[Dixielandjazz] (Urban legend) Bringing dead piano greats up to scratch

[Craig I. Johnson]

John need not worry about the demise of his transcription business.
I can vouch for what he has said. Being both a musician and
a computer engineer/programmer, I have experimented with the Widi program
(and its clone "Seven Canaries.") 
Unless Zeniph has gone significantly further than the Russians
who wrote Widi I cannot possibly see how their demonstration would produce 
satisfactory replicas of the music of the dead pianists.
(And these Russian programs do better than any of the others
I have tried.)

Widi does not handle polyphony worth a damn. There are all
sorts 'bleeps and squawks" where there was music and also
blanks where there was other music. 
Even when you do get a recognizable melody out of the computer
you find that it is scattered over several midi "tracks" and bears
no resemblence to to the allocation of the different strains to
different instruments.

It's easier to manually  transcribe the music from listening, 
than it is to create the midi from a record. I am not even particularly thrilled 
at what I get out of playing a single voiced recording into the computer.

Craig Johnson
Trad cornet player + retired programmer.