PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows Simple question on MIDI patches

Good point Jazzmammal-
From the Manual-
"You cannot enter GM mode using solely the RD-700 on
its own. The RD-700 is switched to GM mode upon
reception of a GM System On, GM2 System On, or GS
Reset message, which has been supplied to it by being
contained within the setup data placed at the beginning
of a song that is to be played back.
• You cannot switch to GM mode if the Edit screen’s
System settings, or the Rx GM System ON, Rx GM2
System ON, or GS Reset settings are set to “OFF.” For
details, refer to
“Switching Between Reception of GM/
GM2 System On and GS Reset”
(p. 70)."

These are in the main setup edit section of the synth.

There is quite a bit in that manual about using GM...

Hey ... no trolls here; that's me. I've got to work through these issues just like everyone else (a PhD doesn't give you superpowers; please see http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ if you are unclear on this). My current profile is at http://uic.edu/~westland if you want an updated picture of me.

I'm tackling BiB for the first time, and it's great to be able to throw out my current challenges, as long as no one minds answering my questions, while I'm working through them.

Bob and RHarv:

I'm glad to hear your observation on the Roland RD700GX manual (mine has the suffix e2 if that means anything) which concurs with mine. I think it all gets down to vocabulary. Roland is a small company (about 300 permanent employees, 2500 total, worldwide ... they have a philosophy of outsourcing their engineering, manuals, etc.). So one Japanese engineer is probably responsible for writing the manual (in his spare time, I bet) which is then translated by a consultant in Australia who just graduated from (say) U of Melbourne language and literature programs, and who is wondering just what this guy means when he says "パフォーマンスモード" (oh, and he doesn't speak a word of English, so no help asking). BTW, I think PG Music may operate similarly (maybe it's just Peter and his brother and a sales staff) but at least they are Canadian. Ay?

Anyway, for me the big issue (and again, I don't have a background in this) is matching up the various vocabularies in BiB, Roland manuals, MIDI terminology, and my own (perhaps misguided) preconceptions about what exactly is going on. I think a schematic diagram in the BiB manual (or RB) would be a big plus, showing how all of the parts fit together -- especially since I don't really understand how BiB is using all of its components. Plus there are a lot of just notational and conception aspects of music in which I am deficient. For example, I can sort of get what Pushes, etc. are from watching the videos and reading the text, but the concepts are novel to me.

Anyway, I've got the basic structure sorted well enough to be able to use either RB or BiB as a sequencer for my Roland. I'll next be working through the set up (to use the RealTracks / RealDrums synthesis and see how this works on my computer)

Chris

I messed with a similar issue for quite some time. I wanted my system to play through my Roland/Rogers keyboard for the 'better sound'. Then along came VSC Dxi and it was as good or better.
I used various versions of midi to the computer, but not back, used a non-powered mixer and ran the keyboard direct, then via midi to the Dxi, with sounds being mixed by me, and volumes set and saved etc....

Then I migrated to the current system. My midi sounds are from the Ketron SD2 I got from PG music. Wow. I then ran the midi out of the Roland Keyboard to the computer via midi to usb cable, so I could play some of those Ketron Sounds.

So now, after spending a bit of cash I have a Bose L1 Model 2. With the Tonematch as a mixer. The keyboard goes both directly out, and via midi to the computer through to the Ketron. To make things a bit more complicated there is the issue of midi out and chained so it runs a VoiceLive box for harmonies using chord triads on ch5 (midi).

As far as drums I have almost no midi drums or no midi drums it's all RealDrums. Suits my genre.

Of course all learning is good, however the first question is..what do I want to accomplish? This simple question becomes muddied by the new types of keyboards, stuff that does 'sort' of what Band in a Box does, that is arranges, sort of...but not quite.

I can say this, with the Ketron pat file, and the ketron hooked up by usb/midi you can't go wrong.

