Originally Posted By: jazzmammal
Cooltouch, believe me I sympathize with you because about 10 years ago this was me. I knew less than zero about MIDI. I've since learned you have to understand the basics or just give all this up right now.

Your problem really is basic MIDI 101 and in your writings you're almost right but then you go off on a tangent that is completely irrelevant.


I'm curious what that tangent was.

Bob, actually I had a much better understanding of MIDI back in about 2001 than I do now. I've forgotten a lot. Back then I bought a couple of books on MIDI and I studied them. I was actually writing and editing parts using the event list with several pieces of music I wrote back then. It was the only way to get realistic sounding vibrato, legato (slurs), and volume control the way I wanted it. See my two CDs of tunes over at Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/albums

The pieces Hokkaido Frosts, Mended Dreams, Thankful for What I Have, and Crocodile Smile, especially. I made heavy use of the event list for the shakuhachi solo in Hokkaido Frosts, the flute work in Mended Dreams, the harmonica in Thankful, and several spots of the guitar work (Roland GR-33 Guitar Synth) in Crocodile Smile.

Problem is, I wrote that stuff back in about 2001, and I've made scant use of it since then. So I'm having to relearn things, but I'm also having to learn them BiaB style, which is quite a bit different from the Cakewalk program I used back then -- Pro Audio 9, which was the forerunner to Sonar. With PA9, I was able to draw some aspects of what I wanted, like the vibrato, for example.

You should have seen the DAW I put together back then. This was before software synths became popular, so everything was hardware. I had a keyboard, my GR-33 guitar synth, a MIDI synth module (Roland JV-1010), and three sound cards loaded in my 'puter's box (M-Audio Delta 66 for the audio work, plus a Soundblaster Live! for its synths on a chip and a Yamaha XG card for its XG patches). All of this stuff was hooked together on both a MIDI daisy chain and its audio outs were running into a Mackie 12-channel mixer along with my guitar amp, a multi-effects processor, a compressor, and separate microphones. I used a Midiman 6-channel mixer for headphones. The audio outs were sent back to the Delta 66 so I could record what I was hearing, and also to a high end Adcom stereo unit, which powered a pair of Alesis reference monitors and another set of good speakers. It was quite the setup.

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You finally realized the event list was the key. Several people in this thread already said that. I'm assuming this is a downloaded Biab file you found on the internet. Those can be problematic and this is an example of that.


I know what you're talking about. I have several thousand song files I've downloaded from the Internet over the past almost 20 years. Some are actually excellent and others are abominations, and there's a whole huge pile of them that fall somewhere in the middle.

What had me steered in the wrong direction with the event lists was I thought the first few lines I was seeing in the event lists were innocuous. The PG tech was the one who told me to get rid of everything but the note data. So those lines weren't as innocuous as I thought they were.

The files I was having problems with were not downloaded from the internet. The one file I mentioned in which I couldn't get unstuck from acoustic piano is actually a file wholly generated by BiaB's Melodist. I have since found another, wholly generated by the Methodist that is exhibiting this exact same problem. It's stuck on acoustic piano. I've also since found another, wholly generated by the Melodist, that insists on changing patches from what I want to Choir Aahs. With that one, the Aahs are part of a description of the patch stuff in the Melody window shown in the Mixer that I can't figure out how to clean out. I don't know how they got in there in the first place, since I've never selected Choir Aahs as a patch. And there's yet another song file, where I have Sforzando loaded, and where it won't remember the DX effects I have loaded. And its event list is also clean. I have these same three DX effects loaded in several other tunes, a few of which are using Sforzando, and they get remembered just fine, so why is this file different? I dunno. I will be discussing these items with the PG Tech tomorrow.

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There's a bunch of terms you need to know that would take me an hour to try to explain.

1. General Midi or GM. You gotta understand what that is.
2. The difference between a VSTi, a VST and a DXi.
3. What the HiQ patches really are and what they're based on. They're not based on ANY old VST or DXi. Just one. Originally it was Sampletank 2.5 and recently it's the Sfzorzando synth.
4. MIDI events like program changes but that's just one, there are volume changes, expression, effects lots of stuff.


You needn't bother. I'm already familiar with them. Just not so much in the way things are done in BiaB, which I find confusing.

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Whoever created the original Biab song file used whatever synth for the melody track. Nobody knows what synth was used unless he put that in the song memo. It may or may not have been GM. Since the patch is shown as piano on your system but it's playing something else, it's may not have been GM. Whatever, that patch is embedded in the file as a program change event. Embedded MIDI events completely override what you're trying to do manually. Think of it as "hardwired". You have to realize that, go in and either remove those events completely or change them to whatever you want.


I think you may have misunderstood what I wrote. The song in which the melody is stuck on acoustic piano, it doesn't show acoustic piano. It shows the patch I selected. It just plays acoustic piano. The event list is clean. It shows nothing but note data. As I wrote above, it's even stumped the PG tech. Hopefully he can get to the bottom of it.

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The frustrating part of all this as I am painfully aware of now, is if you had simply known these basics all of this grief would not be necessary. A few simple mouse clicks and all is good.


But not quite so simple as it turns out.

Last edited by cooltouch; 11/19/17 05:31 AM.
Best,
Michael

My Music:
https://soundcloud.com/michaelmcbroom/albums