Any musicians on the forum?

I very much enjoy playing guitar and a bit of ukulele and a wee bit of harmonica. It was a great way to pass time durring the pandemic.

I play mostly blues, I enjoy both listening and playing.

My greatest accomplishment was convincing my wife to take up the ukulele during the pandemic. We have fun playing and singing songs with the kids that we teach in our classes.
 
I downloaded one of 1000's of midi files off the internet that are really well made.

https://audiomack.com/paco-dennis/song/14195524


About Midi...

"MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and has been the rage among electronic musicians"

"The Method of MIDI​

Much in the same way that two computers communicate via modems, two synthesizers communicate via MIDI. The information exchanged between two MIDI devices is musical in nature. MIDI information tells a synthesizer, in its most basic mode, when to start and stop playing a specific note. Other information shared includes the volume and modulation of the note, if any. MIDI information can also be more hardware specific. It can tell a synthesizer to change sounds, master volume, modulation devices, and even how to receive information. In more advanced uses, MIDI information can to indicate the starting and stopping points of a song or the metric position within a song. More recent applications include using the interface between computers and synthesizers to edit and store sound information for the synthesizer on the computer.

The basis for MIDI communication is the byte. Through a combination of bytes a vast amount of information can be transferred. Each MIDI command has a specific byte sequence. The first byte is the status byte, which tells the MIDI device what function to perform. Encoded in the status byte is the MIDI channel. MIDI operates on 16 different channels, numbered 0 through 15. MIDI units will accept or ignore a status byte depending on what channel the machine is set to receive. Only the status byte has the MIDI channel number encoded. All other bytes are assumed to be on the channel indicated by the status byte until another status byte is received."

The files are very small averaging about 100k. They only contain data to trigger a sound bank full of instruments. I produced this song with Propellerhead "Reason" that has very good instrument samples. I am about 99% sure it was constructed by a very good piano player playing their midi keyboard into a computer. The computer recorded the data and made a small midi file.

You probably have a midi file player on your computer right now. See how your computer "plays" this file

https://freemidi.org/getter-1117 ... you will probably get a popup that asks you to choose how to play it. The default is usually Microsoft player, but maybe you have another player you can choose.
 
Paco Dennis said:
I downloaded one of 1000's of midi files off the internet that are really well made.

https://audiomack.com/paco-dennis/song/14195524


About Midi...

"MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and has been the rage among electronic musicians"

"The Method of MIDI​

Much in the same way that two computers communicate via modems, two synthesizers communicate via MIDI. The information exchanged between two MIDI devices is musical in nature. MIDI information tells a synthesizer, in its most basic mode, when to start and stop playing a specific note. Other information shared includes the volume and modulation of the note, if any. MIDI information can also be more hardware specific. It can tell a synthesizer to change sounds, master volume, modulation devices, and even how to receive information. In more advanced uses, MIDI information can to indicate the starting and stopping points of a song or the metric position within a song. More recent applications include using the interface between computers and synthesizers to edit and store sound information for the synthesizer on the computer.

The basis for MIDI communication is the byte. Through a combination of bytes a vast amount of information can be transferred. Each MIDI command has a specific byte sequence. The first byte is the status byte, which tells the MIDI device what function to perform. Encoded in the status byte is the MIDI channel. MIDI operates on 16 different channels, numbered 0 through 15. MIDI units will accept or ignore a status byte depending on what channel the machine is set to receive. Only the status byte has the MIDI channel number encoded. All other bytes are assumed to be on the channel indicated by the status byte until another status byte is received."

The files are very small averaging about 100k. They only contain data to trigger a sound bank full of instruments. I produced this song with Propellerhead "Reason" that has very good instrument samples. I am about 99% sure it was constructed by a very good piano player playing their midi keyboard into a computer. The computer recorded the data and made a small midi file.

You probably have a midi file player on your computer right now. See how your computer "plays" this file

https://freemidi.org/getter-1117 ... you will probably get a popup that asks you to choose how to play it. The default is usually Microsoft player, but maybe you have another player you can choose.
Click to expand...
Pretty cool link; good writeup...Thanks!
 
Singing has always been in my world. I wrote music for my church choir. After marriage to a bassist we wrote music and lyrics for our band. I played piano, and sometimes bass. We had fun playing in this and that groups for many years. I miss singing with musicians, piling drums amps, and guitars in our cars and dragging the wires and mics and crap on and off stage....
Yes, it was hard and crazy but so much fun.
 
Sylkkiss said:
Singing has always been in my world. I wrote music for my church choir. After marriage to a bassist we wrote music and lyrics for our band. I played piano, and sometimes bass. We had fun playing in this and that groups for many years. I miss singing with musicians, piling drums amps, and guitars in our cars and dragging the wires and mics and crap on and off stage....
Yes, it was hard and crazy but so much fun.
Click to expand...
That sounds like a fun life. I used to play music with some friends and in a folk music song circle. I miss that. It was something I always looked forward to.
 
Really nice!!!!!! I will save this to my groovin' tunes. I have been off this forum to do property management, and it has completely destroyed my time to enjoy music. Sucks. I have to move 45 tons of gravel this next week, with a shovel, to keep my house from sliding down a hill. With my guitars in it. Wish I had more time to listen, but I'll be back!! Keep groovin, man, your music is (according to the young-uns, 'sick', lol!) Nice work. Wish you were next door, except you'd have a shovel in your hand instead of an axe...
 
NewRetire18 said:
Really nice!!!!!! I will save this to my groovin' tunes. I have been off this forum to do property management, and it has completely destroyed my time to enjoy music. Sucks. I have to move 45 tons of gravel this next week, with a shovel, to keep my house from sliding down a hill. With my guitars in it. Wish I had more time to listen, but I'll be back!! Keep groovin, man, your music is (according to the young-uns, 'sick', lol!) Nice work. Wish you were next door, except you'd have a shovel in your hand instead of an axe...
Click to expand...
Thnx...you be careful with those golden hands of yours. I can't count the # of times I have had to stop playing after getting hurt doing manual work. Man, it sounds like a real mess...and 45 tons is insane! "Take it Easy". 🎵 :)
 
I was just listening to "Tower of Power" still playing ( superbly ) after 50 years.


After high school ( 1970 ), two friends and I formed a band with a lead singer, three horn players ( trumpet, alto sax, trombone ). The trumpet player had played with "Tower" for awhile. We did a lot of this type of music, plus covers of Chicago, Blood Sweat and Tears, James Brown, Cold Sweat, originals, and other neat songs that the horn players would write parts for. I will look and see if I have any "live" backings with horns to give you an example of how/why I love playing in this genre.
This song is a funky soul tune that has some kind of horn sounding section in it that resembles the excitement of playing with horns. Not the greatest example but I only found about 40 backtracks.

Weird Horns​

https://audiomack.com/paco-dennis/song/weird-horns
 

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