14 December 2005

So here we are at waitrose.com. You never know, there might even be the odd update. My plans aren’t massively ambitious, but there’s a new poem on the Verse page, and I hope to update Sinfonia in the near-ish future and get back to some MIDI sequencing. However, I think we all know what the road to hell is paved with. For now, some bits and pieces have been removed from the site, either for revision, or because they were too embarrassingly poor even for the internet.

26 August 2003

New to the MIDI page is the third movement of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 1, Allegro comodo. This is a surprisingly gentle movement, mostly swinging along rather than offering the propulsive symphonic scherzo one might expect, given the toughly argumentative and dramatic outer movements. Perhaps the inspiration comes more from Brahms’s intermezzo-like third movements, but it’s the symphony’s most indepedent, innovative movement formally. There isn’t really a Trio section – the contrastive middle chunk, between the Minuet or Scherzo parts -- we expect from the classical symphony; instead Nielsen takes a theme we’ve already heard, the most ‘punchy’ part of the opening section (first heard at 1:25), slows it down to an Andante and turns it into a sort of solemn, brief brass chorale. (This section is often taken very slowly by conductors, and I must confess that as I’ve worked on the piece I’ve gradually sunk well below Nielsen’s metronome marking, of which I can’t make musical sense.) When the opening material returns, it’s no simple da capo (repeating the opening part from the top, as usual in the classical Minuet and Trio), but is completely recomposed and develops freely. The ‘pseudo-Trio’ returns, before a much faster, deliciously throwaway coda.

OK, so the site’s been pretty dead lately. There’s a reason for that, which is that I haven’t been very interested in it. C’est la vie.

24 May 2003

Oops! There’s a note missing from one layer of the trombones in Sinfonia and Sinfonietta 3.6. (Probably in 3.5 too, but I hadn’t noticed.) I’ll update the archives ASAP; in the meantime users with Vienna or other soundfont editing software: look in the Instrument Pool for the entry "Conn 6H rev1". Select the "Middle F11" sub-entry and increase the pitch range for this sample downwards by one semitone to the C#.

18 May 2003

Added the second movement of Nielsen’s First Symphony to the MIDI page. Hey, it’s only a year or so since the last installment!

16 April 2003

As promised, Sinfonia 3.6 and Sinfonietta 3.6 are now available. This new release has just minor changes, mostly to optimize the soundfonts for the Audigy 2 (and Audigy) soundcard. Users of the SB Live may find that some instruments (e.g. the flute and violin) now sound too “dull”: the Audigy series seem to find more information in high frequencies. Live users may want to fire up Vienna (or equivalent) and change the filter cutoff levels, either at Preset or Instrument levels. To minimize problems with note cut-off when the polyphony runs out, I’ve also simplified the string orchestra a bit to reduce its hunger for polyphony; the loss of one layer doesn't seem to harm the timbre appreciably, especially with the new filtering. But there are still times in my MIDI sequences when there are just too many notes, and one needs to start rendering some MIDI tracks to audio to prevent cutoff. The current Audigy 2 drivers are a vast improvement in this area, but I still seem to run out of polyphony faster than I did in the days of LiveWare 3.

Incidentally, I’ve also tweaked a couple more MIDI sequences: the first movement of Nielsen’s Symphony no. 1 (and I’m going to start work on the second movement again, which I started but got sidetracked), and the Allegrissimo of Stenhammar’s Serenade for Orchestra – I’ve yet to do a bit more work on that one.

14 April 2003

Updated the MIDI sequence of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, which I felt was a bit sub-par. I’ve just upgraded my soundcard to an Audigy 2 Platinum EX (this is the one that comes with an external box with all sorts of inputs and outputs, including a powered headphone amp with its own volume control - I like that). It’s a much better product than the Audigy 1, I think -- performs well, doesn’t dislike my AMD/VIA setup which was always problematic for the original Audigy, and has good drivers. Nice to see Creative moving in the right direction. I still find the handling of MIDI note cut-off isn’t as good as on the old LiveWare 3, but it’s the best the Audigy series’ drivers have managed. I’ve revised Sinfonia’s string orchestra to minimize the problems with running out of polyphony, and should be uploading new versions of the soundfont archives this week.

9 April 2003

Over the last few months I’ve been revising my sequence of Brahms’s Tragic Overture, which I think is pretty much done now, so I’ve uploaded the new version. It was one of my early efforts, done before I got Cakewalk, and it was fairly primitive in quite a few respects. I hope this is a bit more musical - generally speaking there’s more detail in the expression marks, a more flexible sense of line, some changes of balance and more incisive rhythms.

I haven’t been writing lately, sorry about that.

