Bruce Graybill: e-mail Mando1@aol.com - Web site

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MIDI is a term that can trigger (no pun intended) many images for different people. Like a mad music composer in his studio, isolated from the world around him by a quasi-techno-nerd cyberspace of synthesized sounds, it is not always well understood in the music world of acoustic Mandolin. While my intent is not to present myself as any sort of expert in this area (that would be very far from the truth), I have had some limited experience over the last year in the process of writing a Mandolin Orchestra work entitled "The Walnut Valley Suite." The Suite was performed at the Classical Mandolin Society of America convention last November in Louisville KY. by an impromptu group of players from AMGuSS, The Providence Mandolin Orchestra, and others. It was the first opportunity I had been given to hear the work performed by anything but my synthesizer, so an actual performance on the instruments it was written for was an invaluable experience for me in both composition, and MIDI use. With MIDI composition, as in any new endeavor, the learning curve can be quite steep in the beginning, but once enough information is assimilated to give perspective, we see that it is just one more tool for making the process of transferring our musical ideas to others easier.

MIDI is an acronym for "Musical Instrument Digital Interface." Use of MIDI has changed the way music is produced more than any other single technology since the introduction of magnetic tape. MIDI use has infiltrated every aspect of music and sound production in our world. Many of our children learn elementary keyboard skills with MIDI. From computer games to sound effects and music for film and television, MIDI is everywhere. The MIDI "standard" language was introduced around 1983, and through voluntary cooperation of many manufactures etc., and has been used to develop many types of devices both musical and non-musical (lighting controls etc.). More specifically, MIDI is a specification for a communications protocol mostly used to control electronic musical instruments. It has two parts: a set of commands or MIDI language, and the details for the electrical way those commands are transmitted and received. A detailed explanation of MIDI is beyond the scope possible in this article, so I will try to keep the technical jargon to a minimum and concentrate more on the process I use for real time MIDI composition on Mandolin. In areas of this explanation that require technical information, I have tried to simplify the specific process to basic ideas.

When I first started to compose for Mandolin I found transferring my musical ideas relatively easy, provided the person I was transferring them to was in front of me, had good listening skills, and some reasonable level of playing and musical ability. The above conditions not always being met, I toyed with transcribing my ideas into TAB (Tableture for Mandolin), and later hand writing standard notation (people who do this well have more patience that I will ever have). My rudimentary skills, as thin as they were, came from reading standard notation for Trumpet as an elementary school student. I longed for a way to get my musical ideas for Mandolin in a form that others could read easily. I found the answer for me in Real Time MIDI composition on computer.

After comparing many systems for computer based musical transcription, and talking to a number of people who did this as a full or part-time profession, I settled on a MAC computer (clearly the best way to shorten the learning curve for computer illiterate people), and a music notation and publishing program called 'Finale' by Coda. Soon I could point and click with the mouse on a staff that was displayed on the computers monitor screen, or press computer keyboard numbers, and have notes and rests of my choosing placed on the staff. It was a wonderful thing! I could make a short musical phrase and with the click of a mouse display the same phrase in a different clef, or transpose it into a different key. I could instruct Finale to play the music I had written, and it would play back on the Mac's little internal speaker (MAC generically includes basic MIDI playback abilities on its computers). After a few weeks using the system, I found that my reading and writing skills were improving solely from the use of the system. Being a lazy person, I still wanted to be able to just play Mandolin and magically make the computer print out what I played.

I already owned a 5 string Electric Mandolin that I had custom made for playing cheesy Rock gigs, and after a bit more research I purchased a GI-10 Guitar Interface and a GK2A Controller (Hex divided pickup) manufactured by Roland Co. I also bought a small MIDI interface that converts MIDI connector to a serial port connector that will go into the SCSI port on the computer. Essentially the GK2A is similar to an electric Guitar pickup except that each string has its own individual magnetic pickup. The Six little pickups (hence the name Hex divided pickup) each have a separate output so that each string (obviously I only use five) has its own separate input on the GI-10. All this is connected with one multi-wire cable. The GI-10 is a Pitch to MIDI converter that takes the frequency (pitch) of a 'note' you are playing, and turns it into MIDI language so that any other MIDI device can make use of the data. The use might be playing it back through a Synthesizer, or computer, or in this case putting it in a form that the computer can translate into notes on the staff.

