MIDI Recordings

In 1993, I wanted Dad to make me some good recordings himself playing, but I didn't want him to deal with microphone placement, soundproofing, and all the other hassles of live recording that get in the way of a spontaneous performance. So I got Dad a Yamaha MDF-2 MIDI Data Filer which is like a simple tape-recorder for the MIDI digital information that can be recorded from his electronic piano. Instead of recording sound, it basically records which keys Dad played and how hard he played them, and I can later use that information to “play” any kind of digital piano in a controlled recording environment.

Dad made a bunch of MIDI recordings of most of the tunes from his little “black book” and gave me them for Christmas. Later on when playing dinner gigs, he found that he could also use them to continue to “play” while he took bathroom breaks without disrupting the mood and no one would notice he'd gone. Once he said he came back from the bathroom to find the diners politely clapping at his performance!

The orginal keyboard he used to record the MIDI files was his beloved “Rhodes” piano, which is really a Roland MK-60, an early electronic recreation of a classic Fender Rhodes electric piano. It doesn't sound much like a real Fender Rhodes, but it does has a warm character of it's own and it would be the best recreation the dynamics of his playing (every keyboard responds differently to a player's touch).

However, I don't have access to a Roland MK-60 here out west, and anyways I prefer the sound of an authentic Fender Rhodes (and I think Dad would too — back in the 1970's, Dad's buddy Ray Heney lent Dad his Fender Rhodes to play for a couple of weeks and I think that's when we fell in love with the sound). I have a Rhodes Stage 73 Mark I which would be great to use, but I needed a digital MIDI instrument in order to play it with Dad's MIDI files, so I used the Scarbee R.S.P. 73 sample library which is a painstaking recreation of a Rhodes Stage 73 Mark I. After lots of side-by-side comparisons, I can't tell the difference between it any my real Rhodes (except it's not as noisy!). The dynamics came out great and it sounds like Dad playing it.

Tech Notes: I used a dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 running Cubase SX to render the MIDI to an audio file. I put the Scarbee Rhodes samples through Scarbee's VKFX to provide a to provide a slight panning tremolo (a classic Rhodes effect) and a Fender Twin amp simulation. I also added a bit of Cubase's built-in reverb. The audio output was converted to MP3 using the LAME encoder at the “standard” VBR preset (128 kbps).

I'm still in the process of converting these MIDI files to audio, and I'll be updating them periodically. If anyone is interested in a straight piano version of some of these tunes, send me a note and I'll make a list of songs to work on later.