Trying to gauge interest in accompaniment files....

[harrisonreed]

Hi TC gang! This is a shameless plug, but I would like to gauge interest here to see if anyone would be interested in audio that I am creating with the help of my accompanist to help me with my own playing. This is basically a track that you could play along with to learn a piece, especially if you want to memorize a piece. The big difference here is that if you bought it, you would own it (no subscription, like Smart Music), AND you would get both a version with a click track, and without. Also, these tracks were recorded with me performing alongside, so the piano performance takes the soloist into account and is alive even though we isolated the piano audio.

The piano we have access to is a Steinway D Concert Grand.

We are not ready yet to actually release these, and even this track would need mechanical licenses to be secured if I wanted to do more than this 30 second teaser. For a non-PD piece like this, Sulek's Sonata, I'm thinking that a small fee would get you two versions of the track, which would also cover the mechanical license on my end. You'd get a clean version with just lead in clicks at the most essential points (in this case, just the beginning), and then a version with a full click track. For PD pieces, (like the RK concerto!) the same small fee would get you the minimal click performance version, a full click version, and then chunked up sections that are at a slower, practice tempo. Still working out the details.

But I really would like to know:

1. What you think of the piano recording? Could you use this in your own practice and do you like how it sounds?
2. Do you like either of the click options? One is a hard click from Reaper, and the other is the "hiss" that I prefer.
3. What pieces would you be interested in? Would you pay for this kind of thing at all?
4. If you think this is useless or terrible, I want to hear from you too.

Sulek Sonata Teaser:
Sulek No Click
Sulek Hard Click
Sulek Hiss Click

Rimsky-Korsakov Teaser:
Rimsky-Korsakov Hiss Click

[Kingfan]

I remember what a PITA it was to find a good accompanist back in high school. I wonder if the solo and ensemble contest people would allow a digital accompanist. If so, there's another market for you!

[afugate]

I remember what a PITA it was to find a good accompanist back in high school. I wonder if the solo and ensemble contest people would allow a digital accompanist. If so, there's another market for you!

It is (or was) permitted in Oklahoma. Our daughter's high school tried digital accompaniment one year. I chose to pay an accompanist to perform with our daughter and I'm glad I did because the results for many of the kids was awful.

A good accompanist knows when a kid is getting into trouble and how to help them out. Digital just can't do that. Perhaps when we have the holodeck available and Bill Watrous covering our sound, then I'll change my thinking. Until then, digital is okay for practice, but not for contest.

--Andy in OKC

[afugate]

1. What you think of the piano recording? Could you use this in your own practice and do you like how it sounds?
2. Do you like either of the click options? One is a hard click from Reaper, and the other is the "hiss" that I prefer.
3. What pieces would you be interested in? Would you pay for this kind of thing at all?
4. If you think this is useless or terrible, I want to hear from you too.

Sulek Sonata Teaser:
Sulek No Click
Sulek Hard Click
Sulek Hiss Click

Rimsky-Korsakov Teaser:
Rimsky-Korsakov Hiss Click

1. The piano sounds great.
2. I prefer the hiss.
3. I'd be willing to pay for accompaniments. I own some now and use them in my practice. My public performances are jazz-oriented so I wouldn't see myself using these in public. But I'd feel comfortable performing with these in small audience settings.

--Andy in OKC.

[glenp]

1. I agree, the piano sounds great.
2. I have a severe binaural high frequency hearing loss, and therefore cannot hear the hiss at all. I believe that high frequency loss is common as you age, so it might be harder to hear for those suffering from age related hearing loss.
3. I would consider purchasing some for fun.

[hyperbolica]

I would be more interested in media where I can change the tempo and the key independently. You can't really practice if it's only performance speed. Band in a Box, IRealPro, that type of format.

[harrisonreed]

I would be more interested in media where I can change the tempo and the key independently. You can't really practice if it's only performance speed. Band in a Box, IRealPro, that type of format.

I really appreciate the feedback, everyone! This is exactly what I was hoping for.

I don't know BIAB too well, but I do know iRealPro very well -- I'm not sure we could compete with either of those, at least not in the non-classical genres. It's hard to improve on what those programs already do. As for tempos, I had thought about that a bit. Certainly for the public domain pieces we could do a ton of tempo options for practicing that you get automatically. I suppose for the non-PD stuff you could specify what tempos you were shooting for and get a customized track to practice with.

I think total tempo control already exists with smart music but then your accompaniment is a robot midi keyboard. Again, that already exists and it's good, so it would be difficult to compete with.

I 100% agree with the need for a real accompanist for live performance, full stop. I think my vision for this would be for others to use it as I already do -- to learn and memorize pieces that you already have familiarity with without having to have another person on call and on the clock. The Sulek is used as a showcase piece for the accompanist, for example, and is in a relatively complex meter. No accompanist wants to sit through grueling practice sessions with a college student on this piece if the student is still struggling with the much easier solo part. And all this is nothing compared to the nearly impossible task of rehearsing the piano reductions of some of the other pieces out there, like the Rouse. Now you wouldn't have to negotiate with someone to help you learn a piece that the accompanist will never actually perform in public, nor would you have to worry about them messing up or learning something incorrectly, or worse, helping cover for your tempo and timing mistakes on a piece that doesn't allow for any.

