By Catherine Elcik

In MIDI Sequencing Intermediate, course instructor Michael Moss focuses on the creative process of writing, arranging, and producing MIDI tracks, and how students can use MIDI editing techniques to create both electronic-sounding arrangements and more natural, live-sounding musical environments.

“The emphasis is on getting MIDI to sound more musical and less machine-like,” Moss says. “How can we take what human musicians do when they play and emulate that in MIDI to give ourselves realistic tracks that sound good?”

From a Fijian woman with extensive training in Indian classical music to a business executive who wants to have a little fun in his home studio, Moss’s online class is open to all musicians eager to expand their digital horizons. MIDI Sequencing Intermediate takes up where Berkleemusic’s MIDI Sequencing Basics leaves off, but Moss says musicians and hobbyists who know their way around a MIDI keyboard should have no problem with his intermediate tempo.

During the first week of class, Moss introduces students to the three stages of the MIDI musician’s art. In the first stage, MIDI is magical—you’re in love with a new tool and want to learn everything you can. In the second stage, reality sets in as you start to wonder why your tracks pale in comparison to professional tracks. “In this stage you learn to be analytical,” Moss says. “Why is this professional drum loop so much hipper than my drum loop? That gets you analyzing what really makes things work.” In the third stage, you synthesize all the music you studied into a unique and personal style. Because Moss’ class is designed for students in the second stage of their MIDI learning, Moss peppers his syllabus with real-life examples of the skills he’s teaching in class.

“Whether we’re thinking about disco-rolling bass or techno-repeated-eighth notes, we actually listen to examples, and I encourage students to emulate them in their work,” Moss says. “I don’t want students to be unoriginal, but if they start off learning how to compose a bass line from a master, the music they compose later will be stronger.”

Interactive Practice Activities

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To highlight the range of music MIDI can help you compose, Moss organizes his lessons around two contrasting styles: techno and the blues. Moss starts the techno section with the drum. “How do human drummers rush tempo?” Moss asks his students. “What’s the role of different drums? When should we use symbols, and when should we use toms?” Then Moss has his students build their own drum beat.

From drums, the class graduates to bass lines. “Does it have a hooky melody or is it just pounding out the chords?” Moss says. From bass, the techno section moves on to synthesizers and the addition of vocal tracts using a combination of Reason and Abelton Live. The vocal section is followed by a lesson on sampling—Moss’ students have sampled everything from children’s voices to the nightly news. At the end of the techno section, students will have composed a viable dance arrangement.

“Every week we’re adding one more layer to this basic groove, and then we start to think about how we can make this thing into a valid piece,’ Moss says. “We talk about building an arrangement—how we can weave breakdown, chorus, and bridge sections together into a cohesive song.”

Once the techno track has been mastered, Moss moves on to the blues. Again, the tracks are built from the drums up, but in this case, Moss asks student to consider additional instrument tracks—the guitar, the harmonica, and the horns.

“There’s a lot of listening and there’s a lot of trying as you go,” Moss says. “As we get into extra instruments like the harp and the horns, we talk about what kind of voicings work and what Reason sounds will be most effective.”

For example, when Moss’ class explores electric guitar, Moss teaches his students how guitar chords are actually voiced. “When you play a bar chord, what notes are actually used?” Moss says. “People don’t realize that a guitar is quite low—they write them up in ukulele range. I try to get people to be realistic about where that guitar really is.” Moss also gets students to think about the best way to emulate a strum by using a rolling chord on a piano (you start with the thumb of the right hand and then lay the rest of your fingers down in quick succession). To keep the lesson grounded in real world sound, Moss challenges his students to recreate the opening bars of B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone.”

Whether Moss is showing his students how playing each horn part individually mimics the rhythmic inaccuracies of actual human play or providing case studies of MIDI compositions he sold to clients, Moss is always looking for ways to share the shortcuts he’s learned in his more than 20-years of experience.

“All those concepts are the same things that I take to work with me,” Moss says. “The great jazz musicians and the great classical musicians in the past have always mentored people, and I think electronic music should be the same thing—I try to give my students everything I’ve got.”

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