Writing samples
Music for the masses
The marriage of music and technology strikes a chord with professional and amateur musicians.
From the Tampa Tribune, Nov. 6, 1998
(Friday Extra cover package)
By DIRK LAMMERS
A composer arranges a 16-piece orchestra score on computer before hiring a single cellist. A DJ coordinates a nightclub's fog machine and disco lights to move with the tunes blasting onto the dance floor.
A duo adds virtual drums, bass and saxophone to its stage act without hiring additional musicians. Such technology might seem state of the art, but it's all based on MIDI, a simple language created in the early 1980s that has yet to wear out its welcome.
"It's interesting to think that the standard hasn't changed," says Paul Reller, who teaches electronic music courses at the University of South Florida. "It's been 16 years, and we're still using it."
MIDI, an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is a sort of electronic sheet music shared by computers, synthesizers and other devices.
It lets Joey Mongiovi, a Tampa saxophonist who performs at corporate events and other gigs, play his sax live as a part of a virtual jazz trio or a calypso band.
"This has enabled me to be a sort of chameleon," says Mongiovi, who composes his own accompanying parts on computer. "It allows me to play all different types of instruments." MIDI, introduced to the music industry at a 1983 trade show, was the brainchild of a few synthesizer designers who wanted keyboards of different brands to speak a common language. It has since grown into a huge industry, in which a Dell computer with a Sound Blaster card can run a Roland drum machine and a Yamaha keyboard, because they all speak MIDI.
It's a modern version of an old player piano, says Jim Buxton, who sells keyboards at MARS music in Tampa. Picture the MIDI file as the old paper punch roll, and tiny microchips as the player piano's hammers and strings. "It's kind of virtual music," he says.
Terry Mohn, chair of the University of Tampa music department, introduces students to music technology through his Introduction to Recording and Electronic Music class. Aspiring musicians constitute only about a quarter of his class, with the rest taking the course as a liberal arts elective. Each learns MIDI, digital recording and editing through a variety of projects, from writing radio jingles to telling a story with voice-overs and MIDI sound effects. The exercises help open the minds of students who may not consider themselves musically inclined. "They find out they can be creative," says Mohn, who began working with electronic music in 1967. "This can be a very expressive medium because it's completely open."
At USF, all music composition majors must take Reller's Introduction to Electronic Music lecture course. Reller, director of the school's SYCOM studio, says he tries to challenge students to look at electronic music as an open canvas in which anything is possible.
"I try to teach technique and creativity at the same time," says Reller, an associate professor. "In the end, technology should be transparent."
Hilton Jones' Electronic Music and Digital Recording course at USF draws students such as Agyenim Wiredu, a 22-year-old computer art major who wanted to learn how to incorporate electronic music into multimedia.
Classmate Matt Moore, a music education major, says technology has become an integral part of music. "This is just another big part of what I want to do," says Moore, 22. "The way music has evolved, I feel it's very important to know. "If you don't, eventually you're going to be paying someone to do this."
MIDI has been extremely beneficial to hobbyists and professional musicians in the area of composition and songwriting. Even if composers prefer their masterpieces be played by real people, they can use computers with sequencing software to write an arrangement, view the sheet music on-screen and hear exactly how it will sound - before bringing in a single clarinet or timpani player.
"Think about the cost to rehearse an orchestra for Bach, Mozart or Brahms," Buxton says. "We can eliminate a lot of the guesswork using virtual music."
Greg Hendershott, who wrote the original "Cakewalk" sequencing program back in 1986 and is now chairman of the music software company of the same name, said early sequencers focused simply on recording and playing back MIDI files.
His latest version, "Cakewalk ProAudio 8," and other high-level sequencers such as "Cubase VST 3.6," integrate MIDI with digital recording to turn a home computer into a full-featured studio.
That means one track could play drum beats, another acoustic piano notes and a third could hold a voice digitally recorded in CD clarity.
