PG Music Home Forums PG Music Product Forums Band-in-a-Box for Windows MIDI stylistic control - I Don't Mean Styles..

Anytime someone knocks GM I quit reading the rest of hi/her post, because I know the person doesn't know what he/she is 'talking' about.

GM does nothing but specify patch names to patch numbers so patch 1 is always a grand piano, 12 is always a vibraphone, 18 is always a percussive organ, 28 is always a clean guitar, 33 is always an acoustic bass, and so on.

OK it does specify a few other standards like continuous controller numbers so that 64 is always sustain, 91 is always reverb level, etc.

Repeat after me: GeneralMIDI has absolutely noting to do with the quality of the sounds or how many continuous controllers the synth can respond to.

It only designates patch number to voice name so that if you create a sequence on one synth and transport the MIDI file to another, it will play the same instruments. See http://www.midi.org/techspecs/gm1sound.php

My SD-90 has 2 GM banks and the sounds on the average range from quite good to excellent. I believe it responds to all 128 continuous controllers and by using those cc numbers I can make variations on the GM patches so that for example the clean electric guitar can be a generic one, a telecaster bridge pickup, a TC neck pickup, a 335, a Strat, a Les Paul and so on.

Some of the SD-90 GM instruments like the clean guitar have 12 different variations, and you can choose the one you want by sending 3 continuous controller messages in a row (or use the MSB/LSB dialog box in your sequencer or work station patch name function to do it for you).

If you want to dis GM, get your self a good MIDI book and learn. By dissing GM you show the world how ignorant you are about MIDI (and I don't mean unintelligent - just misinformed and therefore ignorant of the truth).

Use your intelligence, learn the facts, and you will be happier for it and able to make better music, and isn't that what it is all about?

As far as stylistic interpretations like bass notes overlapping, this can be done with any polyphonic synth.

I played bass for a living and for most of the time I played one note at a time, sometimes staccato, sometimes legato, but for certain songs more than one note at a time is the appropriate choice. I can duplicate either with the cheesy software synth in my computer.

After saying that, I must add that I prefer hardware synths. I have about a half dozen with the choice of thousands of sounds.

They all have a latency of 4 to 6 milliseconds (for all practical purposes, no delay) so I can mix and match the best sound for the song from all of them.

So if the best bass sound for the song I'm working on is from my i3, the best guitar from my SD-90, the best snare drum from my Peavy sample player, the best synth sound from my MT-32, the bets sax sound from my VL70-m, and the best Rhodes sound from my TX81z, I can use them all with no noticeable latency, and no load on the computer's CPU.

I've had a fling with software synths, but until they get to the point where I can load a dozen of them at one time and have no more than 6 ms latency, not load the computer's CPU down and guarantee that they will work when the newer OS comes around, I won't take them seriously.

The Akai S900 sampler, the Yamaha TX81z, and the Roland MT-32 that I used with my Atari ST, "IBM Compatible" PC with DOS 5 and Windows 3.1 and my Mac Classic with a Motorola chip and OS6 all still work today, all have some very good voices in them, all have from 4-6ms latency, and all can be mixed and matched with my newer synth modules. None have gone the way of the Virtual Sound Canvas and so many other soft-synths.

The tools for making expressive MIDI music are there if you know how to use them. To paraphrase Alan Parsons, MIDI has been embedded in the DNA of virtually every popular song for the last 30 years. So obviously it's capable of doing the job. But MIDI is like any other musical skill or instrument. You have to learn how to play it, learn what it will do, learn what it will not do, and then use your talent to coax expressive music out of it.

You don't pick up the guitar and play without a lot of education and practice, you don't pick up a drum kit and learn to play without a lot of education and practice, same for sax, violin, tuba, trombone, or MIDI.

What was asked at the beginning of this thread can be accomplished on almost any GM or other synth made in the last 20 or more years. You just have to learn to do it. Get a good sequencer, a good book on MIDI or a good teacher and have fun.

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