Re: midi articulation

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Carl Sorensen <address@hidden> writes:

>>Midi Sounds
>>__________
>>
>>I¹m no midi expert, but I¹ve used it over the years. My impression is
>>that tools like Apple Logic, Sibelius, and so on, provide their own
>>sounds, which are unrelated, in particular, to midi, which only gives a
>>slight clue to the desired sound. To give a reasonable midi result, I
>>believe we must go that route: provide a sound library, and a player. A
>>user would then be able to write a lilypond score, and get a reasonable
>>audio playback of that score. We could generate midi as we have always
>>done, but the midi would have much better articulation and dynamics than
>>it currently does.
>
> I really don't think this is the right approach.  LilyPond should not be
> developing sound libraries or players.  There already exist high-quality
> sound libraries, and full-featured midi players.  Why should LilyPond
> reinvent the wheel?  What are the weaknesses and/or limitations of, for
> example, Qsynth or Timidity++?

I agree with Carl.  It is sufficient for Lilypond to produce performance
information in MIDI format.  Users can pick from a wide variety of
MIDI-interpreting synthesizers such as soundfont players, LV2
synthesizers, external General MIDI devices and more.

> I'm quite on board with recommending a particular midi player and/or sound
> font.  But I don't see how creating a new synthesizer is necessary (or
> desirable) to improve articulation and dynamics.  While I'm not an expert,
> I would expect that the appropriate MIDI commands can be embedded in a
> MIDI file created by LilyPond, and we just need to make sure a known good
> sound library and player are available.

Integrated score editing environments like Frescobaldi could probably
include a General MIDI soundfont and a MIDI player, but I don’t think
Lilypond should ensure the availability of MIDI players.  It already
doesn’t care what DVI or PDF viewer is installed (if any).

Lilypond currently doesn’t generate all performance information that the
MIDI format allows.  When MIDI itself becomes the limiting factor (which
it is not now) it may make sense to also offer OSC support.

~~ Ricardo