But even older sequencers were a big step for composers. Suddenly, if a musician wanted to change an A to an A-sharp or a half-note to a quarter-note, all it took was a mere keyboard stroke or mouse click. A simple cut-and-paste could move four measures from one section of a song to another, or repeat a drum beat across several lines of a verse.
And amateurs who often miss the beat could "quantize," which shifts stray notes to their proper places. "It's almost like a spell checker for your rhythm," Hendershott says.
In 1991, the industry tweaked the MIDI standard into General MIDI so songs were more mobile. On every keyboard and sound card, an acoustic grand piano was now "Instrument 1" and a French horn was "61." This allowed a musician to save a song to disc, bring it to another computer or keyboard and have it play correctly.
MIDI also is gaining popularity with musicians looking for accompaniment.
If you walk into a nightclub and hear a solo singer-guitarist backed by a mysterious drum and bass beat, it's probably MIDI.
A few years ago, Chuck Thompson and Lee Wheeler were playing coffeehouses as an acoustic duo.
Today, when "Thompson & Wheeler" hits the stage of a Brooksville or Spring Hill club, the duo is backed by drum and bass lines, vocal harmonies and riffs from saxophone and piano without adding a single musician.
The setup includes a PC and a MIDI device that attaches to Thompson's electric guitar, allowing him to play a solo on his guitar and have the sound come out like an alto saxophone. A vocalizer lets him sing backing vocals in five-part harmony, while Wheeler sings lead to lyrics appearing on-screen.
"I've worked in rock bands, jazz bands, country bands, and nothing compares to this," says Thompson, who composes many of his background arrangements and uses some MIDI files downloaded off the Internet.
So with all this great technology, could live musicians become obsolete?
"No," says Buxton. "I don't see that anymore than a great video replacing ... a concert. There's something about the energy of real people."
Reller says musicians feared being taken over by technology in the 1940s when tape arrived, when synthesizers showed up in the '60s and when sampling became the rage in the 1980s. Their fears never came true.
"It I were strictly an instrumentalist, I wouldn't worry," he says.
Reller says in electronic music's early days, there was a degree of "sameness" to the sounds. Today, there's a lot of creativity in electronica, such as the music he has heard recently on WLLD, 98.7 FM.
"That's just awesome electronic music," he says. "It's growing up."
Still, with music so easy to make nowadays, there's a tendency to settle for the mediocre, Mohn says, "sort of like clip art is to artists."
Sidebar: Instruments of change
By DIRK LAMMERS
Electronic music used to be an exclusive club for keyboardists.
A musician wanting to compose a MIDI file would either have to manually type the notes into a computer or play a melody line on a piano-style synthesizer.
But that's not the instrument of choice for Terry Mohn, a lifelong sax player and member of the Bay Area Saxophone Quartet. If he wants to record some electronic notes, he reaches for his Yamaha WX11 wind controller, an electronic sax or clarinet which feeds data to a synthesizer instead of producing audible tones.
"It lets me put in some licks that are not conducive to the keyboard," says Mohn, the University of Tampa music department chair. "It gives the wind player access to the synthesized sounds."
But while it's useful in that regard, Mohn is not about to show up to a quartet concert with it.
"It's a novelty," Mohn says. "I don't want to use it to substitute for my horn."
MIDI, an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is a standard created in the early 1980s that lets computers, synthesizers and other devices speak the same language.
If you own a Macintosh or PC with a sound card, you're probably already capable of playing MIDI files. But if you want to create music, you'll either have to peck your computer's alphabet keys or add a MIDI controller to feed notes into the computer.
Chuck Thompson, half of the Brooksville duo Thompson and Wheeler, wanted to enhance the acoustic act by adding recorded MIDI tracks as accompaniment. But he's a guitarist who doesn't play keyboard.
