I've been playing around with Ockham's music models and they're very cool. Ockham has helped me getting the Python scripts to run on my Macintosh. If you are going to use them on the Mac you must use Poser 4, as Poser 5 won't work with tkinter scripts. Also be sure to save your audio file in AIFF format instead of WAV on the Mac, just type yourfilename.aif in the WAV field. It works best when the midi file and aif file are in the Poser 4 application folder. I just got back from 2 weeks in Amsterdam and am creating an Amsterdam street scene with a calliope as the center piece so the script is making it much easier. Kudos to Ockham

Ulysses and I have been discussing MIDI in general.... turns out we both happened to see the same video, and both took inspiration from it. (As in, "Can something like this be done in Poser?") You can see a small sample of it at animusic.com/aqua-harp.html I'm thinking about some way to make a more general MIDI driver, to give the framework for imaginative music videos. Ideas are welcome. At the moment, I'm envisioning: 1. You would prepare a set of poses in advance. 2. The script would let you match those poses with notes in any desired combination. 3. Each "key down" event would set the figure into the appropriate pose for the pitch, and each "key up" would either return the figure to default or let it flow into the next.

That shouldn`t be too hard to do, but with a piano, it might be difficult because when they play the highest and lowest notes the character has to stretch, though I suppose these could be pre made poses to do that.

I'm really thinking in a looser way, not just fingering of instruments. Imagine some of the early Wt D***y music videos like Fantasia or Sorcerer's Apprentice.

I have the animusic video I love it! I was wondering if you were inspired to do it by that. The full set of them is really inexpenisve, and the way the did the stuff was just really really cool! So cool, in fact, My grandmother wanted a copy of it for herself!! lol Any more items in the works, Ockham? Maybe a guitar and such? I'd really like to explore more of what can be done with this...

Walt Disney isn't bad to say. it's M*l Er that's the bad word...

In terms of instruments, a trumpet would probably be easiest to form "honest" fingering. Trombone equally easy. Piano involves too much ad hoc movement; I can fake it (looks okay from a distance) by pulling the Right Pinky to the highest note and the Left Pinky to the lowest note. But anything beyond that just can't be mechanized. Guitar might be closer to mechanical? Should be possible to set up poses for the usual chords, but how about the picking? I don't have a feel for it. The way things are going, the Magic Empire won't have M*l Er to kick around much longer......

You shouldnt mention d**ney at all or uncle walts gang of thugs will come `round and beat you up.

Nah, they wouldn't dare beat me up -- I still have my Club card. And 7 kids. Four of whom still have to go. Greed will win out there... lol

Oh, and I'm on Roy's side in the fight. Already gave him my shares to vote, too. Not that it matters (I think i've got like, maybe 150 or so, lol), but hey, anything to bring down the big bad shorter than Shrek's enemy false Mickey.... ya know, if the buyout happens or Roy's efforts pick up enough steam, we'll suddenly have to choose between them or Time Warner now that AOL is absorbed... Sigh... Maybe Microsoft will buy Murdoch out... ROFL!!!

A kazzoo might be easy to do... A violin would be quite good as a real choice. You could have real hand poses made to look like fingering of notes and five or six different bowing poses and choose them randomly some way... A piano could be done too, you wouldn`t have to always be playing the exact notes of the tune as long as it looked quite convincing, 3 or 4 chord shapes would probably be enough. You could do most instruments so they look like they are being played properly but not playing the actual notes.

I can likely get some examples of the guitar picking, and if I can get the jp's figured on a current project my partners and I may want to see what we can do for a flute of a sort... This is some really cool stuff, and I think that combined with your jiggle script, some good detail poses, and some carefully designed cool stuff, lots of very cool things could come out. I still suck at midi, though, lol. Strictly a wave gal...

