Music Accompaniment with a Virtual Band

Lee, Ken Lynn (2012) Music Accompaniment with a Virtual Band. Final Year Project (Other), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

This project is to develop a music improvisation system based on a Mikromedia for dsPIC33. This idea came in when a group of musician was trying to perform, practise and commitment between group members are important as to have a perfect performance. Due to the different lifestyle of each group member, some may not be able to practise or come for practise. The idea of having a music accompaniment with a virtual band then came in. This enables the performer to perform alone without the jeopardy of other performers. Besides that, when a music student is practising or performing without accompaniment, the user or the audiences may feel that the performing piece of a music is somewhat dry and unexciting but with this virtual band, it allows music students to practise with accompaniment where it can inspire students to practise more, perform confidently and even make the learning of musical instruments a fun process. The virtual band supports infinite instrument that one can imagine of. The reason to build this The Music Accompaniment with a Virtual Band system is because in the market, there aren't any devices that can play MIDI files. Why MIDI file is so important is because MIDI files contains a sequences of musical data stored digitally and it can be recalled anytime and also MIDI files provides flexibility to the users to edit the file on the fly. For example, a user wants to play a song Canon by Pachelbel but the song was arranged for 2 or more instruments as the harmonization is the main key in the song. So the user has only one ways to play it, which is to source for the whole Canon by Pachelbel in MP3 or any format and play together with it but what if the user wants to play the melody line alone without playing together with the MP 3. The main disadvantage of MP3 files is that it cannot be "dismantled" and "reassemble" any sequences or part of music based on what user wants to be, as in removing the main melody form the song which it might introduce loss to the audio file. The main advantage of the MIDI is that it allows users to edit any tracks from the songs and also able to add in more tacks to the song.