Slashdot Mirror
Concert to be Performed from Beyond the Grave
rtphokie writes "Raleigh, NC based Zenph Studios is hosting a live concert performed by two piano virtuosi long since dead. Zenph developed software which digitally transcribes performances even from the scratchy recordings. A more faithful transcription of timing, key and pedal pressure is achieved using Yamaha's high resolution version of MIDI."
Coupling a performance like this with a 3D Projected likeness of the artist would be mindblowing. The projection wouldn't even have to be very good.. but being able to visualize the person while hearing the digital "passion" in their notes.. live.. would be something amazing.
... not that I'm surprised by a Slashdot (or submitted article) being misleading, but there's not much to crow about here.
We're talking about a slightly more modern idea of the old player pianos. Stuff that matters indeed..
This story is pretty low on the accuracy scale, at least from a technical standpoint. I don't think they're talking about some new form of MIDI as the teaser statement implies. The author of the article just seems to think that MIDI is "high-def", which is pretty funny, actually. Especially considering how slow MIDI's transmission speed is.
Part of the charm of Glenn Gould's recordings stems from the fact that you can hear him humming along with the music if you listen carefully. I guess he drove recording techs nuts.
Attempts to transcribe polyphonic notes are typically only 80 percent successful, says New Scientist. About 10 percent of polyphonic notes are missing and another 10 percent are mistranscribed, which can give the replicated music a hollowness or discordance.
Zenph Studios, a software company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, claims that it has found a solution to the problem, although it refuses to say how for commercial reasons.
By taking the musical score into account?
This was done 12 years ago with Gershwin
That project was similar, but it's not quite the same thing. The Gershwin recordings were done using player piano rolls recorded by Gershwin himself - i.e.: his performances were already in a MIDI-like format - whereas this project is starting from the raw audio recordings of Gould and Cortot and creating MIDI files. In both cases the "concert" featuring dead performers' MIDI files is the headline grabbing story.
The Danish Royal Academy of Music actually has a bunch of player piano transcriptions of...who was it? My violin teacher told me (he was trained there). I think it was Rachmaninoff.
Essentially, they hooked up a player piano on record, and had him play. The result is a tape which is essentially the analog equivalent of MIDI. If you know someone in the archives and they're feeling nice, they'll still pull 'em out and put 'em in a player piano for you.
I love the idea that they can transcribe polyphonic notes with such clarity. I think that being able to hear these piano masters from a real piano and not just recording would be a great experience, I wish that I could see it live.
One of the huge benefits I see is that now electronic music artists can incorporate classical pieces as done by the actual artist instead of a poor transcription. I don't know if anyone has heard tracks such as Gotti's Revenge, but I find that electronic music that integrates classical or otherwise note heavy songs has a much better sound.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Microtiming is control of event timing, but not necessarily *absolute* timing., e.g. the inter-onset time between two near-coincident notes.
Virtuoso pianists (typically having 15-20 years of formal training starting at age 2-4 years) have exceptional control of microtiming.
Non-virtuosos are very sloppy when it comes to timing. Non-musicians are even worse. Each category is like an order-of-magnitude difference.
There are plenty of virtuoso pianists who are totally dead in the "emotion" department.
A few years ago I heard a CD made with this (or a similiar) technology.
The way the technology was described to me was as follows: as you know a piano works by having a small hammer attached to each key. The recording technology has a modified piano where below each hammer is a pool of mercury. When the key is struck the hammer enters the pool, completing an electrical circuit, this causes a line to be drawn (???) on a piece of paper. Another modified piano will read the piece of paper like a player piano.
We listened to music performed by Richard Strauss. It was very cool.
If this could be extended to vocal performances then I know of the perfect recording to utilize. I heard it on the Dr Demento show many years ago, it was an operatic aria by a castratti, a "modified" human. The vocal power was that of a man but the range encompassed both that of a woman and a man. Quite an eery performance when you considered that the singer paid a huge sacrifice to become a great singer. Many operas were written so that only castratti could perform certain roles and are now non-performable.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!