A recorder shouldn't be hard to model or animate the finger positions for. (The hands don't move, just the fingers, so there is no stretching involved.) The same fingering is used for most end-blown flutes and bagpipe chanters and such, depending upon key and range. Being single notes rather than chords also means that even amateur musicians can stand a decent chance of making music (it helps that it is hard to get bad sounds out of a recorder). This would be useful for Renaissance angels, pied pipers, shepherds wooing lassies.... :) Carolly

Okay, we're gathering a good number of instruments here. Piano, at least the way I used to play it (mainly thumbs and pinkies) should be a fair approximation. Serious fingering impossible. Brasses (trumpet, french horn, trombone) are easy because they have only a few valve or slide positions, and the fingers or arms will follow by IK. Recorder or bagpipe: I'll take Carolly's word that the pattern will work. Fretless strings: Locating the note is a matter of superimposing a big arm pose to move up and down the neck, with a twisty hand pose to hit one of four strings. As I recall, bowing has several variations which correspond more to the loudness and style than to the note, so it will just have to be approximate. (This seems to have escaped from my original notion of "free-flowing" moves, but that's okay.... being useful is more fun than being fantastic.)

Instruments like the saxophone and clarinet will have similar fingering patterns to the recorder and bagpipes.

Guess I'll have to do some Googling; I'm sure the basic patterns for all common instruments are available in chart form.

So a fingering chart like this would help? (It is from the Trapp Family Singers' book on learning to play the recorder... and how I taught myself to not only read music, but do it well enough to play with others... but that was 20 years ago.) I also have some typical medieval songs for recorder (Sumer is Icumen In, etc.) as well as Scarborough Fair, and about 300 variants going back to 1670! If you IM me with an email addy, I'll scan some charts for you (I had to reduce this puppy to get it within the thread). Getting ready now to watch the Oscars (still shoving the headache back), but I need to do more scanning tonight of Japanese instruments, so will add this book to the queue. Carolly

Yes, that would help indeed! Use this email: midi@ockhamsbungalow.com

Ah so THAT is a recorder :o) I guess a "flute" is on of those sideways things then? And a penny whistle is played much like a recorder, isn't it? Would a drummer be impossible to do?

Yes, a flute is the sideways thing. Piccolo is the smaller version of flute. Thinking about percussion..... The move itself would be easy enough. You'd parent the hand to the drumstick, and the script would try to move the stick to the face of the drum at the Key Down instant. Big problem: MIDI is wildly non-standard. Some files have a separate track named Percussion, but there's no standard way to tell the drummer "hit bass drum now" or "hit cymbal now". Somebody has probably developed such a trick, because MIDI is very expandable... but the trick would only work for those specialized files. It wouldn't work for the vast majority of MIDI.

Attached Link: http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Movies/PrimRag.wmv

Wow that's WONDERFUL ockham! I love the way the puddle reacts to the music. Is that really done inside Poser?!

"MIDI is wildly non-standard...It wouldn't work for the vast majority of MIDI. " There's a Genera Midi Standart (GM) that specifies the tracks and channels assigned to rhytm (drums) and the notes that apply to each drum instrument. You might want to check this standart, as almost every midi song today conforms to this standart, making it easier to play on almost every soundcard.

The puddle is yours, of course. I should have credited that in the message. And yes, it's all done with Python in Poser.

Thanks for the tip. I'll look it up. My own musical tastes are strictly Baroque, so I haven't been examining the more modern MIDI stuff. (To my ears Beethoven is atrociously avant-garde.)

Oh I recognized the puddle :o) And I was amazed that it could look so alive :o) Oh and baroque music. My favourite era in classical music too. Hdel and Corelli in particular. And Bach of course. :) Sooo... any chance of a midi-driven harpsicord?

I'm a bit more modern myself, but I'm closer to your idea, ockham, as I loved the idea of the intstruments playing themelves as in the source of inspiration, for one, and the idea of doing something a little funky with visuals similar to your movie (in my case, I'm looking to use light flashes for one thing like Close Encounters, and in another as a sort of motion based sound for a creature). Definitely very cool stuff, all of this...

In the beginning was MIDI. Later came General MIDI, which standardized 128 patches (sounds) as well as certain other features to encourage compatibility among musical equipment manufactureres. Both include 16 possible channels of information. Channels can have instrument assignments as well as note and other values. MIDI itself has been around for years and is fairly standardized but the channel assignments are not. One composer may use channel 1 for a piano sound and channel 2 for a bass sound while another composer may use completely differend sounds on those channels. General MIDI pieces typically use Channel 10 for drums or percussion but that is not absolutely required. That's probably why it appears "wildly non-standard."

Attached Link: http://www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/faithfull/379/gm.html#perc