This is a great piece by Joplin. It differs from stock ragtime in several ways. The most notable difference is perhaps the bass part which deviates from the typical oom-pah.
I used a new (to me) midi visualizer again for this video. The program is called Miditrail. It has three different views: 2d 3d and raindrop. The program is actually quite powerful in some ways and can be highly customized. Unfortunately it takes a little bit of computer knowledge to adjust. For example to change the colors of the notes one must open a file and edit the color data. I think the data is in hexadecimal notation, but I am not 100% sure about that. I could not figure out how to get rid of the file name and data readout at the top and bottom of the screen. This is why I have the black borders in case you were wondering. There are some pretty good videos on youtube using this visualizer.
I sequenced this one with Cubase 5.5.3 as usual. I will upgrade some day when they fix the windows nightmare and correctly implement group tracks. Or when Protools comes out with a 64 bit version. I will just get that instead.
I used samples from the stock Kontakt 4 library. The instrument is called 'concert grand.' It sounds really good compared to some other piano sample instruments that I have used. However it lacks the realism needed to pull off a solo piano performance. It sounds like there are 2 velocity layers for the instrument. When you go from loud to soft the sound is really disturbing. It sounds sort of like the microphone is being moved farther away from the piano instead of the pianist playing more quietly. I used this as a challenge to improve my skills. I bounced the track to an audio file and then edited the volume automation to create dynamic contrast instead of using velocity. I can't say that this was totally successful, but on the other hand it was better than using velocity to control dynamics. This instrument also plays from the pianists perspective, or the low notes to the left and high to the right. This always sounds quite strange to me. Under normal conditions the audience does not hear a piano performance from left to right like this. I would not use this sort of panning instrument for most applications, but for a midi visualization it actually worked quite well.
I found two interesting pieces of information while making this video. First the manual for the MAM player has been updated to reflect settings for win7, and second there may be a Pro version of the MAM coming out at some point. I won't hold my breath for the pro version, but I will definitely try out the win 7 settings for my next video. I want to try out the choir that came with Kontakt on a Bach chorale. Hopefully I can get a better quality video with the new settings.
Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9Th1Q96NI
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