Rharv, wow, I went through the entire index and looked at all the chapter headings and sort of skimmed the rest of it but since I was leaving for work, couldn't really get into it. That's the deal, alright. Sounds like it works the same as my Sonic Cell.
So Chris, since you're new at this, to clarify, yes, you have to make sure whatever you're using is sending either the "GM on" message or the GS reset. This would be anything from the software in your computer to a hardware sequencer. As has been talked about already, there's ways to access all of your patches in the Roland, not just the GM ones but set that aside for now. Lets get your Biab and/or midi files playing correctly using GM only so you can see and hear how that works.

Bob

Rharv: You might have a slightly different version of the manual than I have (or maybe an earlier model). On p112 of my rd-700gx_e2.pdf file (downloaded from Roland) it shows me how to set GM/GM2 on using the [EDIT] key (and I can verify this). But I would bet that the Roland General MIDI patch that I got with the BiB does exactly what you are recommending ... GM System On, GM2 System On, or GS Reset MIDI message. Anyway, the Roland General MIDI patch gets me access to the drum kits, and all the other sounds on my Roland ... at least so far. I still have the problem that these aren't necessarily stable. This is probably because of systems commands that are from my MIDI files ... I think by File/Import Chords from MIDI/ BiB procedure, I can automatically get these cleaned out, and then make any detailed changes with BiB. I'm still trying to tackle how BiB handles the structuring of the music, with endings and repeats. Chris

Actually, at my age there is so much new technical material (and bear in mind that most of my 'real' work is finance and statistics, not comp sci) that I always feel down on the learning curve (I do recommend looking at http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ for this reason)

OK ... here is a more technical question. Does Band in a Box use multiple processors effectively.

For example, I have an Athelon II quad-core on my main Dell computer. I'm thinking about getting a similar motherboard-CPU set for my second computer (~$200). Music synthesis is something were parallel scaling has been widely researched, and used in the movie industry. The ramp up is linear. And the Athelon II is a great deal ~$85 since they are using old fab technology.

That said, from what I see on the Win7 performance monitor, BiB seems to be using only processors 2 and 3, maybe not even simultaneously ... and it doesn't seem to be using much of their capacity (maximum is 35%). If BiB is using just one processor, that would suggest that the best platform is a fast 64-bit dual core processor.

Is there any experience here (I can't find any commentary on this in the various forums).

Quote:

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owever the first question is..what do I want to accomplish? This simple question becomes muddied by the new types of keyboards, stuff that does 'sort' of what Band in a Box does, that is arranges, sort of...but not quite.

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Agreed ... vendors confound the area by each trying to expand their own platforms, with everyone from keyboard makers, to software, to computer boxes overlapping (but with different terminology to differentiate themselves in the market place and to confuse the uninitiated).

I'm leaning towards synthesizing everything on my computer, so that I can use Realtracks/Realdrums (everyone has good things to say about them). For practice, it's a lot neater to keep all the synthesis inside the Roland, rather than running through a mixer.

Thanks Bob:

A question on RB ... does it have access to all of the styles and patches that BiB has? It does make sense that for what I am doing with my Roland, a sequencer makes more sense. I'm sure I'll have a stronger opinion about this in a week or so of fiddling with these products.

Chris

I linked to the current Roland online manual for your keyboard a couple pages earlier in this thread, that is the one I have been referring to as far as pages go. Since it is what is listed on the Roland site, it may be worth looking at to see if they updated it and made it a little more understandable since you bought your board. Roland is known for this, as well as for writing new operating systems for some of their keyboards to add features.

My Juno-G got an OS update that allows it to be a sampler now (in the conventional sense). It could always record and trigger what was recorded but now it has features to make using it as an actual sampler much easier. Nice when its free!

I think Roland is larger than you stated earlier as a company; they have a lot of subsidiaries and products. I have met quite a few of their reps, etc, as my parents own a music store and are involved with some large groups promoting music education. Also, PGMusic is NOT just Peter and his brother. Once you get the hang of the programs, see if you can get involved with Beta testing and 'meet' some of the great programmers behind the software... plus the sales and support team, the web team, they are growing fast!

