Re: Doubling a note makes MIDI output louder

[David Wright]

On Sun 09 Jul 2023 at 09:57:23 (-0400), mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
> On Sun, 9 Jul 2023, Knute Snortum wrote:
> 
> > I'm not sure exactly how one would deal with this problem, other than with
> > tags.  Maybe \parenthesize could not produce MIDI output?  Or is there a way
> 
> Is that a problem?  If these are two notes in different MIDI channels,
> then the MIDI output is just reflecting what you wrote - two notes played
> at once that happen to be the same pitch - and deleting one would be
> incorrect.  If the MIDI output is really just a single "louder" note (what
> does that mean - higher velocity?) then it implies some deliberate
> detection of this case within LilyPond, which might reasonably be
> adjustable.

Back in the 1960s, I remember seeing an article pinned up in the
school music room (no social media back then) about making orchestras
more efficient. Instead of a dozen first violins, just amplify a
single player instead; the same across the strings alone could
drastically cut costs (wages, travel, stage size, etc).

Of course, it was just a joke, and everyone knows that one player
amplified does not sound anything like an ensemble of a dozen
players. But that's the problem here. When two real voices happen on
the same note, the result doesn't sound like one louder voice, yet
that's the effect you get from MIDI,¹ where the "two" voices are
being generated from the same source.

¹ My experience is limited to MIDI voices being mixed by PCs,
  not specialist equipment.

Cheers,
David.