HOW TO BECOME A MIDI MUSICIAN WITH OR WITHOUT GOING BANKRUPT: Okay, you've bought yourself a GUS, been impressed by the sound of my Chris*.mid files :-) and want to know where you can go from here. 1) MORE MEMORY If you're going to be a real GUS musician you're going to need the 1M upgrade. There is an obvious reason and a less obvious reason: the obvious reason is that with 1M your songs can contain more patches with 16-bit quality. The less obvious reason is that if you're writing something you often want to carry around a lot of noises in memory (many of which may not end up in the final track) just for experimentation. Most of the time when I'm writing my GUS is pretty close on 1M. At $25 it's truly great value for money. (If only I could buy a 2nd meg!) Ken Goach (ken@austin.ibm.com) writes: >> Also, if you plan on creating your own patches (the record -> WAV2PAT >> method) you'd do good to upgrade. Some of the patches I've created >> had much bigger file sizes than the GUS patches. Yep. But we need another FAQ on doing this one... 2) A MIDI INTERFACE Well, how can you be a midi musician without a midi interface? A quick overview of the options (more details of which can be found elsewhere) is: buy a Gravis connector for your GUS (which isn't released yet as far as I know); build your own connector for your GUS; modify an SB midi cable for your GUS; or buy a stand alone MPU-401 interface card. Which of these is right for you probably depends on your budget, your soldering skills, and your need to run MPU-401 software (probably fairly slight if a GUS is the only sound generating unit you ever intend to own). I bought a 2nd hand MPU-401 compatible on the net a few months ago for $50 (including postage) so that's an indicative price for this option. Ken Goach (ken@austin.ibm.com) writes: >> I'd say $50 is about right for a used basic card. You can pick up >> a new one for around $80, and several mail-order places have >> been running bundled specials of MIDI cards with sequencer software. >> I got a Music Quest one and it works fine with Windows/Winjammer/ >> GUS. >> >> If you're just starting out, get the simplest card. One MIDI >> IN and one MIDI OUT is really all you need. SMPTE or FSK are >> nice, but you don't really need it just starting out. Some >> cards have multiple outputs, etc. For a basic setup, you >> don't need this either. Heck, you could eventually add a >> MIDI patch bay if you wanted to get really complicated... SMPTE and FSK are both more advanced methods of synchronising to external devices (multitrack tape recorder or high end video editing equipment). The standard MPU-401 method is pretty awful and not widely supported. Multiple midi outs are unlikely to be necessary for most GUS users: you've already got 32 midi channels (16 to the GUS and 16 to the midi out port) provided that your software supports this. 3) A MIDI KEYBOARD While some people seem happy with the idea of typing in notes from a computer keyboard, this seems to me a pretty slow way of writing music. Even if you can't play very well, remember that you can always play along really slowly and then speed it up. Also remember that you can often use `step write' options which allow you to take as long as you want to choose the next note. What's more, you can edit your mistakes, push your playing into time using a `quantise' function, and play things in lots and lots of little takes. That said, I have to admit, playing ability helps ... Anyway, the real question when buying a keyboard is: how much do I want to spend? Keyboards go from about $100 for a second hand non-velocity sensitive 3 or 4 octave thing to about $2000 for a 88-key weighted fully featured controller keyboard. I'll assume most GUS users are interested in close to the bottom end of this range. The possibilities that spring to mind are: bottom of the line controller keyboards (new or 2nd hand), obsolete proper synths with midi outputs (2nd hand), and little `home/organ - toy synth' type things generally made by Casio or Yamaha (new or 2nd hand) as long as they have midi outputs. Some parameters to consider. Does it have full size keys? The little ones are awful if you ask me (but probably much cheaper I guess). How many keys does the keyboard have? How important this is depends on your playing skill and how much space you've got. If you're going to be playing with two hands (piano parts, etc), it's nice to have 60 or more. If you're going to be playing with one hand and you haven't got much space, 49 is probably O.K. An important thing to look for is velocity sensitivity (the ability to send messages as to how hard the key was struck). This is very useful. Also a pitch bend / modulation arrangement is very useful. Both of these will allow your music to sound less mechanical and more expressive. Beyond that we get into the `luxury' features: aftertouch, extra continuous controllers, transmission on multiple midi channels with splits/zones etc. I don't really have many concrete examples for you, but I'll give you some stray cases just so you can get some idea of what you're looking at/for. Firstly, the cheapest 'reputable' brand thing I know if is the Roland PC-200 controller keyboard. These are traded fairly often 2nd hand on the rec.music.makers.synth newsgroup for asking prices of about $180. They have 49 full size keys, are velocity sensitive, and have a pitchbend/modulation joystick. They're fairly compact and light. I've seen one but haven't used one so I can't say much beyond this. Secondly, I use a 2nd hand Yamaha Kx-76 