CYBERMIDI MUSIC and MIDI Blog

As a professional MIDI programmer, my job is to take a song and transform it into MIDI data. In short, you are taking all the parts: the chords, the notes, the drums, the dynamics, and reproducing them. As one example, a solo performer can now play and sing along with that MIDI file and can sound pretty close to the original artist's recording.

Many people have asked me how I sequence MIDI files without using sheet music. Not a knock on sheet music, but unless I am reproducing a complete classical music score, there are many songs out there where the sheet music is either hard to find, not entirely accurate, or simply not sufficient.
The answer involves three different skill sets, which everyone has or can learn:

• Some degree of musical training, particularly on Piano or Guitar.
• Understanding how a music sequencing program works.
• The Ears.

In this article, we're going to focus on number three: ear training. There are many methods out there for teaching music and the best ones out there are those that spend time on ear training.

As defined in Wikipedia: ear training (or aural skills) is a process by which musicians learn to identify intervals, chords, rhythms, and other basic elements of music. Training the ear to identify musical patterns is a great tool for mastering the art. Some people may assume that this is a talent that someone must be born with. That's simply not true.

Let's first discuss two types of "pitch".

Perfect pitch (or absolute pitch) is the ability of a person to identify or sing a musical note without the benefit of a known reference. Scientists believe that perfect pitch can be genetic. Most believe that this talent can be acquired during one's early years of development. I don't know the answer, and I really don't care. All I know is that I don't have perfect pitch.

Relative Pitch is the distance of a musical note from a set point of reference. In other words, given the first note, you can sing or hear relative notes (such as the 3rd, the 5th, etc). This skill CAN be taught, even to people who have been told they were tone deaf (although they might have to work a little harder at it). I have relative pitch, but I'm sure It wasn't something I was born with. Here is how I aquired it.

When I was 13 years old, my parents sent me for my first guitar lessons. It was a very long time ago, and I recall very little about them, but I do know the first things I learned was how to read music. Of course, it was very basic at the time, and as I grew, I learned more and eventually was introduced to full-blown music theory. Then in college, I sang in the choir and learned how to sight-read. One of the techniques I learned was called "solfege", which is a pedagogical for the teaching of sight singing.

Over the years I played with many bands, and with many incredible musicians. I remember those rehearsals, as I always seemed to be the one to teach the other guys their parts. I listened to the song and immediately could dissect all the chords. They couldn't. They had sheet music in front of them, I didn't. Sure I could read sheet music, but didn't need to. So what was it that I had that the other guys didn't?

While I wasn't at their playing skill level, I did have a huge advantage over them: my ears. No, they were not huge. It was the ability to listen to a song once, and immediately dissect all the chords and instrument parts. It took me a little longer to figure out a rapid-fire guitar solo. For that I would rewind, forward, and slow down the “cassette tape” until I got it down. Little did I know at the time that I would still be doing that today in my profession as a MIDI file programmer.

The final piece of the puzzle was to learn how to use a music sequencing program, such as Cakewalk or Sonar. I had now mastered the three skill levels.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't have perfect pitch. But I can listen to a song and identify the key by quickly finding the note on a guitar or piano. Once I have that reference point, I can identify all other aspects and nuances of the song, such as chord structure. That's relative pitch. And I owe that to ear training.

So when programming a MIDI file, I can easily identity the song key, recognize chords and other nuances by using relative pitch. I then break down each song measure by measure and simply reproduce what I hear. While some may consider this a special talent, to me its just second nature based on the ear training and musical skills I learned in the past.

And you can do it too. Whether you are a singer, guitar player, pianist, or whatever, don't ever get you discouraged if you find it difficult at the beginning. You can learn ear training. In fact, there are many methods around - just google "ear training".

Music is not just a part of the brain, it's a part of the soul. It's just a matter of learning how to extract and use it creatively. And like anything else, that comes with practice, persistence, and patience and the love of music.

Before long, you'll be master the art.
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Vincent J. Miele is an accomplished musician, and the Founder and CEO of CYBERMIDI.com.