IMPROVISER v1.4 DEMO
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(c) CREATIVE SOUNDS 1991-2
PO BOX 877, BRISTOL BS99 5LA, ENGLAND
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INTRODUCTION
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IMPROVISER is an educational music program designed to help you learn more
about the way improvisation and composition work.
If you want to learn French the best way is to listen to French people
speaking. This, however, is initially very difficult because the ear cannot
pick out individual words and make meaning of the phrases. Therefore the
second best thing to do is buy a course of tapes in French and begin slowly!
The IMPROVISER program applies the same logic to improvising music. Many people think that improvised music can only be played by born naturals who have some special gift. What they don't realise is that these 'special' people have spent hours and hours and hours copying riffs from records, listening to improvised music and understanding the structure of the music. That is very time consuming and is like learning French by listening to French radio.
The power of MIDI is the ability to change tempo without changing pitch! This
means you can slow a sequence down and give yourself time to hear what's going
on. There is a structure and logic to most music and professional improvising
musicians can be recognised by the way they construct phrases. This program
allows you to construct simple melodic and rhythmic phrases and shows you a way into your own improvisation. You are not supposed to like all the music the program creates because not all melodic/random patterns work with all rhythmic/random patterns. The idea is to use it to see what you do like and then work out why! The full version allows you to save the 'improvised line' as a midi file. The program can also be used very effectively as an ear training system.
IMPROVISER then, is a tool to help you understand the structure of music. The
program is NOT improvising in the human sense but shows you the building blocks of the process.
HOW DOES IMPROVISER WORK?
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IMPROVISER sequences out a four track midi file of Bass, Drums, Harmony and
Melody. As it plays out the four tracks it looks ahead into the Harmony track,
works out what the next chord is (it recognises seventh chords to three
inversions; IMPROVISER PRO recognizes upto thirteenth chords) and constructs
a scale or mode that corresponds to that chord. Having constructed the scale it then plays a series of notes from that scale according to the melodic pattern you are using, or probabilities if you are not using melodic patterns, and then superimposes a rhythm on this. All this is done for every chord, in REAL-TIME,that is as the sequence is playing! You can then interact with the program and change the way it is playing to hear what different patterns sound like.
HOW DO I USE IMPROVISER?
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The demo program has a lot of the functions disabled and is very easy to use.
IMPROVISER will ONLY run on a high resolution monochrome monitor. If you have
a colour monitor you will have to use a mono emulator program such as SEBRA.
You will also need a MULTI TIMBRAL MODULE or SYNTHESIZER connected to an
amplifier and speakers.
To run the demo click on the file IMP_DEMO.PRG.
PULL DOWN MENUS
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FILE disabled
TRACKS Turn on and off the five different tracks.
MIDI
This allows you to change the midi channels(1-16) for the five different
tracks. It also allows you to make patch changes.
MAKE SURE that you set up a multi-patch on your synthesizer that has a
Bass, Drums, Harmony (Piano, Guitar etc) and Melody sound. You can set
the improvised channel to the same as the melody channel or choose another
sound altogether. Most multi-timbral synthesizers have a minimum of eight
voices.
The easiest configuration is to set up a patch with Bass on 1, Drums on 10,
Harmony on 3, Melody on 4 and Improvised on 5,6,7 or 8. The tracks can of
course be assigned to any of the sixteen channels.
DRUMS
This lets you set up different default drum settings or define your own.
EXTRAS
CHORD SYMBOLS saves chord symbols as a seperate track in the midi file.
RECTANGLES
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TOP RIGHT - PATTERN BOXES
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MEL_PAT
Click here to turn Melodic patterns on or off.
RANDOM PAT
This creates a new pattern from existing patterns and stores it
in MELODIC PATTERN 17.
MELODIC PATTERN
This is a database of sixteen melodic patterns that are in the program
but can also be redefined.
RHY_PAT
Click here to turn Rhythmic patterns on or off.
RANDOM PAT
This creates a new one bar rhythmic pattern from existing patterns and
stores it in RHYTHMIC PATTERN 17.
RHYTHMIC PATTERN
This is a database of sixteen rhythmic patterns that are in the program
but can also be redefined.
BOTTOM LEFT - SLIDERS
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IMPRO VOL
This changes the volume of the improvised track ONLY.
TOTAL TEMPO
This changes the tempo of the whole piece.
IMPRO FEEL
This pushes the improvised track in front of the beat or pulls it behind.
CHROM CONT
This stands for chromatic content. If you click MEL_PAT off notes will be
chosen from scales at random. If you increase the CHROM CONT slider you
increase the probability of a chromatic run between melody notes.
MEL CONT
This stands for melody content. If you click MEL_PAT off notes will be
chosen from scales at random. If you increase the MEL CONT slider you
increase the probability that a melody note will be chosen.
TOP LEFT - MELODY
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If you click the MELODY button ON the improvised line will go back to playing
the melody. When improvising it is crucial to know where the melody is at all
times. You might find that when you change from a rhythm pattern to a rhythmic
unit (quarter, eighth note etc) and vice versa, that the improvised line is out of synch with the rhythm section. If this happens just click on the MELODY button to return to the melody and release again. If it is still out of time use the IMPRO FEEL slider to pull it into time.
BOTTOM RIGHT - TEMPO BOXES
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If you don't use rhythm patterns you can use these as your basic rhythmic
unit. If your tune is in 4/4 you will get 8 eighth notes to 1 bar. If it is in
3/4 you will get 6 eighth notes to one bar.
Clicking on the box in the middle will record silence into the improvised track.
TOP MIDDLE - OTHER BOXES
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SEED
If you don't use patterns, notes are selected at random. To do this on a computer you use a random number generator to generate random numbers. If you click on SEED you will get a new stream of random numbers.
CHROM
This stands for chromatic and has the same effect as putting the CHROM CONT
slider to 100.
SAME CHORD
This stops the program from reading new chords so if you want to work with one
scale click on SAME CHORD, and turn all tracks except IMPROVISED off.
SAME NOTE
This does what it says!
TRANSPOSE IMPRO
This lets you transpose the improvised line up or down 12 semitones.
We trust you will enjoy using IMPROVISER and hope it will show you a way in to
doing your own improvisation/composition on your instrument.
REMEMBER, improvisation is NOT about playing any notes, but about hearing a
phrase in your head and then playing it. This program is about helping you
build a dynamic library of phrases in your head!
Have Fun!
Please give a copy to your friends!
JINGBELS.MID supplied courtesy of "Hands On" Midi Software Ltd and modified
for IMPROVISER by CREATIVE SOUNDS.