A good time for a mime joke.

Marcel Marceau dead at 84.

Here are his last words: [...]

Ha ha! I was going to post a joke about playing a mouth organ and singing at the same time, but this is a family board.

Hey, they are all getting into the act...maybe it is lucrative? A real goldmime, perhaps?

This one is only $525 or so, and even manages to dispense with the keys.

http://www.roland.com/products/en/MT-90U/

Shall we sing at your place, or mime?

Ian

Talk about hijacking a thread !!

Yes, and a dysfunctional family at that, 124!

But most of us still manage to keep the "fun" in "dysfunctional".

Ian

To get back to on topic...

The thing that confuses me the most is, why audio backing at all? Because of the uneditable nature of them, surely professionally produced SMF's are the FAR more useful option?

I would have thought that recording accurate audio backing tracks would be MUCH more expensive to produce than MIDI tracks. Even if you assume that Yamaha (or whoever) hire great musicians to PLAY the drum and MIDI guitar Parts (and all the keyboards, of course), you don't need a fully equipped studio to do it in. This has GOT to drastically reduce the cost of production. Not to mention the cost of a real horn section, backing singers etc..

Now, after all that, you end up with a product that can easily be edited by the customer, he can easily mute out parts he wants to play himself (or herself!), he can change the sounds if he wants, restructure, basically anything he wants.

So.... WHY?

A Pro musician plays an instrument. This does not include drums, comb and tissue paper, triangle, two sticks on a coffee can etc. (ha, ha). The Pro musician also plays a variety of musical styles and is able to jam on the spot with other musicians, period.

Any other method probably means you are an entertainer or at best an extremely lazy musician and if you are a musician and won't play your instrument. I mean pathetically lazy if you fit this description.

When us dinosaurs are all gone no one will care either way how its done..

Benefits of MIDI files:

MIDI files are petite, often 10K or less. They download from a web page in no time and fit easily on a USB flashdrive. MIDI files are ideal any time you want music to start playing right away.

Limitations of MIDI files:

Because they sound a little different when played on dissimilar sound cards or tone generators, there is no guarantee that those heavenly horns won't sound like tooting trumpets on the next person's (or your next) instrument. Finding and/or making good ones can be difficult for some, if they aren't proficient arranger players, or they can't find (or are able to edit) a suitable style.



Pros of audio files:

They can reproduce exact sounds with CD quality, including all the tiny details like ambient noise, squeaks etc., although Yamaha's Mega and Korg's DNC are gaining ground in that area.


Cons of audio files:

They are large! They can take up 10MB or more per minute of sound. Even with high-speed Internet connections, a simple audio file can take several minutes to download. They are difficult (sometimes impossible) to edit.

Of course, you can use MP3 instead of Wav, but, sometimes the quality of MP3 files makes some recording engineers and performers hesitate, and they are still larger than MIDI files, but, overall they seem to provide a good compromise that most people are happy with.


Just like one's choice of arranger or workstation, or pick of manufacturer, it all comes down to determining and using the tool that best suits one's needs.

Some performers, including a few SZ'ers, use a combination of MIDI and Audio(usually MP3).

Ian

Just use whatever you want THERE ARE NO RULES!