Songwriting & Sound Engineering: An update to last weeks post about MIDI ruling indie music and another suggestion for sound recording software creators
Saturday, November 8th, 2008
After last weeks post about the new power of MIDI, I had another idea about how to incorporate my idea and hurry the future along…
The new power of MIDI rotates around the development of audio to MIDI conversion software, and I wrote last week that we would have to wait until a sound recording software maker like Apple or Adobe add this feature to their software packages like GarageBand, Adobe Audition, Logic, etc. in order for the full power of this to be seen, but it doesn’t have to be that way if some third party would create a new type of MIDI interface.
Let me explain.
A type of third party plug-in could be created that would work with every recording suite. It would work like this:
1. A microphone would record audio and convert it to MIDI in real time (this part is already done and you can download programs for free already).
2. Than a program (the program in question; not yet created) would take the MIDI newly being recorded from the audio and reconstitute it as the MIDI cable and USB pluses of a real MIDI interface such as a keyboard, thereby mimicking just another MIDI controller (again, all in real time).
The result would be that every sound recording program would just accept this as another MIDI input device and… Ta-Da the future!
More detailed advice to computer programmers:
1. Take one of the audio to MIDI conversion programs already created (lease it, buy it, or hack it at first, I suspect these are a dime a dozen and never make money) and look at the MIDI file that it creates as it converts audio to MIDI in real time. The MIDI file can’t be any different than a database.
2. Read up on USB and MIDI protocol to learn to generate MIDI signals from the file being created by the Audio to MIDI software.
3. Market the whole thing to cool young indie musicians, and feel cool and young… and rich and a music pioneer.
I just can’t get over what a good idea this is. Imagine laying down the guitar track, then you want the melody layered on top by an oboe but you don’t have an oboe or know an oboe player so you just play the melody on guitar and it gets converted to an oboe instantly… or forget the guitar for melody, you just hum it into the microphone.
I am currently reading a book on songwriting, and it mentions a few unorthodox songwriting methods; apparently Mel Brooks (who can’t play a single goddamn instrument) wrote the score for his Tony award winning Broadway show The Producers HIMSELF by humming into a tape recorder, and well paid musicians then took it from there.
And that’s the future I dream of… I want to be able to score an entire Broadway show (Tony winning) without knowing how to play a single instrument.
Of course Mel Brooks could have used the software that I propose, and his humming would have been turned instantly into a grand piano or a string section or what have you- for demo purposes.
- J Roland Kelly
Thank God.
