Here's what I said at Piano Street about the Guy dilemma....

Solution:

To be fair to everyone, and to recognize the current level of piano sampling, audio editing, and midi technology: Piano Street should separate "piano performance" forums from "midi-edited" forums.

A performance forum would be one that displays an audio video record of the live performance. The video is now totally cheap to do; the "I ain't got the fancy equipment" argument doesn't wash anymore. The performance doesn't have to be at a real piano. It just has to be a live performance. Basically, if you've got a computer these days, the video capablity is there. Sure, the video/audio thing can be faked, but it's not easy.

A midi forum--it could even be called a "midi-performance" forum, would be one in which no video is required, and essentially anything goes. Guy's interpretations would be totally welcome there, and most important, subject to relevant criticism.

You can't have it both ways, because the playing field becomes hopelessly ambiguous: "How much is you playing?" "How much is you midi-editing?" Would that be 20%? 50%? What's your approach to playing those octave runs in the left hand? "Oh, let me try to remember... did I midi-quantize those, or enter them in realtime. How much did I speed them up in midi"

You get it. Any piano-player worth his or her salt will tell you that these sorts of discussions belong in a midi-editing forum, not in a performance forum.

As a dyed-in-the-wool midi hack (and as a rank amateur pianist) I can appreciate the feelings of pianists who really don't want to discuss the half-way house of midi-edited performances under the rubric of "piano performance."

They're just Not the Same Thing!

You can't have it both ways.

(Hey... that's the way to do things here at Piano World, regardless of what the guys (no pun intended) do at Piano Street.

JG