When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again

[Sherry C]

Howdy Ralph,

Fabulous!

I really enjoyed listening to this piece, and hearing how you used so many tools that really enhance the performance. Mark would be proud of that. And the arrangement - wowza! Now on my playlist

As for the drums, I have a feeling I know what's up. When I checked the staff settings for the drums, it was a "manually entered" bank. I suspect your Clavinova has a "special" drum set/bank that has that drum roll "instrument" (pseudo-pitch) in it, which is not a part of the General MIDI specification. Thus, that same pseudo-pitch which gives such a nice drum roll on the Clavinova gives only a swish (or in my case, squelch) in GM (general MIDI). I used Staff/Split drums, and set that particular drum instrument to a simple acoustic snare, and it's much more fitting, though not as nice as the drum roll I'm sure you have in mind for that.

Thanks for sharing this piece with us. I love hearing your arrangements, and they do inspire me personally to learn new things. I noticed you left the piano open to the player. Mark was working to learn how to improv, and he really wanted to learn how to play jazz, so it's a fitting bit there, even if it's not what you really left the piano open for

It is also my desire for Notation Software and our community here to continue. I'm a part-owner of the company (Mark was the majority stockholder), and Mark's family has indicated that they want me to figure substantially in the decision about what to do with the business. I will do my best to ensure that support and further development do continue - Mark was always concerned about ongoing support for our customers in the event of any changes. I'm praying for wisdom in all this. Any decisions will not be for a little while, though, as Mark's family are dealing with a lot of items right now, and I'm trying to give them as much room as they need for that. I'll keep everyone posted in the announcements section as to what transpires.

Peace to us all,
Sherry

[rrayner]

Hi Sherry,

As always, thank you for your kind comments. You're right on the drum point -- I have taken the approach of finding what sounds good instrument-wise on the Clavinova, and then I peer under her covers to see what midi device settings she uses. I carry that back to my Notation Composer PC and plug in the midi device settings, which, of course, don't always agree with my PC's sound card.

I thought about attaching a .wav file, but I see that it is not one of the acceptable file types -- plus, it's almost 58MB.

Ralph

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,

Re. the .wav file - here's a WAV to mp3 converter that just came up -
http://download.cnet.com/Free-WAV-to...-10851477.html

It's free, and is supposed to give you options for converting .wav files to .mp3 files. If you have any problems getting an upload to the forum, just let me know.

Peace,
Sherry

[rrayner]

Thanks, Sherry. I tried the conversion, and the resultant MP3 file is less than 10% of the original WAV file. As would be expected, there is nowhere near the depth of sound on the MP3, but it is still a fairly good representation of the MIDI/WAV files. However, when I tried to attach it here, the upload failed. The compressed file is about 5.2 KB.

BTW, I'm very relieved to hear that you are talking to Mark's family about continuing on with his legacy. Losing Mark is devastating. Losing the product, that he so lovingly created, would be very sad. I, and I'm sure, others, have spent a lot of time, with your help, learning how to use Composer, and I for one would not look forward to having to start over again with a different application. Or, for that matter, losing the wonderful support that you have provided.

Ralph

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph (and everyone else),

Ralph, please try the mp3 upload again. I've just added that extension type for uploading. (We'd had issues in the past about filesizes, but from what I can tell now we don't need to worry about that so much these days.)

I agree that it would be a tremendous thing to be able to keep Mark's legacy alive in at least respect to the musical vision of his software. There are a number of possibilities at this point, and one of the things that we (his family and I) will be looking at in the coming weeks and months is how we can best achieve that. I'll certainly keep everyone posted about what's happening as I find out.

Peace,
Sherry

[rrayner]

Sherry -- I still get an "Upload of file failed." message. RRR

[Sherry C]

Hi Ralph,

Ok, tweaked (I hope) - please try again.

Sherry