Hi, Smokey,

Yes, we honeymooned in St. Thomas in February 1985. We got married in Nov 84 and then went to St. Thomas in Feb 85 and got married again! Ha! My wife has been after me to go back but after we both retired we bought 40 acres in North Carolina and it is almost impossible to leave the dogs, cats, chickens, and guineas for more than part of a day! So my wife will drive to her home in Maryland or to visit her sister in Florida once in a while and I babysit the animals.

I guess I was not clear about my set-up. I have my music on three different computers now. I have a PC with Windows XP and VSC3 where I have done all the work on the midi files others make and my own from BIAB and PT for years. I then transfer the files via floppy to an old lap top with Windows 98, Cakewalk 3, and VSC, which I use on stage through a SD-20 sound module because I love the play list function in Cakewalk 3. I can have up to 128 songs in a playlist. I have several main lengthy play lists and then some short ones I've made up for individual jobs.

Now, finally, I have decided to incorporate audio. So I bought a high-speed, new laptop and BIAB 2010/RB. I have had nothing but trouble with the laptop. Sony put a new mother board in it ten days after I bought it. I upgraded to Windows 7 because I got a free upgrade from the Vista 64-bit it came with. The Windows 7 upgrade disk came fully equipped with three viruses and I lost all my music and some of my programs before getting it all corrected.

I got Music Creator 5 in order to get the TTS-1 virtual synth that everyone is raving about. It has awesome sound and I loved it until I started playing through the 500+ songs in my play lists and discovered that something, apparently the TTS, was causing strange problems - like tracks set for a guitar part sounding like a drum when played, with individual notes sounding like a piano when you use the transmit button to sound them in the events list. Kent, from PG Music, is helping me work on that problem now.

I have also found that when the pitch bend entries in a file do not end with a "0" I often get a high-pitched sound, or other problem, at the start of the subsequently loaded file - like a hung note. But there is no hung note in the file. When I go back to the previous file I usually find a pitch bend string that does not have a "0" entry at the end. I add the pitch bend "0" entry at the end of the last pitch bend on each instrument and a controller 64 "0" entry and the subsequent file's sound usually disappears. I don't know for sure what it is but it seems like the TTS sounds are so intense they have unexpected effects. I seem to recall, years ago, having similar problems when files did not have a cc 64 "o" entry at their end and beginning.

The master play list I made in the new computer has all 500+ songs I take to a job in a single play list/folder - all in the same order they appear in my song book - because I renamed the files with numbers at the beginning starting with 0001. I can go from one to the next with Shift+F8 in Real Band. Or I can jump to any of them by clicking 'Open" and then the file name. It seems to work very well since I like to do requests whenever I have the music. But with the "TTS" problems we are working on I have not had the confidence to take the new laptop to a job yet.

It is 11 degrees here this morning and I sure wish I was in the islands!

My e-mail is traphillman@charter.net if you want to by pass the forum with any personal communications.

Stay cool! Regards, Scott