SO, my vehicle only has tape (no CD) , and I have a 2 hour commute (round trip). I was thinking I could target certain tunes by taping .abc s of them. Here's the process, but it's a bit unwieldy :
I find ( or write) the abc files,
open them in (Phil Taylor's) Barfly. (This is Mac OS X.x. ) copy the tune part and paste in twice (for the conventional 3 times around) and edit as needed, including set intonation and macros to the best sound.
Then export to AIFF file.
Drop the AIFs into iTunes and then
play iTunes into the tape recorder. BTW since I have 110 minute tapes I made two folders of 34 min (max) length.
It works, but I suspect that I'm doing it in too many steps and wonder if there's a way to streamline the process.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Run a small cable from your Mac's speaker out socket to your tape player. Play the abcs in an abc player - record the sound output on your tape player. Simplest and easiest.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Thanks Donough,
This iMAC has at least 3 audio outs and a standard mini cord gets it to the tape machine. I don't have CD's of the tunes, I suppose I could search them out on ITunes store; I tried that with FTM and only got Edith Piaf.
In the previous post the reference to iTunes means the software vs the store.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
HOLD THE PRESSES!!!
This is a bad idea. The last thing you want to do is learn tunes from an abc player. If you're listening to tunes while you're commuting -- listen to recordings of them being played by good ITM musicians. I'll put it this way... If you learn tunes by listening to an abc player -- you're going to end up sounding like an abc player.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I agree with the piano player. There have been a few tunes that I only had ABC resources for, nothing else. I invariably had to relearn these tunes later (usually after hearing for the first time how a real person plays it), because my rendition was so bad.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Dear Mr Mabee (I love that),
I agree with Cpp. I, too, only have cassette in the car - by choice actually, since I'm a bit of a dinosaur and haven't really got to grips with the music end of PCs.
Anyway... here's what I do. I go through my collection of recordings from time to time and make a compilation cassette of tracks that contain tunes I might like to learn from various sources. If there's a tune I have several recordings of, I might even include them all. I listen to this in the car for absolutey ages - maybe a month. Then I make a new one, bring the old one in the house and usually find I can play along with a lot of it pretty easily, and learn whatever I want to from it painlessly.
It works for me, and of course I have also built up a collection of favourites I can listen to again later, or lend to friends.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Well, nice to be in the middle of things for a change.
This whole project has to do with taking on a lot of material in a short time frame for band purposes. Nobody around here seems to be interested in playing unpublished music. Or maybe thet are locked in on some private, or invitational session.
CCP: If it were only that easy. I don't sound like a 78 recording of any of the holy trinity ( Coleman, Morrison, Touhy). I don't sound like somebody reading out of a book, I don't even sound like somebody else read it out of a book. ( I have been to several reader's sessions and picked up tunes from the same readings week after week.)
I have mentioned elsewhere that I learn earworms. I do this to avoid slavish imitation, because I believe it is fundamentally immoral (like plagarism) to imitate note for note. I get a general sense of the tune and check back from time to time to ensure that if it fits.
Barfly is pretty flexible, there are four or five intonations pre-set, apparently you can edit the intonations, but I'm not that far into it. You can turn on/off swing, etc, etc, etc. None of the Quicktime voices sound like a real instrument, although Mr Taylor's Wheatstone download is pretty credible. With a few tweaks you can get a very snap, exciting playout. I only WISH I could get that rockbottom swingy rhythm.
(Puts on sarcastic mask) As far as "good ITM" players, why don't you fall by the house Thursday afternoon and let me record YOU instead?
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I think Donough was talking about one of those adaptors that allows you to play CDs etc in a tape cassette player.
That's another, slightly more complicated possibility - get a portable CD player, attach it to the car cassette player using the adaptor, and Bob's your uncle.
Maybe (or Mabee) some people learning exact renditions off a MIDI file would sound disastrous, but give the Owell Mabee some credit!
It's just a way of getting a basic idea of how a tune goes, like listening to diddly-dees off someone trying to give you a tune in the pub or over the phone. Imagine if you played exactly like that! But no one does really, do they?
