I'm trying to find out what to call a musical activity that I'm starting to practice.

If I create new music and lyrics for a song, that process is called "songwriting".

If I write out parts for the song, telling the concertina, fiddle, and banjo which chords or notes to play at which times, that process is called "arranging".

If I use a music notation program and a MIDI soundcard to listen to the arrangement, that's certainly good enough for proofreading purposes but may not be good enough to make an interesting performance. On the lead sheets, I will indicate the general tempo, I may say things like "louder" or "softer", and I may also suggest articulations such as "near the bridge" or "with fingernails, not picks". However, any good musicians will still do a lot of reading between the lines (or notes), doing things such as subtly adjusting tempo, timing or volume on the basis of what the style requires or what singers or other musicians are doing at the time. That process is called "playing an instrument" or perhaps "interpreting the arrangement", and the people who play their instruments well do a lot of such adjustment. On a CD cover, the person playing fiddle will be credited with "fiddle".

Let's say, however, that instead of having a concertina player I have a keyboard player using concertina samples, playing in real time and making subtle adjustments to what the lead sheet specifies. On a CD cover, this person is likely to be credited with "keyboards" or "synthesizers", not "concertina".

Now, let's say that, instead of either being or hiring a keyboard player, I (the arranger) want to let the computer play synthetic concertina. (The only keyboard I play is QWERTY, not GABCDEF.) I start making adjustments to either the musical notation or the MIDI file it produces, moving some notes forward or back a bit, putting in volume profiles, specifying articulations, etc. I do not necessarily do this in real time: specifying how an 8-second passage gets louder might take me much less than 8 seconds, around 8 seconds, or considerably longer than 8 seconds. I don't think this process qualifies as any of "arranging", "playing", or "keyboarding". I suspect that some of what I see credited on CD covers as "programming" might be this kind of work, but I'm not really happy with that term.

What is an appropriate name for this kind of not-necessarily-real-time micromanagement of MIDI events that will eventually be played back by a computer?

Howard Kaplan
Songwriter and occasional performer
Toronto, Ontario