Maple Leaf Rag

Composer: Scott Joplin

Arrangement: John Roache

Performer: John Roache

(comments and copyright by John Roache)

About the music: Here is the Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin. Published in 1899, It was Joplin's second published ragtime piece. It became the first great instrumental sheet music hit in America. Supposedly, it sold 75,000 copies in the first 6 months of publication and eventually topped the million mark. Maple Leaf established Scott Joplin as the "King of the Ragtime Composers" and is unquestionably THE most popular ragtime piece ever written. This is my arrangement of Maple Leaf Rag. Being the first ragtime piece I learned to play, over the years my playing of it has evolved from the original Joplin to include influences by James P. Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton, Joe Turner and Claude Bolling. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy playing it.

About the Composer: Scott Joplin (1868-1917)

Scott Joplin, once lost to obscurity, has finally found his place in the sun and been accorded his rightful position as one of the first truly American composers. He was one of the nation's music pioneers, for he was the first to develop fully that pianistic form which could be considered the initial American art form, the piano rag. On the one hand, it is amazing that it took such a long time for the genius of this black composer to be recognized; on the other, his recent rise from obscurity symbolizes the prevailing attitudes of our past and present society. Although Joplin was respected by his peers as "The King of Ragtime Writers," the musical establishment refused to acknowledge his work as a bona fide means of musical expression. Now, however, we have his collected works in print, as well as significant articles and books about him written by some of the foremost music authorities and critics in the nation. The continuing interest in Joplin is clearly based on the fact that the musical world has finally come to realize the uniqueness of his contributions to music.

(Excerpt taken from Ragtime, Its History, Composers, and Music by John Edward Haase and courtesy of the RAGTIME HOME PAGE - http://ragtimers.org/) ================================================================== About the MIDI sequence: There are 2 MIDI files in this archive: mapleaf.MID is a stereo midi which uses pan controller instructions to place each note in a stereo spectrum. Lowest note at the far left and the highest note far right. All the rest somewhere in between depending on their pitch. It sounds just like you were sitting in front of a player piano.

maple_m.MID is the same performance with all the pan controller in- structions removed. I discovered that some FM synthesis sound cards cannot handle pan controller calls correctly. Most of the notes play in the center of the two channels with an occasional high note playing far right and a few low notes playing far left. This is very unnatural sounding and if your sound card is this type, use this file which will play OK.

This MIDI was sequenced with Cakewalk Pro on a SoundBlaster AWE 32 sound card. Your sound card may not reproduce bass notes with the same intensity as the AWE. If this is the case, the balance between the Right Hand part (Track 1) and the Left Hand part (track 2) will need to be adjusted. Load the file into a sequencer and edit the track volumes according to your taste and sound card.

========================================================================= ABOUT THE PERFORMER: My name is John Roache. I am an amateur ragtime enthusiast living in Torrance California. I have been playing piano and keyboards for almost 50 years. I began creating ragtime computer music in the mid- '80s on the Commodore-64 using the SIDPLAYER music composition program. In 1994, I discovered the power of MIDI and have been sequencing ragtime, stride and swing music since then.

I would be pleased to hear any of your comments about this midi. Address e-mail to JohnRoache@aol.com.

Also visit my WWW home page to download more of my MIDI sequences: http://members.aol.com/ragtimers