Personally I would rather drive along listening to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music than a tape full of MIDI renditions, but that's just me.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
It's not MIDI, it's AIFF. I went to the trouble to get a more realistic sound. For one thing MIDI doesn't understand anything any longer than the default length and interprets it as staccato. I think .aif is the Mac counterpoint to .wav, but I 'm not sure. Anyway, If it gets too heinous I can toss the tape.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I understand. Theoretically you should be able to record anything from your computer onto tape. Simply link your computer's line-out or speakers output to your recording device. This way you can record exactly what you would normally hear on your computer.
Press Play & Record on your tape deck and start playing your ABC/Midi files, MP3s, etc. From your computer you should be able to adjust the volume, tone and balance as you need.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
No no no no. I'm afraid the naysayers are right - bad idea learning from MIDI or any other software player. And learning from a recording (or a live player for that matter) isn't a matter of plagiarism - some people keep very rigid settings of tunes (many pipers do this), others take the frame of the tune and rework it constantly. Horses for courses.
If they're unpublished or unrecorded tunes, here's an idea - sight-read them and stick them on a tape for yourself - then listen to your versions of them. And if you can't sight read, then it's even better practice for you. But bleep bleep bleep isn't going to do much for your playing of a tune.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
AIFF is the "agreed to" default format by all the CD makers. For my $0.02, you can learn using ABC, but you really do need to listen to the music and get the ornamentation from what you hear.
I use Barfly as well, but I've never to put it into iTunes to place onto a tape or my iPod for the above reason. I'll play the ABC to get the sense of the tune and get some muscle memory going, but I'll go find a real version to get the "swing" of thngs.
From the sound of it, I don't think there is any other shortcut, short of buying a 1G Shuffle and having it play back through an fm transmitter to your radio or use a cassette adapter to an iPod mini/iPod maxi
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I was a little concerned that AIFF might be one of those Mac specific things. I have noticed that the AIFF files are 20-30 M but when converted to MP3 are only 1.7M. Only worth considering when the Internet gets involved.
It sounds like a lot of us haven't been exposed to computer generated music since Walter Carlos became Wendy. It still doesn't sound enough like the real thing to confuse anybody, but it's quite a bit beyond than bleep, bleep bleep. Technology is not there to bow before, it's there to bend around and twist 'til it does what you want. Either way if you're that much of an audiophile yr going to deny yrself access to the holy trinity, because Quicktime sounds better than those 78's.
Now, go to the Tunes section, search up "Bang Your Frog on the Sofa", Listen to the tune. Great tune. Now go the the list of Recordings by this Name. Buy all of them, learn the tune off the recordings. Now go to the "Off the Session" on downloads. Download 'em all. Learn the tune off of those.
You should be done by now.
Again, I'm trying to learn (pause) SOME (pause) TUNES. I 've been listening to ITM for about 40 years now. I flatter myself that I might have a bit of clue of what it's supposed to sound like.
continuo, I don't want to be a name-dropper here, but anybody that knows diddley (or diddly) -squat about traditional music will tell you that you have no business playing a tune until you can whistle or hum all the way thru it. I can read. I don't read because it intereferes with listening and sets the tune in concrete, making it very hard to break out & do variations. Most of the tunes I learned from reading I had to put away for several months, forget them and then reconstruct. OTOH, the "ear tunes" can be taken out and malformed on a whim.
Anyway ,I digress, the idea of you reading unknown tunes out of a book *deeply* worries me. Please stop it. Yr only hurting yrself in the long run.
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Well didn't mean THAt exactly. I meant specifically - if there's a tune in a book, there's no recording of it, no one plays it currently, then that might be a way of learning it quickly.
I've learnt a few new/old tunes that way. The rest all by ear - can't do it any other way.
thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
SO, my vehicle only has tape (no CD) , and I have a 2 hour commute (round trip). I was thinking I could target certain tunes by taping .abc s of them. Here's the process, but it's a bit unwieldy :
I find ( or write) the abc files,
open them in (Phil Taylor's) Barfly. (This is Mac OS X.x. ) copy the tune part and paste in twice (for the conventional 3 times around) and edit as needed, including set intonation and macros to the best sound.
