Re: MIDI instrument for oboe d'amore

[Jan-Peter Voigt]

Hi Aaron,

just a question: Did you set "\transposition a"?
(http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.19/Documentation/notation/displaying-pitches.html#instrument-transpositions)

HTH
Jan-Peter

Am 30.04.19 um 09:33 schrieb Jacques Menu:
> Thanks Lukas and Aaron for your help.
>
> In fact, my use case is merely to listen to the MIDI file from within 
> Frescobaldi, to ear-proof the score. I don’t have any MIDI equipment, and 
> organ sound is fine for that purpose.
>
> I got the surprise that transposing a voice for the oboe d’amore in A, in 
> Lully’s « Dormez beaux yeux » for the needs of our oboes band, lead to quite 
> modern music being heard...
>
> What would best suit my need is a way to counter-balance the effect of 
> \transpose in the \midi block. This way, one would get both the printed score 
> and the MIDI pitches alright, even for instruments unknown to standard MIDI.
>
> Can that be done?
>
> JM
>
>> Le 29 avr. 2019 à 20:53, Aaron Hill <address@hidden> a écrit :
>>
>> On 2019-04-29 9:28 am, Jacques Menu wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>> I find oboe and french horn, but no oboe d’amore in A.6 MIDI instruments.
>>> Which other setting can I use for this instrument in A?
>>
>> General MIDI does not define such an instrument in the standard, and neither 
>> did GS nor XG.  In fact, the reed section of GM Level 2 has no extended 
>> patches at all.  (GS and XG do have variations like the "bass clarinet" and 
>> some alternate saxophone patches.)
>>
>> While it would not be standards-compliant, you could certainly select an 
>> alternate bank for the oboe patch with the intention that it means an oboe 
>> d'amore.  For your own usage, it would require you to manually configure 
>> your synth to load a suitable sound for the instrument.  For other folks 
>> using your MIDI file, their synths should fall back using a standard oboe 
>> patch which might work, except for lower notes that could be outside the 
>> playable range.
>>
>> From what I understand, an oboe d'amore has a timbre between the normal oboe 
>> and the cor anglais.  What I would do in my virtual instrument software is 
>> load up an oboe patch but then apply some EQ to soften the sound a bit so it 
>> is not quite as assertive.  For the fact that the playable range is lower, I 
>> might also need to mix in a little of the English horn patch to fill out the 
>> lower notes, which will require blending to balance the timbre.  But it must 
>> be noted that this work is beyond the scope of MIDI.
>>
>>> There’s no clarinet in A either.
>>
>> For better or worse, a "clarinet in A" is simply a clarinet as far as 
>> General MIDI is concerned.  In MIDI you typically specify the pitch you want 
>> played, not the note that is written that may sound higher or lower 
>> depending on the instrument.  As such, MIDI note 60 would most often refer 
>> to the equal-tempered middle C whose fundamental is approximately 261.63 Hz, 
>> and one should expect that any GM-compliant synth to render the pitch 
>> properly.  That said, I have encountered some sound libraries that 
>> intentionally transpose samples from their nominal pitches; and that 
>> requires manually transposing a MIDI track to compensate.  I dislike this 
>> practice as it is not very portable.
>>
>>
>> -- Aaron Hill
>>
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