By adding a Roland GK-2A guitar pickup ($275) and a specialized GR-30 guitar synthesizer ($895) to his MIDI setup, Thompson can now jam high on the fretboard and produce the sound of a piano, bassoon or glockenspiel.
What if you don't play an instrument at all?
Singers can input MIDI notes with their voices using a microphone and a computer program called "Autoscore 2.0."
The program, available in "Deluxe" ($119) and "Professional" ($249) versions from Wildcat Canyon Software, converts the notes your voice sings into MIDI notes, says Wildcat's Sam Thorpe.
Still, the more mainstream way of entering notes is the keyboard, which can run anywhere from $100 to $10,000 depending on the functions you want, says Jim Buxton of MARS music.
More expensive keyboards typically produce sounds closer to their real instrument counterparts, but lower-priced models work well for amateurs, Buxton says.
While the keyboard's primary function is to input notes, most feature built-in tone generators or sound modules - the devices that play the notes. Most computer sound cards have built-in modules. Some play quality instrument sounds while others produce canned electronic-sounding FM synthesis.
Many high-end keyboards are "workstations," essentially complete professional studios that let musicians play, record and edit without a computer, Buxton says. Most feature a floppy or Zip disk drive so files can be saved and transferred to a computer or other instrument.
Stand-alone sound modules or tone generators, typically book-sized devices whose only job is to produce the sounds of a controller demands, can connect to any sound card, MIDI controller or workstation by standard MIDI cables.
Drum machines are specialty modules which produce only percussive sounds. Beat boxes such as the Roland MC-303 Groove Box ($599) allow dance music producers and other groove enthusiasts to lay down some beats.
Paul Reller, a USF associate professor who teaches electronic music classes and directs the school's SYCOM studio, says musicians can set up a home studio for a modest cost.
"My students have pretty good MIDI setups at home," he says.
But Reller warns musicians not to get too caught up in the latest equipment craze. He still loves his old synths and analog recorders, and says musicians will reach more success if they "rely on creativity more than trying to keep up with the Joneses."
Return to my writing samples menu
The marriage of music and technology strikes a chord with professional and amateur musicians.
From the Tampa Tribune, Nov. 6, 1998
(Friday Extra cover package)
By DIRK LAMMERS
A composer arranges a 16-piece orchestra score on computer before hiring a single cellist. A DJ coordinates a nightclub's fog machine and disco lights to move with the tunes blasting onto the dance floor.
A duo adds virtual drums, bass and saxophone to its stage act without hiring additional musicians. Such technology might seem state of the art, but it's all based on MIDI, a simple language created in the early 1980s that has yet to wear out its welcome.
"It's interesting to think that the standard hasn't changed," says Paul Reller, who teaches electronic music courses at the University of South Florida. "It's been 16 years, and we're still using it."
MIDI, an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is a sort of electronic sheet music shared by computers, synthesizers and other devices.
It lets Joey Mongiovi, a Tampa saxophonist who performs at corporate events and other gigs, play his sax live as a part of a virtual jazz trio or a calypso band.
"This has enabled me to be a sort of chameleon," says Mongiovi, who composes his own accompanying parts on computer. "It allows me to play all different types of instruments." MIDI, introduced to the music industry at a 1983 trade show, was the brainchild of a few synthesizer designers who wanted keyboards of different brands to speak a common language. It has since grown into a huge industry, in which a Dell computer with a Sound Blaster card can run a Roland drum machine and a Yamaha keyboard, because they all speak MIDI.
It's a modern version of an old player piano, says Jim Buxton, who sells keyboards at MARS music in Tampa. Picture the MIDI file as the old paper punch roll, and tiny microchips as the player piano's hammers and strings. "It's kind of virtual music," he says.