[hyperbolica]

One of the things that's kind of frustrating about BIAB and IRP is the content. To make use of the software, you've either got to be a sleuth (to find content) or a technician (to write it yourself). Doesn't leave a lot of room for just being a musician. You pay a lot for BIAB, and you still have nothing. There's got to be a way to work out copyright, but also not keep tool like this from being just boat anchors. There's so much potential that's not being realized because the industry can't work this stuff out.

When I first got BIAB, I was kind of shocked that you couldn't just start doing cool things with it, for a lack of content. And with IRP, even when you can get content, it doesn't have key stuff like lead sheets with the melody. Like a car without tires. Like buying a computer and then needing to write all the programs yourself to be able to use it.

I'm an author of books, and copyright kind of keeps me going. But it's also sometimes a bludgeon used to beat the utility out of real tools and content.

[Doug Elliott]

I would be more interested in media where I can change the tempo and the key independently. You can't really practice if it's only performance speed. Band in a Box, IRealPro, that type of format.

Amazing Slow Downer works quite well on any recording. You can change key, tempo, and fine-tune pitch. It's not free, but reasonable.
https://www.ronimusic.com/

[robcat2075]

...I would like to gauge interest here...

OK, I'll tell you why this would not be a high interest item for me even though I like playing to recorded accompaniments.

Any accompaniment I might want to play to I can plug into MuseScore. I don't need it to be something that someone else has made available in recorded form, I just need the sheet music.

In MuseScore I can set it to any tempo, any pitch, add any tempo change, any dynamics.

I can add any number of tuning notes or count off beats before it, I can easily loop any portion to woodshed it, if I need to modify or abridge a piece for some reason I can artfully do that because it is a notation editor.

I can turn the metronome click on or off.

If someone had a problem with the default MuseScore piano sound there are others that can be swapped in but really, for home practice, the exact timbre of the piano is not an issue.

I would think that anyone very interested in accompaniments to practice to is already doing what I'm doing and if they aren't... why aren't they? It's easy enough to do, easier than playing a trombone and people do that.

[harrisonreed]

That's fair. I've found that doing music scanning, like we talked about, takes just as long to get into the program as manual input when you account for mistake correcting. The video you linked has a very simple accompaniment, so that might be faster and easier.

For more complex pieces, this would be saving them that work, at the very least, but you're right, it would not be as versatile as the user doing the work themselves.

[muschem]

I'm a big fan of MuseScore, and I've done a fair bit of transcribing of etudes, solos and the like since coming back to the horn. BUT...

I would still be interested in your project, Harrison. I think you're absolutely right that there is value here both in terms of quality and in time savings. I know value propositions are subjective, and everyone draws a different conclusion on what is valuable, how much their time is worth, etc. - but for a good quality accompaniment that I didn't need to spend hours attempting to reproduce? Personally, I'd pay for that.

I'm not exactly slow in MuseScore, but for complex pieces, the lift to get the initial transcription is not insignificant. But, here's the thing... just doing a straight transcription into MuseScore (or really any music software... I'm just going with this as an example) won't get you a high quality backing track. Maybe (big maybe) it gets you 70-80% of the way there on some pieces (more for some, less for others, but you get the idea). For something more on par with a live accompaniment, you need to start massaging the input in the software... places with rubato or other tempo adjustments take some tinkering (=more time). Maybe the software didn't understand what you meant in that dynamic marking, or it is interpreting the articulation you entered in a sub-optimal way. Time to go adjust that (=more time). And so on. Ok, so you finally tuned each and every knob, and got the output perfect? You're still dealing with synthetic (in many cases) sound samples. That last bit of quality isn't something (just my opinion) that a completely digital reproduction is ever going to supply.

So yeah, I'd be interested.

[robcat2075]

So... it's too difficult in Musescore to get the articulation or rubato or dynamics, etc. you want?

How are you going to do that in one of Harrison's tracks?

[harrisonreed]

So... it's too difficult in Musescore to get the articulation or rubato or dynamics, etc. you want?

How are you going to do that in one of Harrison's tracks?

Well, it's give and take I guess. You get the version that the accompanist and I want. It comes down to if you like it or not, if it saves time, and if it would be useful.

I do think that practicing would be just as easy on something like VLC. You can adjust the playback speed without changing pitch. That's not the same as full rubato control, but still easy.

Rob's point is a good one -- this doesn't address what he would be after at all

[muschem]

So... it's too difficult in Musescore to get the articulation or rubato or dynamics, etc. you want?

How are you going to do that in one of Harrison's tracks?

It is certainly true that the ability to adjust things to suit one’s preferences is an advantage of the digital native route. Though, to Doug’s point earlier, we are not devoid of options for adjustments to recorded tracks.

But, this wasn’t my point. The time required to even get close enough to a comparable version of Harrison’s tracks in MuseScore would be significant, and there is opportunity cost for time spent fiddling with software vs time making music. I think there is value there.

[nebtrombone]

I have approximately 600 trombone solo accompaniments in Apple Logic that I play back using a Yamaha Disklavier piano. The accompaniments are created in Finale and then imported into Logic. This allows me to use the click track function, change tempo and in the case of the Bordogni accompaniments, change clefs. If the Disklavier isn’t available, then I use the built-in Bosendorfer Grand sound that comes with Logic. It’s a good way to get students playing in equal temperament and learning the repertoire in context of the complete work. My students have a dedicated midi practice room in the School of Music so they may practice with piano every day.