A super-busy day of notation for the Cycles album. One odd thing about this is that the recorded version not as good as the live piano version, party because my technology back then was different. I'd been playing live piano more and more and this was my most sophisticated performance to date, a veritable piano sonata of six movements, yet I'd not recorded much piano. The Anatomy of Emotions was captured live and plan, but I wanted more for this, adding strings, making more of a concerto sound. I had to program lots of new MIDI code into Prometheus, and over the 10 years since have made a lot of changes and improvements to it. The more recent Music of Poetic Objects album was a step forwards, but to some extent, the first good album using the piano plus 'virtual orchestra' technique was Salomé which I've just completed.
Anyway today I looked again at the piano music and have noted it, both the actual piano versions I played live, and piano versions of the recorded versions. Often, the composition was better on the recordings, but not always... I think Cycles IV (Decay, originally called Nightrest) was better.
Today I completed the scores for Cycles I. This involved a flute/strings section which was scored with the help of a Prometheus export. Then Cycles III, which was largely complete. Then Cycles IV, both version. Cycles II, however, was an improvisation, not much like the actual live version, which could vary wildly. I've programmed a few tools for transcribing this gaggle of MIDI data, look:
The 6 lowest tracks, the scatter of red dots, are the actual piano notes. The upper track of red has the same notes merged, and the orange track is merged a bit to group any chords together. Then I manually type the orange dots. They should form a 'regular' timing, to tell the sequencer where the beats are. After that, I pull the notes to the closest orange dot, then 'regiment' the notes, like shoving them all to the left to make them regular.
It doesn't work completely, but it can be used to notate some very complex and freely expressive music in a way that would take hours by hand and ear. It still takes hours, but fewer hours.
