As experienced musicians will realize, the length of notes in a MIDI sequence can represent the difference between an impressive musical passage and a musical caricature. A staccato effect, for instance, when legato is called for.

If something sounds choppy, rough, or uneven, note lengths may be the solution to smoothing things out. Moreover, it matters not how you go about adjusting the awkwardness--provided you do a little patient tweaking.

Consider, for example, a waltz. Viennese or jazz, as long as it's in 3/4 time.

If an accompanying bass line is hitting quarter-notes on the first beat, the impact may sound like a carrousel, or an oom-pa-pa rhythm. Mechanical. Stilted. If you change these quarter-notes to dotted half-notes (held for three beats), you could see some improvement.

As for the procedures, this depends on the features of your sequencer. Most event lists show the duration of any note sounded (ripe for editing, if your MO is precision, and your favorite tool a scalpel.) But you might elect to try editing in the step-entry mode or by means of a piano-roll display. If you have such a graphic display, stretching (or shortening) a brightly-colored rectangle is a pleasant (and efficacious) diversion. And, for the traditionalist, there's the old-fashioned musical score in its window.

Regardless of the approach, note-lengths are critical. Like sustaining a note to cover an awkward silence.

Sometimes your masterpiece will have an abrupt ending, when all the notes shut off, and the musicians race for the exits. So, you investigate. As a final event, the event list shows control change 64 (the sustain pedal). But the sustain movement did not last long enough. Use the piano-roll (or the equivalent) to s-t-r-e-t-c-h the last note(s). Behold a fitting conclusion for a magnum opus.

Copyright © 1995 Eugene A. Confrey, PhD. All rights reserved.