

Stringless Violin to Bring Soul to MIDI Music 24
lperdue writes "Musicians complain that MIDI may be easy, but the results can be more than a bit cold and soul-less. This story from New Scientist says that Stanford Professor Charles Nichols believes his violin, sans strings will put the emotions back into MIDI music."
Oxymoron (Score:2, Funny)
Soul? MIDI? Have we ever heard these two word togethe before?
Re:Oxymoron (Score:1)
Nice try, but too specific (Score:3, Informative)
Never mind what a guitarist would think. Then again, they already have much more flexibility -- with straight-ahead electric pickups, acoustic microphones and so forth.
Hazarding a guess, I can't see many other violin players picking this up and saying it'd be all that useful. I'm not a musician, so this is just an opinion (uninformed to boot), but I have taken some public performance classes with jazz guitar and whatnot. I don't know how a classical fiddler would actively choose this over an electrified violin -- surely he or she would have to spend a lot of time finessing the MIDI code that something like this would generate.
Wish him luck, surely, but don't hold your breath...
And how does this stop people from putting crappy MIDI on their websites ?
The real benefit (Score:2, Interesting)
For someone like me, who lives in a small apartment where disturbing the neighbors is a concern, being able to play the violin, with all the tactile feedback of the real thing, yet without making a racket, would be extremely desirable.
Electric guitarists, keyboardists, and drummers have had the ability to practice using headphones for years. I believe there are also attachments for the trumpet and saxophone to allow "silent" playing. This innovation (if it works as well as the article claims) just extends that ability to a new instrument.
Re:The real benefit (Score:1)
Re:The real benefit (Score:1)
Re:The real benefit (Score:1)
Sure, but I'm wondering about cost and usability.
With this stringless violin, they're going to great pains to recreate the feel. While that may work, the cost to a user would be great.
Now, if all you had to do was stick somthing in the bell of my horn and switch out the reed and/or mouthpiece for something else, then I'd be much happier (having my own keys to play) than having to get an entire set-up.
Jesus, you're right (Score:1)
Thank you -- you've made me see in a flash an overriding point to the exercise. I stand corrected.
Re:The real benefit (Score:1)
Re:The real benefit (Score:2)
and that, as you say, may be the real beauty here. practice quality without pissing off the parents/neighbors/housemates.
I don't see much point (Score:1, Insightful)
In the ~15 years or so that midi has been out, wave compresssion has improved and hard drives are gigantic. I just don't see much call for midi going into the future.
People don't download midi files anymore, they download mp3s.
But Midi is not Music (Score:1)
Midi is better explained if you think of it almost like a language or a protocol (...kind of). You can have several devices controlled from one source using midi signals sent from the source. You can also change the parameters of the controls of several devices but it's all done from the source.
Here's a bad example:
I have 3 devices, a drum machine, a keyboard and a sample sequencer. All of these devices can send and recieve midi information. The control or source device is the sequencer. This is connected to the drum machine and then to the keyboard. Midi makes it possible for me to program some loops that the drum machine will play and some tunes that the keyboard will play, all without having to touch the drum machine or keyboard. (Of course, there is some setting up to be done)
That's what midi really is. When you download a midi file off the net it's just a control file that uses your own soundcard to make the noise.
Re:But Midi is not Music (Score:2)
MIDI can be used quite effectively by a musician to control very detailed aspects of the music, but to do so goes beyond the lowest common denominator of the General MIDI spec. Therefore, a professional use of MIDI will not allow you to substitute an arbitrary sound card, or even an arbitrary professional level synth for the particular one which the musician used when recording or writing the MIDI file.
MIDI gets a bad rap because of General MIDI. Yes, it has some problems (too piano-centric unless you use the unreserved CC's and sysex), but the point is that it provides ample mechanisms to correct any initial flaws.
Hmmph. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmph. (Score:1)
I need one of these (Score:2)
actually, on second thout, withoput the strings, you really dont know what note you're playing. there's no visual reference to guide you, it looks like. probably monstrous to play, now i think of it.
Check out a similar project (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)