MIDI Classics files can be shown with individual voices on separate lines.
Most guitarists know the frustration of looking at the sheet music of an unfamiliar tune and wondering what it will sound like. Will it be hard to play? Will it sound good? Will it be worth the time it will take to learn it?
Sabatine decided to use MIDI software and his personal computer to turn written notes into sound. MIDI is a specialized computer language used for writing music. At its most basic level, it defines each note as pitch, duration, and volume. A string of notes can be put together to form a track, and one or more tracks can be combined to make anything from a simple melody to a full symphony. Once a piece of music has been stored in the form of a MIDI file, it can be played back or edited with a wide array of MIDI software or hardware.
A former student of Frederick Noad, Sabatine began by transcribing Noad's collections of early music for the guitar, The Renaissance Guitar and The Baroque Guitar, into MIDI files. He went on to translate a number of standard pieces for beginning to intermediate classical guitarists, including studies by Sor, Carcassi, Coste, Aguado, and Giuliani. For more ambitious players, Sabatine transcribed all of Bach's music for lute, and virtuoso works by Albéniz, Tárrega, and De Visee.
These transcriptions are now available through Sabatine's mail-order company, MIDI Classics. Copyright issues have kept Sabatine from transcribing much contemporary music, but he does offer MIDI versions of a number of Beatles songs transcribed and arranged by Joe Washington or Eric Schoenberg, as well as some guitar blockbusters, including Mason Williams' "Classical Gas," Jorma Kaukonen's "Embryonic Journey," and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." To use MIDI Classics files, you'll need a multimedia computer; a dedicated sequencer/synthesizer; or a sound module, computer (either PC or Mac), and MIDI interface.
As with anything involving personal computers, the promise of "plug and play" isn't always fulfilled. Each brand of MIDI software has its own built-in assumptions about how MIDI files should be handled. These assumptions affect the way a given piece of MIDI software or hardware will translate a "generic" MIDI file into its own proprietary format.
I opened up some MIDI Classics files with four different brands of MIDI software for the Mac (Finale 2.6.1, Concertware Pro 1.5, EZVision 1.0, and MusicTime 2.0) and got slightly different results each time. MusicTime and Finale were able to capture all the details contained in the files on the first try. The older programs needed to be fussed with a little. Generally speaking, the newer the software or hardware, the fewer problems there are.
Like many MIDI files, MIDI Classics files have trouble capturing the subtleties of rhythmic feel. This is because they're based on notation rather than performance. In standard notation, all quarter notes are equal. In performance, a guitarist may play a note a little before or after the beat to make it swing. A "straight" version of a piece of music that's meant to swing, such as a Chet Atkins solo, will always sound a little stiff.
What can you do with a MIDI file? Sabatine's original idea was simply to provide a way of hearing a piece before you decide to learn it. Noad sees MIDI files primarily as a learning tool. "They're more valuable than an artistic performance because you can slow a piece down to a snail's pace and learn it inch by inch," he says. My own students confirmed MIDI Classics' value as a learning tool. After a particularly tricky lesson working on "Classical Gas," they could appreciate being able to hear the music, or just a section of it, played over and over again at any tempo they chose.
Those considering using MIDI Classics files to learn new tunes will probably still have to buy the sheet music. Standard guitar music is written on the treble clef an octave higher than it sounds. MIDI Classics files appear on screen at pitch and often in the bass clef. Individual voices in a piece will often be shown on separate lines. It takes some fussing to translate a MIDI Classics file into standard notation.
Since MIDI files are just musical data, you can do a lot more with them than just listen to a piece over and over again. Most music software will let you edit music. You can change note values or pitches, change tempos, extract parts, transpose the music into a new key, or change the instrumentation. Using advanced notation programs such as Finale and Encore, you can, with a little patience, create a score in standard notation and then translate it into tablature. If a file calls for more than one guitar, or a guitar plus other instruments, you can play one part while your computer accompanies you.
MIDI Classics are a good supplement to records, sheet music, videos, and other learning methods. In letting users hear a piece as slowly as they want and as many times as they need, MIDI files take advantage of computers' greatest virtue as a learning tool: patience that exceeds that of even the most saintly teacher.
--Stephen Dick
December 1995 ACOUSTIC GUITAR
MIDI Classics
Copyright © 1995, Stephen Dick. Reprinted by permission. Revised September 15, 1996