In support of the choir I have used computers for many years to record music and produce practice tapes for those of us who are not good sight readers. In the early years I used an Atari, for which some excellent software was available. Moving to a PC, it was difficult to find something as good. However, I have succeeded and the Ataris are now mothballed, seeking a good home.
I have tried several PC sequencers in the course of my search and have written some notes about them.
The specification of the tapes is that they contain perhaps a dozen songs, with short gaps between. One of the four TTBB voice parts is on its own on the left channel, while the other three parts plus any solo part and as much of the accompaniment as is useful are on the right. A piano sound seems best, since it gives a very precise timing to the note. The result can hardly be described as music but it does the job, namely to help learn the notes.
Noteworthy Composer has proved an excellent tool both for importing from the Atari and recording from scratch; it is also inexpensive ($39). The companion NoteWorthy Player is free and is a very useful tool for playing a sequence of songs.
I am definitely into parallel processing! Several members of the choir have expressed an interest in helping to create MIDI files. The plan to harness this effort is to get more than one person independently to record a piece. I have written a program (and ported it to the PC) which will compare two MIDI files and print a report. So unless they both make the same mistake in the same place, we should get a correct MIDI file; certainly we should get one in which we can have a great deal more confidence than hitherto.
A selection of miscellaneous references that I may visit one day: pages to visit.
This page was last updated 28 July 2001
Brian Maskell