Real or is it Synthisized???

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One of the complaints I hear a lot by live musicians is the "tin" sound of midi realizations. I provided one such recording to the orchestra in preparation of the premiere of my symphony and was dismayed at how few of the orchestral members even listened to part of it, let alone any of it. Granted, my own midi realizations (which you can hear on MySpace) are not quite professional quality (far from it) - but music programming (turning midi into quality sound files) is an art all its own and not one I've spent enough time with.

I did come across another composer in the film industry (well, ok, I'm not actually in the in the film industry...yet). Alain Mayrand wrote a bit about recording a piece of film music with an example of voice over recording combined with synth sounds. The recording is amazing especially consider he spent about 15 mins total time creating this 10 second sound bite.

As for my own work, here are a couple of snippets from the 4th movement of my symphony, "Don't Tell Your Secrets to the Fence." One is the midi realization, the other is the concert recording. It's pretty obvious (to me) which is which, but that has more to do with factors other than the synth sound.



What do YOU think?

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