Then export to AIFF file.
Drop the AIFs into iTunes and then
play iTunes into the tape recorder. BTW since I have 110 minute tapes I made two folders of 34 min (max) length.
It works, but I suspect that I'm doing it in too many steps and wonder if there's a way to streamline the process.
Thanks
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
You can get a tape that allows you to connect up a CD player or minidisc into your Tape Deck.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Donough
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Run a small cable from your Mac's speaker out socket to your tape player. Play the abcs in an abc player - record the sound output on your tape player. Simplest and easiest.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Bren
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Thanks Donough,
This iMAC has at least 3 audio outs and a standard mini cord gets it to the tape machine. I don't have CD's of the tunes, I suppose I could search them out on ITunes store; I tried that with FTM and only got Edith Piaf.
In the previous post the reference to iTunes means the software vs the store.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
HOLD THE PRESSES!!!
This is a bad idea. The last thing you want to do is learn tunes from an abc player. If you're listening to tunes while you're commuting -- listen to recordings of them being played by good ITM musicians. I'll put it this way... If you learn tunes by listening to an abc player -- you're going to end up sounding like an abc player.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Phantom Button
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Yes Bren that's it. DOH! That's probably what Donough was talking about as well
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I agree with the piano player. There have been a few tunes that I only had ABC resources for, nothing else. I invariably had to relearn these tunes later (usually after hearing for the first time how a real person plays it), because my rendition was so bad.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Shrog
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Dear Mr Mabee (I love that),
I agree with Cpp. I, too, only have cassette in the car - by choice actually, since I'm a bit of a dinosaur and haven't really got to grips with the music end of PCs.
Anyway... here's what I do. I go through my collection of recordings from time to time and make a compilation cassette of tracks that contain tunes I might like to learn from various sources. If there's a tune I have several recordings of, I might even include them all. I listen to this in the car for absolutey ages - maybe a month. Then I make a new one, bring the old one in the house and usually find I can play along with a lot of it pretty easily, and learn whatever I want to from it painlessly.
It works for me, and of course I have also built up a collection of favourites I can listen to again later, or lend to friends.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by kris
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Well, nice to be in the middle of things for a change.
This whole project has to do with taking on a lot of material in a short time frame for band purposes. Nobody around here seems to be interested in playing unpublished music. Or maybe thet are locked in on some private, or invitational session.
CCP: If it were only that easy. I don't sound like a 78 recording of any of the holy trinity ( Coleman, Morrison, Touhy). I don't sound like somebody reading out of a book, I don't even sound like somebody else read it out of a book. ( I have been to several reader's sessions and picked up tunes from the same readings week after week.)
I have mentioned elsewhere that I learn earworms. I do this to avoid slavish imitation, because I believe it is fundamentally immoral (like plagarism) to imitate note for note. I get a general sense of the tune and check back from time to time to ensure that if it fits.
Barfly is pretty flexible, there are four or five intonations pre-set, apparently you can edit the intonations, but I'm not that far into it. You can turn on/off swing, etc, etc, etc. None of the Quicktime voices sound like a real instrument, although Mr Taylor's Wheatstone download is pretty credible. With a few tweaks you can get a very snap, exciting playout. I only WISH I could get that rockbottom swingy rhythm.
(Puts on sarcastic mask) As far as "good ITM" players, why don't you fall by the house Thursday afternoon and let me record YOU instead?
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I think Donough was talking about one of those adaptors that allows you to play CDs etc in a tape cassette player.
That's another, slightly more complicated possibility - get a portable CD player, attach it to the car cassette player using the adaptor, and Bob's your uncle.
Maybe (or Mabee) some people learning exact renditions off a MIDI file would sound disastrous, but give the Owell Mabee some credit!
It's just a way of getting a basic idea of how a tune goes, like listening to diddly-dees off someone trying to give you a tune in the pub or over the phone. Imagine if you played exactly like that! But no one does really, do they?
