source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 15:16:58 -0800 Subject: Re: Message from Internet From: Gary Morrison <71670.2576@compuserve.com> > Recently, US Snail brought me the latest tapes by Warren Burt and Gary > Morrison. While both of these composers have asked me not to review their > work in public, they probably wouldn't mind my saying that their latest work > is excellent. Thanks, Brian! Actually, I wouldn't mind Brian reviewing my (88CET) music in public. Perhaps he's refering to the fact that I asked him not to duplicate the tape? Anyway, both of those statements go for others of you who have received copies of my 88CET demo. You're welcome to review my 88CET demo on this forum, and I also ask you not to copy it. Stan Hoffman, Randy Winchester, Steve Curtin, and several others have given me some very useful constructive criticism along areas that I hadn't considered. So thanks to all of you as well. Here's something else I'd love to hear what you folks have to say about, if anything: Perhaps the most important thing I've learned from their constructive criticism is that attempting to simulate "very convincing orchestral wind and percussion ensembles" (to use Brian's words), is a risky business. Our ears are VERY picky about classical music. It's kind of like discussing which is the better violinst between Guidon Kramer and Itzak Perlman: Violinists can debate that question for hours on end, but the undeniable truth of the matter is that they're both excellent. So when an electronically synthesized violin performance comes along, it's just not even on tens-of-parts-per-million kind of scale (puns intended of course) we normally use to evaluate classical performances. Not even CLOSE! That even though, in the big picture, it could be 95% of the way up the naturalness scale with Itzak Perlman at the top, and a 1968-vintage Moog at the bottom. Or as I'm fond of putting it, when you move from analog and FM synthesis, to physical modeling, sampling, or additive synthesis, you find that your instrument simulations ... improve (?) ... from impressive imitations to what sound like ungodly hideous real instruments! Any thoughts, anybody? And my reviewers have pointed out another very amusing risk in attempting the simulate classical ensembles - one especially relavant to xenharmonic realizations: Traditional timbres carry a strong weight with them. One reviewer (perhaps I ought not mention names) pointed out that my "Night and Day" (scored for flute quartet, trumpet, three horns, bass trombone, and percussion) felt a lot like listening to Junior High School orchestra performance, because it contained a lot of out-of-tune notes on orchestral instruments! (Or at least reasonably good simulations of them.) If it were on abstract electronic timbres instead that sort of image would never have come up. Along similar lines, another reviewer wasn't sure whether to take my short 88CET fife, drum, and bugle corps piece, called A Different Drummer, for the cute little scherzo I intended it to be, largely because it was rendered on serious-sounding instrument simulations, in a militaristic style. Any thoughts on that? Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 6 Feb 1996 06:46 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id VAA23946; Mon, 5 Feb 1996 21:46:13 -0800 Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 21:46:13 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu