Originally Posted By: jazzsax
Bob "notes" Norton,
You mentioned Passport Design's Master Tracks Pro above, I haven't heard a reference to that program for decades! <...snip...>
Thanks for triggering great memories.


Master Tracks Pro's parent company, Passport Designs was purchased by Microsoft to use their video technology in Power Point. They abandoned MTPro, G-Vox bought the program and ruined it. Bugs introduced in 2005 never got resolved.

When G-Vox went down, one of the owners bought it and renamed the company Passport Designs with the intention of bringing the products back. They re-built Encore, but haven't done a thing with MTPro except promise. I think they are under-capitalized for that.

MTPro still has some global editing features that I haven't found anywhere else. With the 'change filter' I can highlight a song or a track and then fine tune just what parts/notes/beats/velocities/etc. of that track I want the changes to apply to. It's a real time saver.

MIDI gets a bad name because it's easy to do a bad job - step enter a tune and you are asking for something sterile. But yet, it's really easy to step enter a tune.

Play it into the sequencer, and you get a live sounding performance as long as your synth can reproduce the nuances that were put into the original.

That makes a good MIDI track that a musician recorded in real time very similar to a Real Track - with the exception that you can edit the MIDI track in thousands of ways that are yet unavailable with recorded audio.

So if you cannot play well, and are reliant on downloading what others play, you can choose a MIDI track as well as a Real Track - you just have to find a MIDI track created by a decent musician.

Then you can change the instrument, transpose with no artifacts, change the speed with no artifacts, change the timing, change notes, change the groove, and play with it to your heart's content.

Don't dis MIDI simply because there are a lot of bad MIDI files out there. It's like dissing all singers because you heard a lousy one at karaoke.

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com

100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks