Viz Lab Summer Grant 2007

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Virtual Instrument Sequencing

Justin Rubin Music

My work entailed becoming familiar with the process of creating demonstrations of my music compositions that have yet to be premiered through the use of virtual instruments. In the VDIL I began by entering the music into the Finale engraving program then exporting the scores as MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files. Next, I brought them into Pro Tools and from there patched the MIDI information through the Garritan Personal Orchestra plug-in (Garritan is the virtual sampled instrument library). Setting each MIDI track to a specific instrument in Garritan then allowed me to play the music back with a near-realistic sound.

One aspect to this experience that I did not anticipate was the idea of changing the orchestration as I originally envisioned. The use of virtual instruments made this very easy and I could experiment with changing the flute part (for example) to an oboe, or maybe a trumpet, deciding which worked best, adjust the original score, and then save a virtual performance of the work. This process I found to be far more useful than simply listening to the General MIDI instruments which do not have an artificial, synthesized sound. I also adjusted tempi and dynamic balances before adding appropriate reverb to enhance the realistic sound.

I was immediately able to apply my newfound abilities to my professional creative activities when a music publisher (T.D. Ellis Music) contacted me with interest in possibly publishing some of my works. However, some of the pieces had yet to find a first performer, so I fashioned sound files through the process I learned this summer to give the editor a reasonable idea of what the piece sounded like.

Secondly, I began to learn how to use the East West Symphonic Choirs virtual instrument. As this library uses samples of real voices, I had to also learn how to use WordBuilder so that text could be input and allow the choir to enunciate the words clearly while singing. While I was able to learn how to fundamentally use the two programs together, the more subtle applications of WordBuilder I only touched slightly (such as changing the duration of consonants, adjusting the overtone emphasis of particular text articulation, etc.).