3 January 2003

Yes, I’m still alive – just monumentally lazy. I’ve got a new poem for you. I have to admit, I’m increasingly diffident about uploading things like this – the whole point of having this site was to tempt me to write, but if anything it’s made me all the more inhibited. Anyhow, though I wasn’t conscious of it when I started writing it, this is a sort of unofficial remake, much simplified, of W. H. Auden’s ‘Lullaby’, crossed with bits of Eliot’s ‘La figlia che piange’, a couple of poems I guess I was trying to write out of my system. I call it Waifs and Strays.

4 September 2002

Creative have released new drivers for their Audigy soundcard under Windows XP and 2000. These are said to fix problems with soundfont playback; unfortunately, for me, they seem to exacerbate an existing one, where notes get cut off when they shouldn’t - something especially noticeable in passages of short repeated notes like drumrolls and tremolandi (but also in passages with lots of legato) which play correctly on the Live card, and better at least in the Audigy drivers of November 2001. The problems arise so commonly that they really can’t be worked around, and I have to advise people to use the previous driver update of November 2001.

Regular visitors will know that my predictions as to when (or even whether) new things are to be uploaded tend to be a bit optimistic. I still have a couple of short stories on the boil, that shouldn’t take too much longer.

18 August 2002

Having finally finished a film that was in my camera for more than two years (!), I’ve uploaded three extra snaps of Wibbly Wobbley Lane on the English place names picture corner (they’re at the bottom of the page).

I’m not sure if Oxfordshire’s going to yield such rich results as East Anglia, but there’s a couple of promising spots on the map that I’ve been meaning to visit, such as Horton-cum-Studley, which is probably where they make all those, err, thrillers that Channel 5 in the UK shows on Friday nights (you know, the ones that always seem to star Shannon Tweed and feature very little tweed) – unless they're made at Glympton Assarts Farm, which is near Woodstock... or possibly Tackley Park. Perhaps what the Oxfordshire countryside specializes in is innuendo. You can be sure I’ll bring you the results of my inquiries. Never let it be said that FW lacks class!

9 August 2002

After quite a long hiatus I’m drifting back into writing a little. The first of three bits of short fiction I hope to be able to get finished this month is called ‘Likeness’ and was written in a couple of bursts, the first a few months ago, the latter part (plus revisions) this week. It’s a strange little fable, and I don’t pretend I entirely understand what it’s about. Originally I had plans for it to be a good bit longer, but it turned out it was the situation I was interested in, and I didn’t have any real urge to develop a proper plot out of it. I think what influenced it primarily was reading some of Italo Calvino’s short fiction (in the English translations, mostly by William Weaver, and published in the UK by Vintage). And in fact, a specific folktale motif I allude to towards the end appears in one of the stories in Calvino’s collection of Italian Folktales.

That’s not to say that this little piece is terribly like his work – it certainly doesn’t aspire to his philosophical substance and exactitude. And as a matter of fact, I’ve remembered since writing the above that the first sentence came into my head while I was watching David Lynch’s Lost Highhway on video.

18 July 2002

New MIDI sequences! I have Nielsen’s Opus 1 for you – not his first ever composition of course, but the first to be performed in public and receive an official Opus number. It’s the Little Suite for string orchestra, dating from 1888 (when Nielsen was 23) and revised the following year. Of course we’re a long way from the sound world of the mature symphonies: this is a smaller, lighter work, but actually it has plenty of Nielsen’s fingerprints – notably in the sinuously chromatic basslines spicing up his harmonic idiom. The first movement is the simplest, a slowish, solemn Prelude; the second is an impishly elegant Intermezzo with an irresistible waltz-like Trio section. But it’s in the finale that you can really hear the future symphonic master shaping up: it begins with a slow introduction that draws on the material of the first movement but recomposes it entirely, then takes off into a exuberant Allegro con brio. It’s full of melodic invention, but it’s also very well-worked structurally; the theme of the Präludium comes round once more, now with a triumphant nobility in the Allegro tempo, and the shape of that opening figure recurs once more in the last couple of bars. By now Nielsen has upped the tempo once more (at 6:12) to bring the whole suite to a joyful close.

22 June 2002

Uploaded fully revised versions of my sequences of Mozart’s Symphony no. 34 to the MIDI page. The most obvious changes are in the second movement, which I rethought pretty thoroughly; the outer movements are just spruced up a bit.

20 June 2002

Finally, the new version of Sinfonia (now at 3.5) is up. I’ve also updated Sinfonietta today to version 3.5. I’m looking into the possibility of a smallish patch from Sinfonietta 3.4 (not older versions, sorry) to 3.5, to save people having to redownload the whole thing, so if you’ve got Sinfonietta 3.4 you might want to hold off redownloading for a day or two. Last time I tried patchmaking software it all went a bit wrong – the patch turned out bigger than the original file, which doesn’t seem right – but I’ll have another go. A patch for the full Sinfonia from 3.2 to 3.5 might be possible too.

