J. S. Bach "Little" Fugue in g, BWV 578

This project was more difficult than I originally thought it would be.  The video on my channel is actually a re-up.  The original video had a few note errors; I was in a rush when I put the score into my sequencer.  I made many other changes in addition to correcting notes.

First, I was not really happy with the overall sound of the original.  I wanted the voices to stand out more.  However, the more I did to achieve this, the more I hurt the sound of the voices.  After much automation and eq-ing, the piece sounded flat and ear fatiguing.  I went back to the beginning (again) and made just a few simple changes.  I panned the tenor and alto voices left and right, and narrowed the soprano to the center.  I spread the bass out to the entire field.  I also did some minor eq-ing to make the voices stand out.  The soprano I left more or less alone, since it was not really interfering with the other voices too much.  I did some automation to cut the volume by 2 db or so during a trill that seemed to overwhelm the other voices.  The alto voice got a high shelf eq with a slight attenuation to give the soprano some breathing room.  The tenor got a high-pass filter to let the bass voice live a little, and a low pass combined with a high shelf to help the alto stand out.  If you listen carefully you can hear that the timbre of the tenor is hurt by this processing, but overall I felt that it was worth the loss to let the other voices stand out more.  The bass got some slight eq.  In addition, whenever there was a long note I generally automated a 1-2 db cut for that voice.  These long notes mask the other (more interesting) parts.  The organ has tons of overtones, making it a real challenge to mix the voices and not hurt the timbre of the instrument.  The end result is perhaps unnatural sounding, but I think it works very well with the video.  I earned a new found respect for mixing artists after this project, those people really perform miracles (as do the mastering artists).

Second, I put the reverb on each track as an insert rather than having a single instance as a send.  I found that this gave a more realistic sound.

Next I revised the phrasing a little.  I wanted a somewhat human feel to the performance.  I achieved this by fist turning off the snap function in my sequencer so that when I adjusted note lengths they would not be perfect divisions.  Second I changed the phrasing when a musical idea was repeated, especially the fugue subject and especially between the voices.

While listening to live performance organ videos on youtube to get a feel for what the reverb should sound like, I found the version of this piece performed by Ton Koopman.  I really really liked his ornaments, so I added some to my version in Koopman's style.  I thought it was fun to see the ornaments in the MAM player.  Usually ornaments are not written out in a score so you have to use your imagination to "see" them.

The bass needed revising as well.  Some viewers had posted on the previous video that the bass was out of sync.  I was a bit confused by this, since everything was midi generated.  I start out with everything aligned to the beat, and the bass notes were exactly in time.  However, it occurred to me that someone listening to the video with pc speakers would not have a very good low frequency content to their audio.  The bass notes are samples from very large pipes, probably 16' or even 32' long pipes.  The air takes a long time to get moving, and the initial attack of the note is very soft.  This is hard to hear if your speakers have a limited frequency response.  To adjust for this I moved the bass ahead by 30 ms or so.  I apologize to anyone if this makes the bass sound out of time, but I hope that it will improve the overall listening experience for most people.  I checked on my pc speakers, and the bass timing did indeed sound better, although some of the higher notes sound a bit early.

I also made some minor changes to the tempo:  I chose to slow the piece down by 3 bpm to 82, and got rid of the retard at the end of the piece.  The ornaments seemed to work better at the end when played full speed.

Finally I had some fun with the look of the video.  I changed the colors, changed the output to balls instead of bars, and adjusted the vertical resolution so that black bars appeared at the top and bottom.  This reminded me of scrolling paper rolls like those used for a player piano.

Revising this project took many hours over a two week period, most of which were spent shaking my fist at the monitor and trying my best to not throw the computer out the window.  Eventually I got everything as good as I could, and called it good enough.  Many other things too mundane to mention went into this project, and I doubt anyone wants to read about them.

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1XD1MSES_8