Just as there are many very small movements and steps to playing a note properly on the Mandolin, most of which we do unconsciously (unless we are in the presence of Keith Harris), there are many steps in MIDI language to make a note playback or notate with the synthesizer or computer. The computer or Synthesizer must know it is supposed to play something (hopefully musical sound), when the note starts, when it stops, what pitch it is, how loud it is to be, whether it is sustained or decays over a certain amount of time, what kind of sound (like a Piano or Trumpet) it is to make, and many other parameters that can define more precisely what is to happen sound wise, and this is only to play one note! We as individuals make many similar decisions, though not generally as consciously. In example, I wish to choose Mandolin for an instrument, play it properly tuned, play a D note in this octave (struck of course with a flawless rest stroke) with a metallica sound around Forte loudness for about three seconds and have it decay slowly with the natural vibration decay of the string, and end exactly on the bottom of the conductor's baton fall.... and I want to start that note now! There are many choices we have to make to do what seems this simple task, and there are as many that must be specifically identified with our MIDI language if we wish to have it come out of the speakers sounding the way we played it ourselves!

At this point it is necessary to get a little more detailed with the explanation, so bear with me... MIDI specification allows for 16 data channels (like TV channels each giving separate data), and a MIDI device like a synthesizer, or drum machine, can be programmed to accept that data from only one, or as many as all the channels simultaneously. The voluntary MIDI 'standard' identifies which channels are used for which type of data, so that each device we use accepts the commands in a similar way. In this case I use 'Mono mode' (a separate channel for each string) so that I may play chords and have each note read individually by the computer. The GI-10 allows you to set up many parameters to match the interface to your playing style. In example you can adjust the sensitivity of the interface to read well whether you are a hard player attack wise, or a soft player. After all the communication parameters are setup between the computer and interface (there are many), you must set up the Finale preferences to accept the input from this port of the computer, and instruct Finale on what device you want to playback the sounds, and in what instrument sounds you wish to make. I send the output MIDI data from Finale back out the Mac's serial port to an outboard synthesizer connected to the stereo for playback. In definition it sounds ominous... a synthesizer with 64-voice polyphony and 16 part multi-timbral capability output in multiple stereo configurations. What does it really mean? It can playback as many as 16 separate parts, different instrument sounds for example, and up to 64 total notes split in any way between those parts, at the same time.

So I have all this equipment set up and all my parameters set, my computer instructed to record what I play, my Mandolin tuned to standard pitch so the interface can tell the computer what notes I am really playing. I can either play at any tempo, record what I play (Transcription Tool), and play it back and press a footswitch while it is playing to tell the computer where the beats are, or I can play the Mandolin and press the footswitch on the beat at the same time (Hyperscribe) to tell the computer where the beats are. After I have done this, if my setup is right, I can click a control or two with the mouse and the music I have played along with all the mistakes, and various artifacts that must be removed by editing, is on the staff and available for editing and print or playback through a synthesizer. In the case of the Walnut Valley Suite, after I recorded and edited each part so that it played back what I intended, I put each part in the proper range and clef, adjusted the dynamics to get as close to the sound I imagined I wanted (a synthesizer is only so close) and copied the parts into a blank Score for Mandolin Orchestra that I created in Finale. There are many further steps using the publishing capabilities of Finale that finally got the music into the form of multi-page scores and individual parts on paper, but that is another story.

If you have interest in MIDI composition, there are a number of good resources on the Internet, as well as many books on the subject. The book that got me started was 'MIDI for the Professional' by Paul D. Lehrman and Tim Tully. I encourage you to check out MIDI for use as another tool to better our musical communication. I am off now to finish up work on my latest MIDI composed project; '77 Head Bangin' Hot Licks for the Procrastinating Mandolinist'. and as you might guess by the title... I am late getting it finished!

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Biographical data:

CMSA member Bruce Graybill is a singer-songwriter, composer, and award winning mandolinist and guitarist. Bruce is based in the Kansas City area and performs both as a solo artist and with an acoustic jazz & swing ensemble called The Knights of the Blue Fesque. Included in the many awards he has received in performance competitions are:

The 1995 Dogwood Music Festival Guitar Championship
The 1997 Kansas State Flatpicking Guitar Championship
The Kansas State Mandolin Championship twice (1990/1995)
3rd Place (1995) in the prestigious Walnut Valley Mandolin Championship, at the National Flatpicking Championships.

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