Originally Posted By: joden
How anyone can even suggest MIDI intruments sound anywhere NEAR a real instrument being played by a real person is totally beyond me!

You do it by giving a MIDI instrument to a real person and recording the MIDI data of what what he/she's playing. That's what Toontrack does with both EZKeys and EZDrummer, and the outcome is pretty good, I may add. For the record, I own both EZDrummer and EZKeys with many MIDI styles for both products, so I have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about here.

Inherently, all keyboard-based instruments and sounds plus the drums and most percussion instruments sound very convincing when a human being is doing the playing, even through MIDI. Other instruments as guitars, reeds and horns are more tricky to make'em sound convincing and even impossible in certain situations, but nonetheless completely useful to make a demo of your song well enough to give a clear idea to other musicians how to play their parts, vibe-wise.

I've been re-visiting some MIDI-only Smooth Jazz styles in BIAB and some are OK but others are dull, lifeless and mechanic, as they seem to be written with a the note-by-note data entry mode, so there's no dynamics whatsoever. That's exactly why many people avoid'em like the bubonic plague, and TBH, I don't blame'em one single bit for that.

Unfortunately, I don't think PG Music would swing their R&D into this direction anytime soon. I'm sure they put it together with the 64-bit overhaul! wink

Pepe aka Lt. Kojak
Milano, Italy
https://soundcloud.com/theodore-kojak/tracks
Hy-Bro Test Sound Files