Digging up old graves

Once the original parade was done, it was done. I saved the original Cakewalk files and the individual section renderings to a CD and stuck it into a binder with a bunch of other old, useless software that my pack rat tendencies prevent me from throwing away. (Anybody need a Microsoft Sidewinder game pad driver? Or a CD copy of Civilization II?)

There was never any intention of revisiting it. Or even of removing or replacing the two absolutely horrible sections that I consistently fast-forward through. Or fixing the awful digital clipping that appears a few times.

Why? Because it could never actually be released. It’s pretty much just a pile of uncleared samples. So once the parading was done, the piece would be complete, dead, and fondly remembered by a dozen or so dirt hippies.

Alas, here we are, something-teen years later with brand new tools and a desire to resurrect our once glorious past.

Looking at the archive CD, we have a few things to work with. Some of the original samples were saved and the midi tracks and processed audio were, too. But that’s not enough to just pretend it’s a remixing project. Hell, I’d love to just throw stems to the wind and curate the results. That would be easy (I’ll probably do something like that, anyway, but more on that later). But we’re missing something really important.

For those readers who aren’t total fucking nerds, here’s a quick primer on midi. Midi is simply a timestamped list of events. Like this:

Time 000 – Note on C3 at velocity 102

Time 004 – Adjust parameter CC34 to 27

Time 005 – Adjust parameter CC34 to 28

Time 008 – Note off C3

Time 016 – Note on E3 at velocity 102

etc.

It looks kind of like this:

Some midi data

It was built to handle note, controller and program change information, and that’s it. Midi contains no information about what sound is being produced other than (perhaps) a program change event. But shoot that file at a different synthesizer, and you get a different sound. Heck, shoot that file at the same synthesizer with an altered patch memory and you get a different sound.

Which brings us to this guy:

A dead battery

The expected lifespan of a CR2032 installed in a JV-2080 is probably less than 18 years. In other words, since nearly all of the patches used in the parade were customized, were never exported and saved, and have since disappeared, we’re missing some important sounds. The patches could certainly be recreated, but that would be a lot of work (that I’m really not all that interested in doing.)

But that’s okay. It means that the new version won’t just be a straight-up remix of the old version. Plus… just wait until you see some of the new sound mangling toys I have. Holy. Fucking. Shit.