Using midi in choir rehearsal

As I’ve admitted elsewhere, midi was a lifesaver to me during my teaching career because I unfortunately quit taking piano lessons when I was a kid. By the time I decided to be a music teacher and took it back up again, the old brain neurons just didn’t connect like they should. So I would sequence the accompaniment part and vocal parts into midi files and use them to accompany the choir and play their parts during rehearsals. Of course, if I had a student who could handle it, I gave them the opportunity, but they were few and far between. I do regret not pushing them more and using them more effectively. It should be every music teacher’s goal to promote the art of piano playing and accompanying.

In the old days, I recorded the music directly into the wonderful Ensoniq ESQ-1. It had eight tracks that you could record into and play back with digital controls. It was amazing in the day. Several recording and playback generations later, I concluded my teaching career using a software midi sequencer called Metro (still available at Sagantech.com) to produce the midi files, and Sweet Midi (ronimusic.com) on the iPad to play back in the classroom. I exported the music sequence from Metro as a midi file (Song Title.mid) into my Dropbox account and then imported it into the Sweet Midi app on my iPad. Very quick and easy.

I will do a blog on Metro in the future. The focus of this blog will be the basic functions and use of Sweet Midi as the midi file playback device.

To use the midi file in rehearsal, I first connected the iPad to my rehearsal digital piano via a Lightning adaptor and USB cable (such as connects a computer to a printer). The piano had on-board speakers which were very handy for some things, but mostly I used a couple of small powered speakers for output to the students. The iPad sat on the extended music rack of the piano, right within arms’ reach. Our Music Boosters purchased a large electric adjustable desk to put everything on, so I could stand or sit in rehearsal. Very nice. One of the fantastic benefits of using midi in rehearsal is the ability to be mobile and not stuck behind the piano all the time.

Let’s take a look at the app.

As you can see, there are 12 tracks on the screen, but more are available if you scroll to the right using the black “Slide” horizontal bar. I don’t think I ever used more than 12 tracks.

Looking vertically down each track you see that each has controls for Pan (Left and Right stereo field), Reverb and Chorus (I never used them), Volume, Solo, Mute, and Instrument. Under the white Channel label, you have a numeric Bar indicator, Play/Pause button, Time Signature, Transpose, and BPM (tempo). Below that is a horizontal scroll bar that is used to quickly jump to a specific measure (bar). At the very bottom of the screen are Help and Settings buttons that are very helpful as you are learning to use the app. At the very top of the screen is another Play/Pause button, another locator scroll bar, and a volume scroll bar.

I always put the piano accompaniment on track 1, followed by the vocal parts. I used one track per vocal part. Normally then, track 1 was the piano accompaniment, track 2 was Soprano, track 3 Alto, etc.

The controls that I used the most were pan, volume, the locator scroll bar, and tempo.

Pan

The piano accompaniment track was kept in the Center pan position so that everyone heard it equally. I panned the Soprano track hard left and the Alto track hard right because that’s where they were in the rehearsal room. Since I connected the Left and Right external speakers to the L/R speaker outputs on the back of the piano, the sound came out balanced that way. In this way, each section heard their part clearly, not to confuse it with the other. I panned the Tenor part ½ to the left and the Bass part ½ to the right to enhance their clarity as well. The Basses and Tenors were normally located in the center of the choir. You will want to set your pan positions based on how you have your choir sections organized in the room. Panning the parts is important for clarity. It helps the students hear their part more clearly. It’s a very good idea to “spread” the sound in this way, rather than having all the sounds stacked on top of each other. Sweet Midi will remember your pan settings for each song. If it does not, there is a place in the Settings to select so that the app will remember the pan positions.

Volume

The volume faders will be the section that you will adjust the most, and it will depend on what you’re doing throughout rehearsal. If you’re working on the Alto part, for example, you could adjust the faders so that the students hear the Alto track the most, piano accompaniment a little less, and the STB parts even less or not at all. Once the Altos are comfortable and confident, you could take the Alto track out completely and see how they do, or add the others back in. You will be adjusting the volume faders constantly depending on how the students are doing and what your goals are moment to moment. However, the controls are very easy and quick to adjust and really will not slow your rehearsal down at all.

Locator

Before you start playback, touch the button on the locator scroll bar and move it to the measure number that you need in rehearsal. It is easy to maneuver this control but is sometimes finicky. If your finger slides one way or the other as you lift your finger, the measure number may move up or down and start playback in the wrong place. It doesn’t happen very often but can be frustrating if your rehearsal is on a roll and is suddenly sidetracked. I’ve often wished for some programmable starting points for each midi file or numeric keypad for entering measure numbers in the app.

Tempo

One of the very best benefits of using midi in rehearsal is having the ability to adjust the playback tempo. When you are learning a new piece of music or have a difficult passage, it is very common to practice at a slower tempo. Everybody does it! Simply touch and drag the tempo field up or down to suit your needs. If the song has no tempo changes within the midi sequence, it will be a simple numeric value displayed. For example, if the tempo of the entire midi file is 120, you could move it down to 80 for your initial rehearsals and over time work it up to the correct speed. If there are tempo changes within the midi file, your tempo edit will be displayed as a percentage. If your initial tempo is 120 and a subsequent tempo later in the song is 80, lowering the tempo by -20% will change the tempos to 96 and 64 respectively.

Sweet Midi Instruments:
By default, Sweet Midi uses basic “General Midi” sound patches for it’s audio output through the iPad headphone jack or on-board speakers. You can select a different sound output for each midi track/channel. Many music directors decide to have the Soprano part played with a flute voice and the Alto part played by a clarinet voice for example. It would seem logical to use different timbres for each voice so the student could lock onto it better. To me, these instrumental ‘patches’ sounded good on occasion, but to my ears just sounded obnoxious, unmusical, and cheesy most of the time. I opted to stay with the piano sound for all of the parts. There is an option to purchase and install third-party sound files that are considerably better than General Midi patches. Even the piano patch is considerably better. When I used the iPad in choir rehearsal, however, I used my digital piano as the output destination which had an even better piano sound reproduction. There is a place in Settings where you can select this.

I have looked at other midi player apps and either find them lacking features that I needed, or being much too feature-rich and cluttered. I have not found any that offered programmable location points or numeric keypad entry, which are on the top of my Sweet Midi wish list. So Sweet Midi is the right blend for me. I would be very interested to hear your views and recommendations! What is your preferred midi player app? Please contact me if you have questions or ideas for me!!