Fermata and MIDI

[bayswater]

Is anyone aware of a MIDI event or controller that will pause a sequence? I'm trying out alternative instruments on some old baroque pieces where pauses between phrases are common. A lot can be done by varying tempo, but sometimes, the piece just has to pause for a beat or so and most of the ways I can think of to do that make a mess of the view in QuickScribe.

I couldn't find any reference in the MIDI 1 spec or the DP manual. If there is no MIDI event for a pause, how is this normally handled in MIDI?

[FMiguelez]

I have the same situation often. There´s no MIDI event for pauses, AFAIK.

At the end of the day, unless the pauses are extraordinarily long, I think tempo manipulation is still the easiest and fastest way to control fermatas without making a mess.
Putting a bunch of slow tempo changes at the pauses can be tedious, but then it's easy to control each duration by simply editing one single CT tempo point. If they occur at regular intervals at the same phrase points, copying/pasting the tempo points for pauses via option-dragging with the grid on usually works great and fast.

[bayswater]

Here's a typical case, and I'm not clear how I would use tempo without also reducing the duration of some notes.

The first bar is the end of a phrase, and the second is the start of the next. We want this to pause 2 beats between phrases, but keep the score looking like this but with a fermata mark over the last note of the first bar.

If I slow the tempo in the first bar, the notes in it will just play longer, and the second bar will start without a pause.

I suppose I could shorten the notes in bar 1 by a 1/16th and have the score editor quantize the durations, and put in a very slow tempo just before the end of the notes in the first bar, positioned to get them to play to their proper length, and then low enough to pause for 1/16 of a beat at a very slow tempo.

Or is there a better way to use tempo to do this?

[HCMarkus]

What FM says. Do you have to change tempo at a bar line?

I insert tempo changes anywhere I need 'em. In your 3/4 case, a dramatically slow tempo change event slightly after bar 1, beat 3, and another normal at tempo slightly before bar 2, beat 1 should get you what you need from a performance perspective.

But does it look weird in the score? You are gonna' have to hand draw in the fermata regardless, right? Maybe you'll need to white out a tempo change.

[bayswater]

Thanks both of you, but I'm still not getting it. Inserting a tempo change somewhere in bar 1 in my example doesn't create a pause. it just makes the note sustain longer. What am I missing here?

[FMiguelez]

You have to place the "pause" tempo points at very specific places, so that the pauses don't affect the pace of the performance, but you can still edit the length of the pauses as needed.

In your specific case, I would insert a 20 BPM tempo change a tick after the last note on of the pause, and a tempo change to the tempo after the pause right at the moment the phrase continues. The length of this can be from 1/8 note to 1/4 note, so the trick is to place this very slow tempo change "in between notes of the pause", so the performance before/after is not affected.
I've been doing this a lot lately for my piano pieces, and it works. It gives you the (editable) needed pause length and it doesn't mess up the notation at all.

[bayswater]

You have to place the "pause" tempo points at very specific places, so that the pauses don't affect the pace of the performance, but you can still edit the length of the pauses as needed.

In your specific case, I would insert a 20 BPM tempo change a tick after the last note on of the pause, and a tempo change to the tempo after the pause right at the moment the phrase continues. The length of this can be from 1/8 note to 1/4 note, so the trick is to place this very slow tempo change "in between notes of the pause", so the performance before/after is not affected.
I've been doing this a lot lately for my piano pieces, and it works. It gives you the (editable) needed pause length and it doesn't mess up the notation at all.

OK, thanks. I'll try that.

[bayswater]

Well, almost there. I'm working with something with a tempo of about 78 bpm in ¾ time. Reducing the tempo to 20 (the minimum) just after the Note Off before the pause doesn't create a pause that long, so it become necessary to reduce the tempo before the end of the note. That either makes the note length too long or too short to show up correctly in the score. I can get what I want by automating volumes to reduce the note's volume to zero when the pause is in effect.

I was able to do this easier a long time ago in Dr T KCS by inserting a Pause event in the conductor track, but that didn't have to deal with audio.

There is something very odd about the scale in the Conductor track for Tempo. But that's a different topic.

[HCMarkus]

At this point, why not just create "performance" and "score" versions?

When I am dealing with things like this, I am rarely concerned about score, so the issues you are dealing with seldom arise for me. When they do, I just do a "save as" and adjust whatever needs adjusting without worrying about the other version.

[bayswater]

At this point, why not just create "performance" and "score" versions?

When I am dealing with things like this, I am rarely concerned about score, so the issues you are dealing with seldom arise for me. When they do, I just do a "save as" and adjust whatever needs adjusting without worrying about the other version.

Sure, I can do that. I'm just getting carried away here, figuring out how to do things, and learning some techniques that might be useful. Just seemed to me that pauses are common in baroque music (at least the way it is performed now) that there should be a n elegant and repeatable way to do this, where all the notes line up cleanly on the edit screen, but the playback is customized.

[mhschmieder]

Yeah, no direct way as far as I know. Depending on how stable the actual tempo is at that point (and even if it's unstable on purpose), I usually just change the time signature to absorb the pause.

Usually I have some tempo changes too though, as a pause almost always has some ramp-down preceding it, and ramp-up following it, even if on the subtle side.

Not sure if this approach is any friendlier to downstream manuscript manipulation in a bona fide scoring application like Finale though.

[bayswater]

Yes, I thought of that first -- insert an extra bar where the pause goes, an adjust the tempo for that one bar to set the length of the pause. With a duplicate for the score, that would be the cleanest way.

[stubbsonic]

One option is to select the tempo at your pause and change the quarter note in to an 8th or 16th note (just for that one tempo event). That'll make it 2X or 4X slower/longer.

Another option is to shorten the note before the pause (making the pause longer), -- to maximize the space before the next note. Now use two tempo events, a slower one near the beginning of the last note to re-lengthen it, and put the other tempo change one tick after that release, you'll squeeze more pause time out of that 20 BPM moment. If shortening the note messes up the notation, you can use the play/display only function to hide/play the short note, and show/mute the long note.

Allowing tempos slower than 20 BPM would be more elegant, I think. Might make some MIDI sync'ing things a bit more wonky, in rare cases.

[FMiguelez]

One option is to select the tempo at your pause and change the quarter note in to an 8th or 16th note (just for that one tempo event). That'll make it 2X or 4X slower/longer.

Another option is to shorten the note before the pause (making the pause longer), -- to maximize the space before the next note. Now use two tempo events, a slower one near the beginning of the last note to re-lengthen it, and put the other tempo change one tick after that release, you'll squeeze more pause time out of that 20 BPM moment. If shortening the note messes up the notation, you can use the play/display only function to hide/play the short note, and show/mute the long note.

Allowing tempos slower than 20 BPM would be more elegant, I think. Might make some MIDI sync'ing things a bit more wonky, in rare cases.

That's what I do and it works most times. Given that QS scores are not that good anyway, doing as HCMarkus suggested maybe just the ticket.

If you can't get the pauses to be long enough, another more radical option is to double all of the piece's note length values and adjust with tempo and time signature (make it from 4/4 to 2/2), so you half the pulse allowing you to go another half slower for the pause, so it's the equivalent of 10 BPM for more breath room.

But I agree that a pause event would be most elegant, or at least to be able to go as slow as 5 BPM for these and other similar situations.

[bayswater]

So it seems there are a lot of approaches to this, and choosing one depends on the specifics of the piece of music.

I thought a pause event might be difficult to implement because it would not be clear how it would deal with audio. But thinking about it, audio could be locked and ignore the pause event.