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Topic: Using NWC with Organ (Read 3795 times) previous topic - next topic

Using NWC with Organ

The church to which I belong has a Walker digital organ with MIDI capability. Our music director would like to hook up a laptop to it so that he could play something and have the laptop record it with MIDI so that he would be able to have the laptop play back what he recorded for the choir to sing while he stands in other parts of the church to see how our voices are projecting. He has Finale on his machine in the office, but says that, as nice as it is, it is also pretty complicated. NWC looks like it could be very useful for him, but first, we have a few questions:

1) How well would NWC handle something like that Walker?

2) When he buys a laptop, what kind of sound card (and
other options) should he get to have the best results
(without needing an enormous $$$)?

3) How does NWC handle the recording of dynamics? I tried
NWC at home with a simple keyboard, and it captured the
note durations okay, but not the dynamics. This could,
however, be due to my old computer and sound card.

Any ideas?

Thanks!
--Rob

Re: Using NWC with Organ

Reply #1 –
NWC does not at present import dynamics, either from a live performance or from an imported midi file.

As to hardware requirements, virtually any sound card would suffice, especially if you'll be playing back through the external midi device such as your organ. That being said, you do need a way for the computer to pass midi information in and out; probably the simplest way to accomplish this is to use a midi adaptor cable which plugs into the joystick port of every sound card with which I'm familiar (the popular Creative line included).

Re: Using NWC with Organ

Reply #2 –
Fred,

Thanks for your reply. For our specific purposes, the dynamics may not be very critical - just as long as we can get the organ to play back the accompaniment during rehearsal so our music director can concentrate on working with the choir instead of playing the organ.

That said, and without taking away from the benefits of NWC, is there, perhaps, a program more appropriate for our purposes. Maybe all we need is something that would record the MIDI, with dynamics, etc., without necessarily having to put it into notation. As I mentioned in my original question, our music director DOES have Finale on his office computer, but would like something simpler for the laptop for this purpose.

Any suggestions?
--Rob

Re: Using NWC with Organ

Reply #3 –
There are specific programs to play back MIDI files.
NoteWorthy and Finale both can write MIDI files which
can be played back e.g. by the Windows Media Player
(comes with windows).
But it might be more appropriate to use a simple sequencer
program like Cubase or Cakewalk as you can alter the tempo
and mute/un-mute tracks (e.g. the choir, the pedal, etc.).
I use Finale personally. There are two dedicated Finale
forums on the web, see
http://www.cmp.net/finale/
http://forums.codamusic.com:82/~techsupport
to which you can post any Finale questions.

Greetings,
Harald

Re: Using NWC with Organ

Reply #4 –
Harald,

Thanks. I did a little more looking around on cNet, and found what looks like a GREAT program for our purposes: Anvil Studio (http://www.anvilstudio.com). In my experiments with my keyboard, it was much easier to record to get note durations, and DOES record dynamics, all with sheet music notation as well!

It remains to be seen how well this will work with the organ, but this seems to be better suited to it.

One additional benefit of Anvil Studio is that it is free. The costs come in when you add certain feature modules (e.g. printing), but at least one may use the program's many built-in features for free and decide which (if any) additional modules to purchase.

Thanks again!
--Rob