Musicians and latency

[Andy Vermiglio <avermiglio@xxxxxxx>]

It is true that church organ musicians routinely work with long latencies.
However, few church organists work in jazz fusion bands where precise timing
is much more crucial.  The several hundred millisecond delays, while
tolerable for the church organist and an individual singing the national
anthem at stadium events, would have disastrous musical consequences in
contemporary jazz settings.

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From:   AUDITORY  Research in Auditory Perception
[mailto:AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA] On Behalf Of Mikael Fernström
Sent:   Friday, September 13, 2002 6:06 AM
To:     AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
Subject:        Re: Can Musicians practice with hearing protectors?

About the issue of MIDI versus "real" instruments and latency:
I think that musicians are extremely flexible people ;-) For example, a
piano player that learns to play church organ. Suddenly you can have
latencies up to several hundred milliseconds, primarily due to the
mechanism, secondarily due to the speed of sound if the pipes are far away
from the console. And still, excellent music can be made.
/Mikael