Re: two bugs (?)

[David Raleigh Arnold]

On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 16:43:42 Bernard Hurley wrote:
> The situation is a bit more complex than that.  As far as I can recall
> (I
> wrote the embedded code for a midi interface many moons ago):
> 
> 1) A midi channel can only have one instrument at a time assigned to
> it, but
> it is possible to change instruments.  
> 2) A midi channel can be specified to be polyphonic, so that it can
> control
> a polyphonic synthesiser.
> 
> In theory, the midi spec allows you to do things like start a note,
> change
> instruments and start another note, chnage back to first instrument
> and stop
> its note then change to second instrument and stop second note all on
> one
> (polyphonic)channel.
> 
> Problems:
> 
> A) You need a synthesiser that can cope with this sort of complexity,
> many
> don't.  Synthesisers on even good soundboards are rather basic.

I thought you were using timidity.  All the soundcard gets is
a .wav file.  Why would anyone use a midi synthesizer at all?
Even the best are lousy compared to sample players.

But even with timidity, unisons are a problem.  Even for rough
error checking, it would be better if midi were in voice
contexts instead of staff contexts.  I improved the sound
greatly and got rid of all the errors by having one staff
for each voice, in spite of how ridiculous it would have looked
to me if I had ever looked at it, which I never did.
Get that done first.

The rest of the problem if there is any
is with the midi format itself, I think, drawing from
my vast fund of ignorance on the subject.

Making split midi versions is the easiest way to go IMHO.  If
you have a really big score,
divide the parts into several simultaneous midi versions, make .wav
files out of each, and then mix those.  You could also get
more subtle dynamics that way if you want to work that hard
at mixing.  :-)

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Information is not knowledge.           Belief is not truth.
Indoctrination is not teaching.   Tradition is not evidence.
         David Raleigh Arnold   address@hidden