Many thanks to those who have enquired over the status of Sinfonia! I hope you find it worthwhile, and do email me with comments and suggestions

27 May 2002

Rest of the Haydn Symphony no. 76 has been revised now. In the third movement, the changes were the same sort of thing: tempo a little steadier, rhythms a bit crisper, more dynamic range. Listen out for the central Trio section, a deliciously deadpan waltz. – Incidentally, since I was mentioning the issue repeats in the Adagio, I should just say something about my practice of playing all repeats in the Da capo (the repeat of the outer section of the Minuet after the Trio). In the nineteenth century the tradition came in of omitting the repeats in the Da capo, which isn’t surprising given how much longer Scherzo movements were tending to get, as well as progressively further from their origins in dance music. But the classical manner was to play all repeats, and I think it’s structurally essential, especially with the first eight-bar section here, to do so.

The finale just needed perking up a bit (actually a lot: I’m quite shocked at how slow it used to be, listening to the original version at the Classical Archives – I must upload the new ones). It’s marked Allegro, ma non tropppo (fast, but not too fast). My original tempo was a bit too slow, more of an Allegretto, and not helped by some slack phrasing (basically, quite a lot of note lengths needed shortening, and the phrasing needed perkier accentuation). On the other hand, I’ve also heard this movement taken much too fast (Adam Fischer’s recording with the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra on Nimbus), so that its quirky humour and sense of poise gets jettisoned in favour of a not-very-interesting headlong hurtle for the finish line. I hope the balance here is about right.

Update: The Classical MIDI Connection has a new URL, the thoroughly intuitive www.classicalmidiconnection.com. Check it out – your one-stop shop for... I can’t be bothered to finish this sentence.

26 May 2002

Final (I think) versions of the first and second movements of the Haydn symphony are up, the other two to follow. The changes in the Allegro first movement are relatively subtle: more dynamics, crisper rhythms, a little more rubato, and a very fractionally broader tempo overall. Crisper rhythms mean you don’t need to rely on sheer speed, as I’ve sometimes made the mistake of doing, to generate impetus.

The revision of Adagio is more thoroughgoing. My tempo here was too fast and inflexible, and again a lot of the rhythms were slightly off, dynamics lacking in contrast, and there were various places where accompaniment figures were balanced too loudly against the solo lines. Having set a steadier tempo, I decided to omit the first repeat – I think on balance the movement goes better without it – but I’ve also uploaded an alternative performance with the repeat taken, for the completists among you. There is something to be said for including it: there’s a psychological satisfaction in the return to the opening material after the cadence, and perhaps it adds something to the magical, haunting shift to the minor when the woodwind and horns are introduced for the first time (1:19 in the shorter version, 2:36 with the repeat). But on the other hand, like me you may feel the main subjects, repeated and varied several times throughout the piece, come back one time too many if the repeat’s played. Take your pick.

That moment where we shift from major to minor, and the wind instruments transform the colouring of the movement, is characteristic: rich, complex effects produced with strikingly economical means. Haydn takes his sweetly innocent main theme (or pair of themes), varies and decorates them with ease and grace, never straying far from the original shape or harmony of the melody, and interrupts them with minor-key sections of a much darker hue – the first initially hushed and withdrawn, in the tonic (B flat) minor, the other dramatic and fiery and lurching into G minor). Yet the main melody returns, as imperturbable as ever, each time, and is finally developed more freely in an extended coda that manages to integrate the different moods of the movement, then ends as unemphatically and seeming-artlessly as one can imagine. – The writing in this movement is deceptively simple, and therefore all the harder to sequence in a halfway-musical manner; I’ve done the best I can.

16 May 2002

It’s been preying on my mind for some time (hey, when your mind is a low-grade sort of mind, all sorts of stuff can prey on it) that the Haydn Symphony no. 76 sequence has all sorts of things wrong with it – notably, apart from the first movement, the tempi are all wrong: inner movements too fast, finale turgid – and some of the phrasing leaves a lot to be desired. I’m doing a bit of tweaking at the moment; just uploaded a version of the last movement that at least fixes the worst things, though it’ll be further updated. Ideas for other things to put up on the site are sloshing around in this thing I call my head, but when I’ll get around to implementing them is another matter entirely.

Update, 18 May: This rejigging of some of the MIDIs is ongoing: another one I’m sorting out at the moment is the middle movement of the Mozart, where my tempo was bloody-mindedly fast. Partly I suppose I got a bee in my bonnet about the marking in the score Andante di molto, where someone in one of the early sources has clarified Più tosto Allegretto – i.e. really rather fast for a ‘slow’ movement. (I know of no reason to ascribe that annotation to Mozart himself, mind you.) Certainly some conductors take it ludicrously, lugubriously sloooowly, but I definitely over-compensated: what’s more, some of my rhythmic pointing just isn’t crisp or ‘alive’ enough. Just uploaded a version that improves these things, though again I may well tweak further.

