JOB WELL DONE

The August 2003 issue of EM was one of the best ever. I thoroughly enjoyed all the useful information, especially the “Mac Shareware Roundup” [in the cover story “Too Much Good Stuff”]. Keep up the great work.
Dana
The Right Connection

ART AND CRAFT

I enjoyed Richard Alan Salz's “Recording Musician: The Old Two and Four” in the August 2003 edition of EM — except for the section about the Fine Young Cannibals song “She Drives Me Crazy.” Mr. Salz states that he has “always admired the distinctive high-pitched snare drum.” Although I respect his opinion, I strongly disagree with it.

The snare sound on the Cannibals' song initially helped to sell the song, but now it sounds horribly dated. To me, it's in the same league as the “Macarena” and “Don't Worry, Be Happy.” The Cannibals' song could have stood on its own without the gimmicky snare.

I've been in the Top 40 field for almost 40 years, and I've witnessed gimmicky recordings come and go quickly, never to be heard again. Songs that are crafted and recorded well are still played and enjoyed. Just listen to Sinatra's “Young at Heart,” the Doobie Brothers' “Listen to the Music,” or Shania Twain's “You're Still the One.” All of these and more will remain classics to be enjoyed time and time again.

After all, what we do, or should be doing, is craft. Real craft doesn't need gimmicks.
Tom Klepacki
Birdland Studios
Clearwater, Florida

MORE GOOD STUFF

Try the LPAC (Lossless Predictive Audio Compression) Archiver at www.nue.tu-berlin.de/wer/liebchen/lpac.html#LPAC%20Archiver. It's free, faster than GenieSys's RatHole 3.1 (August 2003, “Too Much Good Stuff: Short Takes,” p. 52), and compresses everything I tried at almost 2:1 ratios.
John
via e-mail

TEMPER, TEMPERAMENT

I enjoyed Jim Aikin's engaging and informative article about alternate tunings (“Desktop Musician: Playing in the Cracks,” June 2003), but I was puzzled by his concluding remarks. His speculation that equal temperament may have given the past 250 years of Western music its “restless, edgy quality” seems surprisingly ill informed.

Equal temperament has been controversial since it was first introduced. Even Bach's “well-tempered” harpsichord was probably not equally tempered. But tempered intervals are simply not an issue in much of Western music. Whether in a string quartet or a symphony orchestra, most performers use their ears to instantly tune each chord to perfect intervals. Top-level ensembles do this with amazing accuracy.

I would turn Aikin's speculation on its head. My view is that much synthesized music is a bit harsh and — dare I say — flat, especially when attempting to mimic standard ensembles. I wonder if that can be attributed partly to synthesizers with fixed intonation.
Robert Patterson
via e-mail

Author Jim Aikin replies: Robert — It's tempting to conclude that one of the reasons that synthesizers tend to sound harsh and cause early-onset aural fatigue is because they play in fixed equal temperament. But the intonation of a piano is also fixed, and I for one don't find an hour of Chopin harsh or tiring. Timbre and responsiveness seem to be more important factors than temperament.

As a cellist, I'm very aware that one often fudges certain pitches up or down a bit to reduce the beating of intervals, but it's an overstatement to say that this practice results in “perfect” intervals. A perfect minor seventh, for instance, is so far away from an equal-tempered minor seventh that to most performers trained in the Euro-American tradition, it would sound very out of tune. Barbershop and bluegrass vocalists may sometimes use perfect minor sevenths, but string and wind players seldom do.

It's also worth noting that classical string players and vocalists customarily use a lot of vibrato. That makes the question of whether they're employing, or aiming at, perfect intervals almost moot. You can hallucinate perfect intervals in a string-quartet performance if you want to, but the players aren't producing them. What they're producing is a sort of cloud of pitch information that hovers, at any given moment, around an abstract pitch class. Whether the pitch class of a specific note is equal tempered or just-intoned is likely to be somewhat subjective and debatable.

The connection between equal temperament and the increasingly restless quality of classical music in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries may be a little less direct than I implied, but the connection is undeniable. Equal temperament was adopted primarily because it facilitated modulation to distant keys. The desire to modulate was an artistic response to the restlessness of the era. If composers hadn't felt the need to modulate, such an ugly tuning system would never have been tolerated.

Editor in Chief Steve O adds: You are correct that Bach did not use equal temperament when performing “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” It appears — the point is debated — that he used a version of the Werckmeister or Kirnberger temperaments, and he may not have used the same temperament every time he performed.

MAYBE BABY

Nick Peck's review of Mackie's Baby HUI MIDI control surface (May 2003) was well written, even though I didn't agree with all of his opinions. I bought the Baby HUI for use with Steinberg's Cubase SX.

In the third paragraph, Peck states, “The Baby HUI's feature set is a subset of its big brother's, so any DAW that recognizes the original HUI will work with the Baby HUI.” I wish this were true. The original Mackie MIDI map does not work for the Baby HUI with Cubase SX, although the program works perfectly with the original HUI. I contacted Mackie about this, and they directed me to Steinberg. I then contacted Steinberg and was greeted with silence.

I attempted to map the MIDI commands myself. With the help of a good soul in Steinberg's user forum, I made some headway: apparently, the Yamaha DM2000 MIDI map — also stored in Cubase SX — almost works. I was able to get faders, mutes, solos, pans, sends, and even the lower transport controls working. The upper transport commands, however, remain dead meat. Ironically, Steinberg had the Baby HUI working for Nuendo months ago, but has yet to support it in its new version of Cubase.

As far as I know, the problem still hasn't been fixed. I think that the public should know about it before anyone else makes this mistake.
Eric Bragg
Fountain Square House of Music

Author Nick Peck replies: Eric — Thanks for your insightful comments. As you can imagine, it's impossible for a reviewer to test a product of this kind with every possible DAW. I'm sorry to hear that the Baby HUI is not working as advertised for Cubase SX. I would think that it is in Mackie's and Steinberg's best interest to resolve this problem.

Assistant editor Matt Gallagher adds: Steinberg reports that the next major release of Cubase SX will offer support for the Baby HUI. At press time, Steinberg had not determined a release date for the next version.

EM ARCHIVES

I have all the issues of EM ever published, and they come in handy several times a year. Unfortunately, the magazines weigh a ton and are beginning to take up a large amount of space. Have you considered selling your back issues on searchable CD-ROMs or DVDs?
Dave Quick
via e-mail

Dave — I have long dreamed of offering an electronic EM archive, complete with the original layouts and graphics, mostly because I want to use it myself. But creating even a nonsearchable version would be a big job. Our earliest issues (circa 1985 through 1988) were created before we switched to desktop publishing; we only began systematically archiving our files in January 1997. So to create a nonsearchable, digital archive, we would have to scan every issue before 1997 and create an electronic version of each story. To create a searchable version, we would also have to run optical character-recognition software and then proof and correct the OCR errors. On the other hand, although a 1997 through 2003 electronic edition would still require considerable work, it is a far more practical project and could be done from the existing files.

In the end, it comes down to money and reader demand. If we have reason to believe that enough readers will buy a disc-based EM collection to make it financially viable, we would seriously consider creating one. Otherwise, it's going to remain a dream.
— Steve O

WE WELCOME YOUR FEEDBACK.

Address correspondence and e-mail to “Letters,” Electronic Musician, 6400 Hollis Street, Suite 12, Emeryville, CA, 94608, or emeditorial@primediabusiness.com. Published letters may be edited for space and clarity.