Personally I would rather drive along listening to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music than a tape full of MIDI renditions, but that's just me.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Bren
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
It's not MIDI, it's AIFF. I went to the trouble to get a more realistic sound. For one thing MIDI doesn't understand anything any longer than the default length and interprets it as staccato. I think .aif is the Mac counterpoint to .wav, but I 'm not sure. Anyway, If it gets too heinous I can toss the tape.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I understand. Theoretically you should be able to record anything from your computer onto tape. Simply link your computer's line-out or speakers output to your recording device. This way you can record exactly what you would normally hear on your computer.
Press Play & Record on your tape deck and start playing your ABC/Midi files, MP3s, etc. From your computer you should be able to adjust the volume, tone and balance as you need.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by Shrog
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
No no no no. I'm afraid the naysayers are right - bad idea learning from MIDI or any other software player. And learning from a recording (or a live player for that matter) isn't a matter of plagiarism - some people keep very rigid settings of tunes (many pipers do this), others take the frame of the tune and rework it constantly. Horses for courses.
If they're unpublished or unrecorded tunes, here's an idea - sight-read them and stick them on a tape for yourself - then listen to your versions of them. And if you can't sight read, then it's even better practice for you. But bleep bleep bleep isn't going to do much for your playing of a tune.
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by continuo
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
AIFF is the "agreed to" default format by all the CD makers. For my $0.02, you can learn using ABC, but you really do need to listen to the music and get the ornamentation from what you hear.
I use Barfly as well, but I've never to put it into iTunes to place onto a tape or my iPod for the above reason. I'll play the ABC to get the sense of the tune and get some muscle memory going, but I'll go find a real version to get the "swing" of thngs.
From the sound of it, I don't think there is any other shortcut, short of buying a 1G Shuffle and having it play back through an fm transmitter to your radio or use a cassette adapter to an iPod mini/iPod maxi
# Posted on August 23rd 2005 by I_Fel
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
I was a little concerned that AIFF might be one of those Mac specific things. I have noticed that the AIFF files are 20-30 M but when converted to MP3 are only 1.7M. Only worth considering when the Internet gets involved.
It sounds like a lot of us haven't been exposed to computer generated music since Walter Carlos became Wendy. It still doesn't sound enough like the real thing to confuse anybody, but it's quite a bit beyond than bleep, bleep bleep. Technology is not there to bow before, it's there to bend around and twist 'til it does what you want. Either way if you're that much of an audiophile yr going to deny yrself access to the holy trinity, because Quicktime sounds better than those 78's.
Now, go to the Tunes section, search up "Bang Your Frog on the Sofa", Listen to the tune. Great tune. Now go the the list of Recordings by this Name. Buy all of them, learn the tune off the recordings. Now go to the "Off the Session" on downloads. Download 'em all. Learn the tune off of those.
You should be done by now.
Again, I'm trying to learn (pause) SOME (pause) TUNES. I 've been listening to ITM for about 40 years now. I flatter myself that I might have a bit of clue of what it's supposed to sound like.
continuo, I don't want to be a name-dropper here, but anybody that knows diddley (or diddly) -squat about traditional music will tell you that you have no business playing a tune until you can whistle or hum all the way thru it. I can read. I don't read because it intereferes with listening and sets the tune in concrete, making it very hard to break out & do variations. Most of the tunes I learned from reading I had to put away for several months, forget them and then reconstruct. OTOH, the "ear tunes" can be taken out and malformed on a whim.
Anyway ,I digress, the idea of you reading unknown tunes out of a book *deeply* worries me. Please stop it. Yr only hurting yrself in the long run.
# Posted on August 24th 2005 by Owell Mabee
Re: thesession >Barfly>iTunes> tape. Any shortcuts?
Well didn't mean THAt exactly. I meant specifically - if there's a tune in a book, there's no recording of it, no one plays it currently, then that might be a way of learning it quickly.
I've learnt a few new/old tunes that way. The rest all by ear - can't do it any other way.
# Posted on August 24th 2005 by continuo