It’s interesting how these total misjudgements happen. Partly I suppose one just gets impatient and decides things are finished before they are (this must happen a lot to the people who code operating systems for Microsoft), but perhaps it’s also a matter of being so close to the project that you get absorbed in the details and fail to notice when the overall picture doesn’t look as it’s supposed to. Still, at least, one of the great things about MIDI is that you can keep changing your mind.

19 April 2002

Sinfonietta 3.4 is up on the Sinfonia page (the larger soundfont, Sinfonia itself, will be slightly delayed). It incorporates a couple of new instruments I’ve used since version 3.2a (v. 3.3 wasn’t released), and fixes or improves various other things. There are also some new mp3 demos – biggish in file size because they’re at 192kps, but hopefully of vague interest to someone. Note that for the soundfont file itself, I’ve changed archiving software from sfpack to sfArk version 2. It’s a self-extracting executable, so you won’t need to download any other software.

Update, 22 April: there seem to be some filtering inconsistencies between the way Sinfonia plays on the Audigy – where the new version was developed – and the Live. This is particularly obvious on the solo violin and also affects the flute. I’ll look into this; if need be I’ll provide two versions of certain instruments, unless I can understand and resolve the issues.

14 April 2002

A new MIDI project: I enjoyed doing Nielsen's Second Symphony so much that I thought I'd go back and sequence No. 1 as well. The first movement is up, with the characteristically expressive tempo direction "Allegro orgoglioso", with pomp and weight as well as forward drive – and, as is often pointed out, with a big C major chord to start it off, though the symphony is in the key of G minor. In terms of conducting / sequencing, the big thing to negotiate in this movement is its rather wide range of tempi, which need to sound organically related: the more lyrical second subject (first heard at 0:57) is marked Poco meno mosso, and later relaxes further into a Molto tranquillo (1:21); but soon it leaps forward, marked 'much faster' than the opening (Assai più vivo del Tempo I, 1:33), and these three centres of attraction in terms of pace will exert their influence over the whole of the movement. It’s rather easy to let the piece fall apart if conductors overindulge or get the tempo relationships wrong.

I’ve corrected and improved a few things in my Sinfonia soundfont as well, and will update a new version (honest!) this week. I’ll be switching from sfpack to sfArk, by the way, for the archiving: it seems to be better supported these days. More details shortly.

I want to apologise for the lack of new content in the scribbling department this year. Unfortunately, a pack of mischievous Not Funny Any More Elves have stolen the amusement-producing parts of my brain, replacing them with a reconstituted cream substitute some of you might remember from the 1970s and 80s, Angel Delight. (Usually pallid pink or off-orange – and tasted funny, but isn't a very funny thing to have in your brain, as I’m sure you can imagine.) I’ve hired a crack team of Often Vaguely Cooperative Pixies to track down these naughty elves, so hopefully they’ll be able to retrieve my comedithalamus; then all I’ll need is a surgeon willing to take a chance on what is an unusually delicate, and frequently messy, operation to reinsert it (which requires a broken bottle, six wooden spoons with pictures of actor Billy-Bob Thornton on the backs, and quite a lot of anaesthetic). Watch this space, till your eyes swim and you decide to watch something else, like some goldfish or the telly.

3 January 2002

A new nonsense poem today, my first in a while. What inspired it was seeing an omnibus of Spike Milligan’s children’s writing (A Children’s Treasury of Milligan (Virgin Books, 2001)), in Border’s. I think my favourite book as a child was his The Bald Twit Lion (to give it its full title, ‘The Sad Happy Ending Story of the Bald Twit Lion, a Story for Very All Ages’), and I liked the silly poems in A Book of Milliganimals too. Both of those are in this anthology, which has nice colour reproductions of his illustrations too. Most of my comic stuff has the memory of Spike rattling away somewhere in the background, and this one is no exception.

Postscript, 27 February 2002: so farewell, Spike. You were a very, very silly and peculiar person. I’m sorry you weren’t a happier person more of the time, but however hard won it was, you made lots of us laugh in a profoundly undignified manner. Thanks for that.

1 January 2002

And a happy new year to y’all too! First up for 2002 is the finale of my effort at Nielsen's Second Symphony on the music page. The last of the Four Temperaments is the ‘sanguine’: a rollicking, bull-in-a-china-shop main theme that goes headlong and heedless for much of the movement – softened by a more playful second theme, but crashing headlong into the buffers later on. After a moment’s shocked silence, the movement picks itself up by developing the second subject, slowly and ruminatively. After a while jollity returns and the whole symphony ends with a slightly more measured, march-like version of the finale’s opening tune. (I’ve tweaked a few things in the sequencing of the earlier movements too, so new versions of all are uploaded.)

jd

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