which I bought for $450 not so long ago. It's got 76 keys with velocity and aftertouch sensitivity, pitch bend and mod wheels, 4 sliders and various switches and a fairly flexible structure of assigning controllers to send various messages. It's also enormous and very heavy (which is good for stability, but it takes up a lot of space and is hard to move about). It's not going to break in a hurry. Thirdly, going from an ad in front of me, you can buy something called a Yamaha PSR-300 keyboard which "offers a whole new world of music expression and creativity" (ha ha!) with a 61-key keyboard which I guess is velocity sensitive ("featuring touch response") new for $349 (probably less if you haggle). But frankly, I wouldn't be seen dead with one of these :-) . Probably plenty on the 2nd hand market a month after Christmas though! Ken Goach (ken@austin.ibm.com) writes: >>If you're really wanting something cheap, just go to Target or >>WalMart or somehwere like that and get a cheap Casio that has >>MIDI OUT. Sure, it may not have advanced features, but as long >>as you can input info to a sequencer, you're happening. Some >>models are touch sensitive and have ptich/mod wheels. Trust >>me, you really *want* the pitch/mod wheels, and a velocity >>synth is nice if you can play at all (beginners might do >>better to stick with a constant-velocity synth for starters). Note that you can always scale velocities to constant from a variable velocity synth but you can't go the other way round. Ken Goach (ken@austin.ibm.com) writes: >>One advantage of getting a proper synth as a keyboard is >>that you can also use its sounds. Just set MIDI Map to >>send certain channels to it instead of the GUS, and you'll >>have two synths to use. I'm looking at a Roland D-5 myself... Also, you may be able to use them to make new patches on your GUS. Possible cheap 2nd hand synths that MAY be worth owning: multitimbral options - Roland D5 and D10, Kawai K1, Yamaha SY22; single patch or split keyboard options - Roland JX-8p, Roland Alpha-Juno 1 and 2, Yamaha DX-7, DX-11, DX-21. Roland JX-3p's and Juno 106s are groovy analog beasts, but don't have velocity sensitive keyboards. And if you can pick up a Roland Jupiter 6 in good condition for not much money, tell me about it and I'll buy it first (great analog sounds). 4) A SEQUENCER Now, if you just want to play then you don't need one of these. You can play from DOS using Gusorgan and you can play from Windows using whichever of kbmidi, splitmidi, etc. works for you (all on epas). (Patch manager is also a possibility but it doesn't have velocity rescaling which is necessary until the GUS log-linear problem is fixed). But if you want to write, you're going to spend a lot of time with your sequencer. The first thing is that you're going to need a Windows 3.1 based sequencer product. As far as I know you need to be able to use the GUS windows drivers so that's the end of that. This is a terrible shame because Cakewalk for Dos is a great product. It's got almost almost all the features of Cakewalk for Windows except prettiness, and it's much cheaper. Still, I don't think there will be GUS drivers for the DOS products because there's quite a lot of work for the GUS driver to do. It's not the same as making a midi driver. (If anyone knows better, please correct this). What do you look for in a sequencer? A personal list includes: measure view and event view as basic requirements (staff view is nice for looking at other peoples work, but I've never used piano roll view in my life); midi through mapping to different channels (so that you can move between tracks and change sounds without changing settings on your keyboard); an `event filter' so that you can perform operations on particular midi events easily; an `interpolate' command; and sysex librarian facilities (although currently useless on a GUS). This is a personal list. But these are things that would drive me crazy if I didn't have them (of course, this is because I'm used to them). Seriosuly, though, I use these all the time. Things not to get excited about: the ability to have 100s of tracks. I tend to use one per midi channel plus sometimes a couple for drums. This is a pretty small number - say 20 at most if just on a GUS. At any rate you're not going to notice the difference between 32 and 256. The ability to have enormous files: frankly they normally aren't very big. Midi is quite compact because it doesn't have to contain sound data. I don't know if this is an issue, though since all Win 3.1 products probably support big files. Ken Goach (ken@austin.ibm.com) writes: >>I use piano roll all the time. Sometimes it's easier to >>have a graphical representation of where notes happen, >>how long they are, etc. If you're not really experienced >>in reading music, piano roll might be the answer for you. >> >>I've found that there are some things you can only do with >>the event list. Like removing a patch you specified (when >>you don't want a new track to load a patch but instead to >>be on the same channel as an existing track, thus picking up >>its patch) or editing a tempo change. Anyway, here's a list of Windows sequencer products with list retail prices and addresses. Note that actual prices may not be closely related to these. Also note that I don't guarantee all these will work with a GUS (must be Win 3.1 and preferably support patch cacheing). - Winjammer $50. Dan McKee: 69 Rancliff Rd, Oakville Ontario L6H 1B1. Compuserve MIDIFORUM, Compuserve ID 70742,2052. - Cubase $299. Steinberg: 17700 Raymer