Terry Mohn, chair of the University of Tampa music department, introduces students to music technology through his Introduction to Recording and Electronic Music class. Aspiring musicians constitute only about a quarter of his class, with the rest taking the course as a liberal arts elective. Each learns MIDI, digital recording and editing through a variety of projects, from writing radio jingles to telling a story with voice-overs and MIDI sound effects. The exercises help open the minds of students who may not consider themselves musically inclined. "They find out they can be creative," says Mohn, who began working with electronic music in 1967. "This can be a very expressive medium because it's completely open."
At USF, all music composition majors must take Reller's Introduction to Electronic Music lecture course. Reller, director of the school's SYCOM studio, says he tries to challenge students to look at electronic music as an open canvas in which anything is possible.
"I try to teach technique and creativity at the same time," says Reller, an associate professor. "In the end, technology should be transparent."
Hilton Jones' Electronic Music and Digital Recording course at USF draws students such as Agyenim Wiredu, a 22-year-old computer art major who wanted to learn how to incorporate electronic music into multimedia.
Classmate Matt Moore, a music education major, says technology has become an integral part of music. "This is just another big part of what I want to do," says Moore, 22. "The way music has evolved, I feel it's very important to know. "If you don't, eventually you're going to be paying someone to do this."
MIDI has been extremely beneficial to hobbyists and professional musicians in the area of composition and songwriting. Even if composers prefer their masterpieces be played by real people, they can use computers with sequencing software to write an arrangement, view the sheet music on-screen and hear exactly how it will sound - before bringing in a single clarinet or timpani player.
"Think about the cost to rehearse an orchestra for Bach, Mozart or Brahms," Buxton says. "We can eliminate a lot of the guesswork using virtual music."
Greg Hendershott, who wrote the original "Cakewalk" sequencing program back in 1986 and is now chairman of the music software company of the same name, said early sequencers focused simply on recording and playing back MIDI files.
His latest version, "Cakewalk ProAudio 8," and other high-level sequencers such as "Cubase VST 3.6," integrate MIDI with digital recording to turn a home computer into a full-featured studio.
That means one track could play drum beats, another acoustic piano notes and a third could hold a voice digitally recorded in CD clarity.
But even older sequencers were a big step for composers. Suddenly, if a musician wanted to change an A to an A-sharp or a half-note to a quarter-note, all it took was a mere keyboard stroke or mouse click. A simple cut-and-paste could move four measures from one section of a song to another, or repeat a drum beat across several lines of a verse.
And amateurs who often miss the beat could "quantize," which shifts stray notes to their proper places. "It's almost like a spell checker for your rhythm," Hendershott says.
In 1991, the industry tweaked the MIDI standard into General MIDI so songs were more mobile. On every keyboard and sound card, an acoustic grand piano was now "Instrument 1" and a French horn was "61." This allowed a musician to save a song to disc, bring it to another computer or keyboard and have it play correctly.
MIDI also is gaining popularity with musicians looking for accompaniment.
If you walk into a nightclub and hear a solo singer-guitarist backed by a mysterious drum and bass beat, it's probably MIDI.
A few years ago, Chuck Thompson and Lee Wheeler were playing coffeehouses as an acoustic duo.
Today, when "Thompson & Wheeler" hits the stage of a Brooksville or Spring Hill club, the duo is backed by drum and bass lines, vocal harmonies and riffs from saxophone and piano without adding a single musician.
The setup includes a PC and a MIDI device that attaches to Thompson's electric guitar, allowing him to play a solo on his guitar and have the sound come out like an alto saxophone. A vocalizer lets him sing backing vocals in five-part harmony, while Wheeler sings lead to lyrics appearing on-screen.
"I've worked in rock bands, jazz bands, country bands, and nothing compares to this," says Thompson, who composes many of his background arrangements and uses some MIDI files downloaded off the Internet.
So with all this great technology, could live musicians become obsolete?
"No," says Buxton. "I don't see that anymore than a great video replacing ... a concert. There's something about the energy of real people."
Reller says musicians feared being taken over by technology in the 1940s when tape arrived, when synthesizers showed up in the '60s and when sampling became the rage in the 1980s. Their fears never came true.
