CC1 - Semester 2 - Week 5

Naturalisation

For this week, I took a MIDI file for the song "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits and naturalised it. Most of my work was to process the guitar part (particularly the last solo of the tune). I mostly modified the velocities, durations, and starting points (groove) of the notes.
Here is the ORIGINAL MIDI part also available in .cpr format for Cubase) ..
and HERE is my modified version of the tune. (and its .cpr file)

Naturalisation might come handy in many cases, firstly to add the spice of "human mistakes" to the artificial result of machines providing simulations of musical pieces. Nevertheless, many of MIDI files these days are already played by a person and they originally do have the human error within their structure. Still, there are many corrections needed to make the MIDI file sound as close as possible to the original song.
Besides, in many electronic compositions there is a huge need of "groove" which could just be provided by skillfully apply certain applications while producing the tune, for the final result to sound natural to ordinary audience.

References:
Christian Haines Creative Computing 1.2' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 21/08/2007
- Dire Straits, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dire_Straits) [Accessed: 06/09/2007]
- MIDI search engine, Music Robot (http://www.musicrobot.com/) [Accessed: 06/09/07]