Native Instruments launched the Balinese Gamelan Orchestra last year and I juast couldn't resist.
It took a while to develop a suitable ensemble arrangement for ragtime music but once we had found it there was much pleaure in it's repeated application. Essentially the three main componenbts are arranged on the right hand part and separated on the stereo map with the highest frequency on the outside and the more mellow tones near the centre.
The marimbas varied rather more depending on the piece but many of them emplyed a version which runs short seqences for each note - producing a rippling effect in the left hand to add interest and body to the arrangements and improve the balance.
In many tracks - particularly the Rags and the Marches a base drum was added to the centre of the mix.
This has been great fun to produce.
We tried to contact John Cowell who produced most of the midi recordings on which these were based but none of the email addresses produced any response. Unlike some other MIDI recoders he has not placed restrictions in the MIDI file and he dosen't have a website that I have been able to find where this could be clarified. So we have decided to take the risk.
Adding 93 tracks to the site in one go is a significant enterprise but we have got there - I suspect that there are still some small errors. Testing has been hampered by some errati behavious by the system this week and upgrading the database software to MySQL 5 provided some challenges but the OSCommerce support forum came up trumps.
It took a while to develop a suitable ensemble arrangement for ragtime music but once we had found it there was much pleaure in it's repeated application. Essentially the three main componenbts are arranged on the right hand part and separated on the stereo map with the highest frequency on the outside and the more mellow tones near the centre.
The marimbas varied rather more depending on the piece but many of them emplyed a version which runs short seqences for each note - producing a rippling effect in the left hand to add interest and body to the arrangements and improve the balance.
In many tracks - particularly the Rags and the Marches a base drum was added to the centre of the mix.
This has been great fun to produce.
We tried to contact John Cowell who produced most of the midi recordings on which these were based but none of the email addresses produced any response. Unlike some other MIDI recoders he has not placed restrictions in the MIDI file and he dosen't have a website that I have been able to find where this could be clarified. So we have decided to take the risk.
Adding 93 tracks to the site in one go is a significant enterprise but we have got there - I suspect that there are still some small errors. Testing has been hampered by some errati behavious by the system this week and upgrading the database software to MySQL 5 provided some challenges but the OSCommerce support forum came up trumps.