"It I were strictly an instrumentalist, I wouldn't worry," he says.
Reller says in electronic music's early days, there was a degree of "sameness" to the sounds. Today, there's a lot of creativity in electronica, such as the music he has heard recently on WLLD, 98.7 FM.
"That's just awesome electronic music," he says. "It's growing up."
Still, with music so easy to make nowadays, there's a tendency to settle for the mediocre, Mohn says, "sort of like clip art is to artists."
Sidebar: Instruments of change
By DIRK LAMMERS
Electronic music used to be an exclusive club for keyboardists.
A musician wanting to compose a MIDI file would either have to manually type the notes into a computer or play a melody line on a piano-style synthesizer.
But that's not the instrument of choice for Terry Mohn, a lifelong sax player and member of the Bay Area Saxophone Quartet. If he wants to record some electronic notes, he reaches for his Yamaha WX11 wind controller, an electronic sax or clarinet which feeds data to a synthesizer instead of producing audible tones.
"It lets me put in some licks that are not conducive to the keyboard," says Mohn, the University of Tampa music department chair. "It gives the wind player access to the synthesized sounds."
But while it's useful in that regard, Mohn is not about to show up to a quartet concert with it.
"It's a novelty," Mohn says. "I don't want to use it to substitute for my horn."
MIDI, an acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, is a standard created in the early 1980s that lets computers, synthesizers and other devices speak the same language.
If you own a Macintosh or PC with a sound card, you're probably already capable of playing MIDI files. But if you want to create music, you'll either have to peck your computer's alphabet keys or add a MIDI controller to feed notes into the computer.
Chuck Thompson, half of the Brooksville duo Thompson and Wheeler, wanted to enhance the acoustic act by adding recorded MIDI tracks as accompaniment. But he's a guitarist who doesn't play keyboard.
By adding a Roland GK-2A guitar pickup ($275) and a specialized GR-30 guitar synthesizer ($895) to his MIDI setup, Thompson can now jam high on the fretboard and produce the sound of a piano, bassoon or glockenspiel.
What if you don't play an instrument at all?
Singers can input MIDI notes with their voices using a microphone and a computer program called "Autoscore 2.0."
The program, available in "Deluxe" ($119) and "Professional" ($249) versions from Wildcat Canyon Software, converts the notes your voice sings into MIDI notes, says Wildcat's Sam Thorpe.
Still, the more mainstream way of entering notes is the keyboard, which can run anywhere from $100 to $10,000 depending on the functions you want, says Jim Buxton of MARS music.
More expensive keyboards typically produce sounds closer to their real instrument counterparts, but lower-priced models work well for amateurs, Buxton says.
While the keyboard's primary function is to input notes, most feature built-in tone generators or sound modules - the devices that play the notes. Most computer sound cards have built-in modules. Some play quality instrument sounds while others produce canned electronic-sounding FM synthesis.
Many high-end keyboards are "workstations," essentially complete professional studios that let musicians play, record and edit without a computer, Buxton says. Most feature a floppy or Zip disk drive so files can be saved and transferred to a computer or other instrument.
Stand-alone sound modules or tone generators, typically book-sized devices whose only job is to produce the sounds of a controller demands, can connect to any sound card, MIDI controller or workstation by standard MIDI cables.
Drum machines are specialty modules which produce only percussive sounds. Beat boxes such as the Roland MC-303 Groove Box ($599) allow dance music producers and other groove enthusiasts to lay down some beats.
Paul Reller, a USF associate professor who teaches electronic music classes and directs the school's SYCOM studio, says musicians can set up a home studio for a modest cost.
"My students have pretty good MIDI setups at home," he says.
But Reller warns musicians not to get too caught up in the latest equipment craze. He still loves his old synths and analog recorders, and says musicians will reach more success if they "rely on creativity more than trying to keep up with the Joneses."
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