Experimental Classical Music Series

ABOUT THE EXPERIMENTAL CLASSICAL MUSIC SERIES

This series constitues the record of an adventure I had involving making samples from scratch (no canned or pre-packaged samples) and applying them to classical music MIDI files and scanned sheet music. Wherever possible, I sampled all the notes in a chromatic range (ie all 88 keys of a piano, all the notes on my accordion, harmonium, bass, and guitar - or all the notes in the range of people playing scales on youtube). The one exception is in the Beat Bachs section of Toy Bachs, which uses canned percussion samples re-sampled to be tuned to every note.

When addressing this project to folks, sometimes they would ask - can't you purchase packaged samples? But #1 - baking from scratch is more fun and importantly #2 - there's a wabi sabi to the very imperfect way in which I (or others) play and record their scales - resulting in very human (and often out of tune) playing that I think is more textured and interesting than pristine studio samples that have been shined to diamond-like perfection.

Many heroic efforts were made by others to provide the MIDI files that comprise these recordings. In that spirit, all of my experiments in this domain are likewise free for you to listen to. If you enjoy any of it, you may wish to donate to the music-education-in-schools organization of your choice.

All source files used in the making of this album are courtesy of mutopiaproject.com and are in the Public Domain with the following exceptions:

MIDI Files via Mutopiaproject.com
BWV 617
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0, original source Autograph

BWV 772, 777, 780, 783, 988,
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0, original source Bach-Gesellschaft

BWV 1046, 1047
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0, original source Rust, 1871. Bach-Gesellschaft Volume 19

BWV 721
Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, original source Bach-Gesellschaft Edition Orgelwerke Bd 4. 1893

BWV 768
IMSLP550652 - Public Domain Sheet Music

BWV 659
Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0, original source Edition Peters 8662