these days. Hope you enjoy.

 

[Krisfield]

Great tune. Got me thinking about film and tv music.

 

[Tosh]

Excellent example of music using MIDI, @SaucyJackBass ! Assuming this is a thread for posting our MIDI works, may I offer one of mine?

This was done using Logic Pro 9 - all instruments except bass guitar are included in Logic

Blue Diesel | Three Litres

Blue Diesel by Three Litres, Instrumental music from Salem, OR on ReverbNation

www.reverbnation.com

 

[Kubicki Fan]

Music and film together, delightful!
Wached it over.

 

[MonetBass]

Very cool - I dig it!

While I'm a big fan of technology and using it in music creation, for my songs I always try to have at least one human-played instrument on them. Otherwise the music sounds a bit sterile, IMO. Realizing of course that getting a set of kettle drums or the like into your home studio ain't practical!

 

[brianrost]

The DAW technology is getting ridiculous these days.

Yesterday I updated to Logic Pro 11 which now has three “Session Players”…Drummer (which has been in Logic for years), Piano and Bass. Each player has a number of controls to determine swing, push/pull against the beat, how often to fill, complexity of fills, etc. The contols can be sequenced so the part varies over time. The bass player lets you choose between a P, Hofner, J, Rick, StingRay or upright.

To start exploring how it works, I sequenced a short song. Using the chord track I set up a chord progression, then turned on the Session Players to generate the MIDI parts. I chose the upright bass model and the Motown drummer model. Logic generated parts appropriate to the chords and tempo. I did not enter any melodic information, it was all auto generated. This is not AI, it’s just a very sophisticated auto accompaniment feature similar to the Karma feature found in Korg workstations for many years. The whole thing took about an hour, including the time to learn how the new features worked.

So here it is for your listening enjoyment.



Below is the generated walking bass line. I only wish I had the chops to play this part myself I need to do some shedding on this…

 

[MonetBass]

The DAW technology is getting ridiculous these days.

Yesterday I updated to Logic Pro 11 which now has three “Session Players”…Drummer (which has been in Logic for years), Piano and Bass. Each player has a number of controls to determine swing, push/pull against the beat, how often to fill, complexity of fills, etc. The contols can be sequenced so the part varies over time. The bass player lets you choose between a P, Hofner, J, Rick, StingRay or upright.

To start exploring how it works, I sequenced a short song. Using the chord track I set up a chord progression, then turned on the Session Players to generate the MIDI parts. I chose the upright bass model and the Motown drummer model. Logic generated parts appropriate to the chords and tempo. I did not enter any melodic information, it was all auto generated. This is not AI, it’s just a very sophisticated auto accompaniment feature similar to the Karma feature found in Korg workstations for many years. The whole thing took about an hour, including the time to learn how the new features worked.

AI uses a database to generate content, so technically this is AI (it just wasn't called that back in the day). Regardless, that's a cool experiment and I like the results.

 

[brianrost]

MonetBass,

As an EE/CS guy I’m somewhat hesitant about calling it AI because it seems to be no different than auto accompaniment algorithms we’ve had for decades other than a bigger grab bag to draw from. It’s not like Apple stuffed a copy of Suno into Logic. When I change parameters Logic doesn’t stop to figure out what to do, it's seamless the same way that Karma and the Motif arpeggiator are. Drummer has been in Logic since 2013 but was never called AI before. The Session Players won't work on machines without at least an M1 processor, so whatever it’s doing is a lot more processor intensive than the many other MIDI randomizing features in Logic.

If you look at the score, it just follows textbook walking line rules:

1. Every bar starts on a root.

2. It emphasizes use of chord tones over scale notes.

3. If the chord changes in the next bar, the previous bar ends with one of the following: half step away from new root, whole step away from new root or the new root anticipated (but never tied).

4. When the chord does not change in the next bar, the previous bar ends on a chord tone with only one exception...bar 16 into bar 17 ends a whole step away from the root. It always plays the root in the same octave. Note: Bar 25 to end is just a direct copy of bars 13-18, which is why it's note for note identical. It would be interesting to extend the C7 in bars 13-18 to see how many bars it can go without repeating a phrase.

I’ll report back after I’ve spent a lot more time mucking about with it.

 

[MonetBass]

Fair points, all. In reality, AI has been around since the 70s, it just wasn't called that latest buzzword. Heck, in one of my DB management classes back in college ca. 1987, we built a primitive AI model.