Street, Suite 1011, Northridge CA 91325. ph. 818-993-4091 - Musicator G/S $299. Musicator A/S: Box 410039, San Francisco CA 94141, ph. 916-756-9807 - Cadenza $299. Big Noise Sotware: Box 23740, Jacksonville FL 32241. ph 904-730-0754 - Cakewalk Pro for Windows $349. Twelve Tone Systems: Box 760, Watertown MA 02272. ph 800-234-1171 - Trax $?, MasterTrax Pro $495. Passport Designs: 100 Stone Pine Rd, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019. ph 415-726-0820 My personal choice is Cakewalk for Windows. However, it's not cheap. By the way, the upgrade from Cakewalk for DOS is $150. (Note that it may actually be cheaper to buy the DOS product and then get the upgrade than to buy the Windows product outright, particularly if you can buy a midi interface / software bundle). Two cheaper possibilities I have limited experience with are Winjammer (which wasn't useful to me since it didn't have a measure view), and Trax (which doesn't have an event view or sysex facilities). Even cheaper I guess is this Midisoft recording studio that we're meant to all be getting in the mail: absolutely no experience with this. Ken Goach (ken@austin.ibm.com) writes: >>I've used Winjammer extensively and have discovered a few secrets. >>The docs on it are kinda sparse, and sometimes I think it >>could almost use its own FAQ! >> >>Personally, I'd suggest that people ftp (or get from someone) >>the Winjammer demo and the Cakewalk for Windows demo and whatever >>other Windows sequencer demos they can get ahold of and try >>them out. See if you can live with the functionality that >>Winjammer has. Sure, it doesn't have some of the more advanced >>features that Cakewalk has, but if you can live with it, it's >>only $50.00 to register, where Cakewalk is between $250-300. Almost all of the sequencers have demo versions (normally with all features except that file saving is disabled). Winjammer can be found on epas in limpingware version (not crippleware but not quite shareware). Cakewalk for Windows, Cadenza and Musicator demos are on wuarchive.wustl.edu in mirrors/win3/demo. Also, the October 1992 issue of Keyboard magazine has tiny reviews of most of these products. 5) A NOTATOR PROGRAM If you want to print out sheet music versions of your files you're going to need a notator program. Some sequencers have some form of this built in, although there are also very expensive dedicated programs. Cakewalk for Windows DOESN'T have this capability. I have no experience at all with any program which does. Anyone who does is welcome to fill this space. Newsflash: Just read on the net that the next version of Cakewalk for Windows v.2.0 due out June 1993 (?), DOES have limited notation printing capabilities. Here is a list of known notator programs with prices and addresses. - Basic Composer $50 Education Software Consultants ph 708-848-6677 - L.M.P. $130 Teach Services ph 518-358-2125 - Quick Score Deluxe $150 Dr.T's ph 617-455-1454 - Music Writer, $119-295-595, by Pygraphics (817-481-7536) - Music Printer Plus, $595 by Temporal Acuity Products: 300 - 120th Ave N.E., - Bldg 1, Bellevue WA 98005. ph 800-426-2673 - Music Time, $250; Encore, $595; Score, $995 Passport Designs: 100 Stone Pine Rd, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019. ph 415-726-0820 - Music Prose, $249; Finale, $749 Coda Music Software 1401 E. 79th St., Bloomington MN 55425. (612-854-1288) Paolo Colombo (MATERIA1@IPDUNIVX.UNIPD.IT) writes: >>Chris, if I recall it correctly, you were looking for some info on Music >>Notation-Printing software. I think I can, at least partially, help you. >>I got the data from an article by Dr.A.Kuzmich published in the American >>Suzuki Journal, vol. 20 No 4, August 1992, pages 34-36 (cont'ed at pag. 60) >>entitled" Music Notation/Printing Software". This Journal is published 6 times/ >>year and I believe you can get a copy of it writing to: American Suzuki Journal, >>P.O. Box 17310, Boulder, CO 80308-7310. Try also contacting their headquarters >>in Boulder (303-444-0984). He talks about budget priced music printing software >>up to professional stuff ($50 to $995). And the following hot tip: >>Finale and Encore, and others perhaps, feature substantial >>educational discounts (about 250$), if you're eligible. >> >>I looked in Computer Shopper and I found a place carrying almost all of the >>softwares: it is Leigh's Computers in NY. (800-321-MIDI). I left in the Leigh's Computers endorsement because they do seem to be a fairly good source of music software and midi interfaces. 6) MORE GEAR If you've made it this far and you're not bankrupt, well, the world's an exciting place! Buy yourself another midi module. Buy an effects unit. Go on an overseas holiday. And, for the neighbours' sake, get some decent headphones. MISCELLANEOUS WORDS OF ADVICE: Ken Goach (ken@austin.ibm.com) writes: >>NOTE: If you're just testing the waters (not sure if you >>want to take the MIDI plunge), then go the cheap route >>where possible. See what you have already that may work >>(that old Casio keyboard I got for Christmas two years >>ago has MIDI OUT), or borrow some equipment (MIDI card, >>synth, etc). Depending on where you live, there may even >>be music stores that rent such equipment. You could rent >>a MIDI card and synth, get Winjammer or the Cakewalk demo, >>and play around with MIDI sequencing for a very minimal >>"investment." Comment: I agree. You're not all going to write symphonies or number one hits, but it's good fun anyway! Suggestions, corrections to Chris Wilkins (chrisw@leland.stanford.edu)