Spendyour time where you think you need it. Having fun is the important part. Stop by when questions arise.

Yes, RB has access to the styles and Realtracks and patches like BiaB.

Chris, about the program being written to take advantage of multiple cores, I believe from a post made some time ago (over a year) by Peter Gannon, that the answer is No, not yet.

Having said that, Internet music forums have plenty of observations and questions about programs that are supposed to be optimized for multiple cores, yet seem to handle things in a very unbalanced way.

Thanks for all of the information RHarv. This will actually require some significant exploration on my part (and right now I have some rather limited accompaniment objectives in mind) but it's great to know that for most of the things I will use right now that BiB and RB have access to essentially the same facilities -- just the UI's are different.

I'm curious (since you seem to have spent time with the PG Music organization) about how big they are. Roland is publicly traded (on the Osaka exchange) so companies like Hoovers have gotten their organization stats -- they were around 300 employees in 2000 expanded substantially in the next decade, and now are shrinking. But I understood from one of their sales reps that most of their employees are contract, and that they typically outsource engineering. Given the quality of their products (I'm a fan) I do think they must have mastered their outsourcing.

Matt:

My daughter is graduating in Comp Sci from U of Illinois, and has a number of friends who are doing multi-core programming (though they tend to be more in the nVidia Tesla realm). They all claim that getting any sort of balanced use of cores from a program is a huge huge headache -- graphics scale well because you can break the problem up into hypercubes. But when you have real-time data streams as BiB must be dealing with continually, perhaps without the ability look ahead, it would be very difficult. Where I could see it benefiting BiB is in real time synthesis of complex models (I guess, from what I understand of it, what Realdrums/tracks is doing).

Chris

The one area that might use multi-core functionality is the rendering of RealTracks. At first blush, way back a couple of years ago, you'd see RealDrums and perhaps one RealTrack and it would take 40 or 50 seconds to process the thing into wave file(s). Now as we go forward and the software has matured we don't wait for the entire render process before the song starts, it gets so far and boom off it goes and plays while the rendering goes on in the background. So splitting up the processes might solve a bottleneck. That said the software would have to determine the processor and then make the decision.

As to the use of a 'mixer' in my case the line 1 is my mic which goes through a vocal processor, line 2 is the keyboard direct, line 3 is the computer and line 4 is a EWI wind controller. All the knobs are set to 12 on the pre-amps and the volumes, and the main volume is at 12 o'clock at home. Each song has it's notes, ie Mute Ketron (it's a button) keyboard to 80 percent (that would be the Roland piano direct not thru the computer). So the object is to get the levels set in Band in a Box to make things easy, and just send up the main volume. The beauty of a mixer. Mix all the sounds to your liking and tweak. That said the Bose is Mono. I do have a stereo rig too but don't use it any more.

I keep hoping for the software to be compiled for Linux. The only thing I really do on the Win7 machine is Band in a Box. The rest is Ubuntu 10.10 released on 10 10 for the reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide and binary.

My crazy friend Dr. Hank had his 64th birthday on 10/10/10. Weird eh? He got his Bmus and Masters Music at Indiana U and was a student of the long time principal trumpet player at the Chicago Symphony. (Dr. Henry Meredith prof at the University of Western Ontario, (his wife is Dean of Undergrad Music and a Dr. too, but sits beside the wife and I in the Baritone/Euphonium section of the Plumbing Factory Brass Band, Dr. Hank is the conductor, and owns most of the instruments we play....

If you have not found the treasure trove, check out google for >Allanah Band in a Box and you'll find thousands of songs, mostly jazz standards, in Band in a Box format. I have taken the best ones and changed the style, muted the melody, and muted the piano, and use them to play along, usually with all RealTracks and RealDrums.

Most of all, have fun!