How are the MAM movies made?
There are several steps to the process. First, I create the rendition. For pieces that I can perform adequately myself, I’ll use a MIDI recording of my performance as a starting point. For pieces that are well-suited to the conductor program, I’ll perform them using that tool and save the result. Some pieces have enough instruments that it works better to perform the part for each instrument separately, and layer them (sound on sound). Sometimes I use a combination of techniques. Once I have a rough draft of the rendition, I edit it. I’ll correct wrong notes, and change the timings and dynamic levels of notes. In the original version of the Music Animation Machine, the next step was to play back the rendition and record the computer’s video output and the synthesizer’s audio output. Nowadays, the audio and video are processed separately. The edited performance is played back through a synthesizer (or sampler) and its output is recorded. The edited performance is also processed to produ
