Composing Software

[Bob Norris]

Hi,

 

With our bagpipe there are several composing software tools that produce the sheet music and audio output. The audio can be set to instrument, Bagpipes, small pipes, flute, others but no concertina. When played they sound very close to the actual instrument. What I'm wondering is there any commercial software that can produce music for the concertina that when played sounds like the concertina?

[Larry Stout]

Bar Fly is an program for Macs which typesets abc files to produce sheet music. It also has the ability to play them through a midi interface. There is a sample of a Wheatstone Aeola available for download somewhere (I forget where) which makes the playback sound mostly like a concertina, though without much nuance.

[Laitch]

There is a sample of a Wheatstone Aeola available for download somewhere (I forget where) which makes the playback sound mostly like a concertina, though without much nuance.

http://www.barfly.dial.pipex.com/download.html

It's near the bottom of the page.

[Bob Norris]

Bar Fly is an program for Macs which typesets abc files to produce sheet music. It also has the ability to play them through a midi interface. There is a sample of a Wheatstone Aeola available for download somewhere (I forget where) which makes the playback sound mostly like a concertina, though without much nuance.

 

That lets me out, 7 PC's here in the office

[Marien]

Hi Rob,

 

There are lots of packages in which you can edit dots with a midi sample for an instrument. Midi samples

for different instruments can be linked to the scores, and when you play the different instruments you will hear differences. To my idea, the quality of the instrument sounds depend on the quality of these samples. It is difficult to have an idea of what you hear on your PC.

 

One thing that might be good is to connect your PC to a hifi audio system (maybe not for you, but at least the loudspeaker set connected to my PC does not produce the best sounds).

 

If you play the same volume all the time, then you may select "organ" or "mouth organ", if there are no samples for accordian, concertina or bag pipes. Sometimes the Organ midi instrument sounds more like a concertina than an organ.

 

Obviously a concertina or bag pipe differs from a stringed instrument, where the volume is fading away after the "hitting the string". In my computer the sound of a bagpipe or a concertina simply is there or it is not, in one steady volume, not fading away. It does not sound very nice and in reality people tend to vary the volume by blowing or pushing more or less hard. The feel you bring in the music by pushing gentle or powerful, creating your own vibrato and trying to express a certain mood, that is not easy to guess for a computer program. You cannot express that easily in the dots.

 

Maybe playing the instrument is better then listening to a computer pogram. To me a composer program may help to get an idea how a melody could be played, or to print dots of a tune that´s in my head for fellow players. The best software for making music may already be available for free in your brains.

 

Happy sessions,

Marien