JS Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier / Rodrian

Unlike, say, Chopin's piano pieces, J. S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier is not a cycle written to exploit the capabilities of 'a' particular instrument. Instead these pieces are a mind-bogging record of sheer human ingenuity: Striking as they may be, individually, taken as a whole they embody an unparalleled record of never-ending novelties... GO FILES
If not an even more striking novelty than the one before it, at the very least every piece makes you scratch your head as to how Bach could have yet come up with one more such wondrous a curiosity--Not merely as a complete conception, where each piece is concerned, but also in the case of almost every musical phrase after musical phrase throughout all the works in the assembly. And still there are pieces here which are beautiful beyond telling.

Although any transcription of Bach's music is by definition in the Public Domain, these 'interpretations' ARE copyrighted:
This music may not be reproduced by any means without the expressed written permission of S. D. Rodrian... with the one exception that these Midi files (either in the ZIPped "JSB_WTC.ZIP" file or individually) may be freely distributed through the WWW as long as they are not modified in any way.

J.S.Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Book ONE: 24 Preludes & Fugues.

file ------------------- work CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THEM ALL.

I am making these files available now (rather than later) because I have reached a point of diminishing returns in their editing. That is, theoretically the pieces can always come closer still to the way I think they ought to be interpreted --but not by so much that it justifies my spending all that much more effort on it. Although it was fun while it lasted, it's time to work on something else now.

As a point of departure you must understand that I use the SoundBlaster AWE32 card (on a P.120 PC): This card comes with digitally sampled instruments. [I use Master Tracks Pro.]

On other software (provided the hardware is capable of digitally-sampled instruments), if you don't know how to avoid the FM banks of computer-generated instruments try the Midi Mapper (which might have been properly programmed with your card's wave table instruments).

These files are set to a minimum 'stereo' pan. The following set of 'controls' instructions are for the AWE32 card, but users of other cards may deduce the effect I'm after from them...

for the CREATIVE MIXER: set the Treble, Bass, and MIDI Volumes to their loudest possible settings. Then set MAIN VOLUME to play at your own particular comfort level. NOTE that the note 'velocities' in these files are set to the loudest possible setting (whenever and wherever possible).
Set all right/left 'balances' as close as possible to the center.

for the AWE32 CONTROL PANEL: Use the Qsound (not Reverb and Chorus).

for the BOB (break-out box): Make sure all the controller 'boxes' (under the M's) are unchecked... Save this setting to the default.bob file if need be: When any box is 'checked' it interferes with the controller information sent by the midi files for proper playback.

The best thing you can do is download the latest AWE64 drivers awe64synthupgrade.zip and execute SETUPEX.EXE after you unzip it from the zip file.

or:   RETURN TO MAIN MIDI INDEX
All Copyright (P) 1997 Mr. S. D. Rodrian (my uncle)
Return    626 Lalor Street
to the TOP         Trenton NJ 08611
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