Writing about musical techniques is as frustrating as attempting to describe what makes a painting beautiful, or any other form of visual art, sculpture, for instance. You have to see the work of art. To experience it. Analogously, you have to hear musical sounds.

What we have tried to do in the preceding pages is simply to offer some examples. To point the way toward experimentation, trial and error, learning, discovery. All such effort being oriented toward one objective: improving MIDI recordings. Fortunately, one can correct many of those transgressions that so dismayed our teachers: running a choppy arpeggio, sustaining and smudging chord changes, blunders in adhering to meter, and other egregious sins.

One nice aspect of MIDI-computing is its interactivity. Sequencing gives us an opportunity to participate. In so doing, we strengthen our understanding and appreciation of quality music. We are presented with a canvass that is multidimensional.

Editing MIDI recordings is a process, not a final event. The process is open-ended. In other words, however much one fine-tunes a recording, there always seems to be room for further improvement. Hence, a risk: Devoting a lifetime to tweaking one file.

Admittedly, enhancing recordings is intellectually and emotionally challenging.

Some of us believe it's worth the effort.

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