PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production DISCUSSION RE COYOTE. are there uses for it ? (includeing example audio excerpt.)

DISCUSSION >> IS COYOTE PLUGIN THAT BAD ?
(or does it have its uses ?)

some people have said its junk.
i'm not sure i can completely agree with this.

heres a little song sample with scratch one shot vocals that showcases a retro (60's ?) hammond organ patch from coyo playing the melody.
dont seem bad to me...but maybe i'm stoopid.
what do you think ?...link...
(i'll leave it up for a few days....you can tell me my vocs suck too...lol.)

https://soundcloud.com/alfsongs/crazylovecoyo-1-0rbmp3

heres my take on coyote.

PROS. (why i like some aspects.)

..its lightweight on pc resources
..its unobtrusive and loads fast automatically if you wish.
..it lets me get a rough song idea/chords/arrange down fast without futzing around. eg 3am this week.
..i'm not spending loads of time going thru plugin sound selections. and of course cos i find so many good sounds in fancy shmancy plugins one can get 'paralysis by analysys.'
(maybe kiss is good/limited options when scratching out a song idea fast ?)

NEGATIVES.

..yes it does have various sounds i wouldnt use in a final serious song.
BUT whats your take on that hammond sound patch ?
i think its even nice to use in a final release ?
(i tested on my wife who went 'ooh thats nice'...and believe me she is a tough critic....lol.)

in conclusion all i'm saying is maybe dont dismiss coyote out of hand ? cos what ive found is sometimes ive tried a fancy plugin and on occasion ive preferred a patch in coyote.
yeah i know weird huh ? but it just seemed to 'fit' better.
worst case lets take a case where coyo has a filler support rhythm role down lower in a mix.
would it be usefull in that context ?

ok have at me...tell me i'm a dunce...lol

happiness.

om

om, no you are not a dunce!
I use Coyote as a scratch pad. It is the only sound source I use with BiaB. Once I get the arrangement I want I drop the MIDI files into my DAW so I can use better sounds.

If you use short notes then the GM sounds are not that bad; say eighth notes (quavers) and shorter notes. Anything longer can/will show GM sound deficiencies. YMMV

Mario.

you know what ? re single notes you hit the proverbial nail on the head.
thinking back includeing a few weeks back anytime ive liked
a coyo patch is single notes.
but for pads i like to use other vi's.
i also like various pg midi supertracks.

the thing that bugs me about vi's (and i'm at fault of course) is the libs are so BIG with so many lovely patches that i get 'bogged down' in the zillion patches.
how do you handle that ? ie you love 20 patches but you need to choose one. of course then self doubt creeps in as in 'did i use the right patch' and or 'will the listener like the one i selected as to song sound picture'.

the major reason i like coyo is at the beginning of laying out a song arrange it doesnt get in the way and i'm not thinking about patches. so i can work fast trying all sorts of chord arrangements and progressions and testing how well my vocs work with different progressions and song keys.

but if i use a fancy plugin its like my concentration is diverted from the core mission of getting a good song skeleton happening and song foundation.

it seems you and i use coyo the same way.

Dan.

dont trouble yourself ive heard what ez keys can do.
good product and i dont doubt what your saying.
the idea was not to knock other products as there are many many good ones out there like ez etc.
i just feel that coyo aint that bad for free for someone new to music
production who is just starting out writing songs provided one is carefull re patch selection.


happiness.

om

I hear ya! I have a few zillion software patches that I have acquired over the years. I use the old trial and error method BUT when I come to one that is close enough I quit looking. I usually have an idea about what type of sound I am looking for so that helps. However like when I am auditioning BiaB styles if I find one that I like but takes me into a different direction I will choose that one.

You’re not wrong. Coyote has its uses and the good news is that it is supplied free in BIAB. You might be referencing a recent thread in which I and others commented that Coyote Forte was in a different class (better) but is 32-bit and has not been updated. BIAB includes Coyote so users can at least hear something.

I come from several decades of using Roland hardware MIDI synths. I still have an Integra-7 but rarely use it now. How much easier that was! Now there is an endless number of software MIDI virtual instruments, and parameters to tweak to get great rewards in sound.

I’ve thought for a few years it might be nice if someone wrote an article on choosing software sounds for BIAB that could be in the Tips and Tricks Forum. Someone like Mario, who graciously helped me a couple of years back to find some great sounds for jazz big band, could do it and make things easier for newcomers.

Good-but-not-great GM sound engines certainly have their utility, and MAY be "good enough" for a final mix. Like Mario's rule of thumb about short notes, that's a solid tip. I've occasionally used a GM pad to good effect, too. But starting with the GM source and substituting where you need a better instrument is a good approach.

One of the reasons I am trying to avoid these discussions. If you are not getting the best sound quality why would you want to even use this tool for your music. How does faster and easier even begin to out weigh the sound quality? I would say you guys are showing your age by promoting sound from a midi soft synth lke coyote. It's 2024 not 1994! But I do regocnize that I am likely even older than most. Nuff said.

Thanx for kind words Matt but I do not use any VSTis in BiaB. Plus what I might choose for a sound someone else might not like.

However I suggest if one wants better GM sounds the one should get a good soundfont player, a good GM soundfont (SF2) and a soundfont editor. The editor is an option but when I was using SF2s I created various soundfonts for different genres. I had one for orchestras, one for jazz, one for rock, etc. Note the soundfont player must be one that allows all 128 GM slots to be used and one that allows all 16 MIDI channels. Google/Bing should provide paths to said SF2 info.

I hope this helps.

Dan, I think faster and easier outweighs great sounds when you are composing. You have to be able to get fast results when ideas strike. Later when the song is we’ll-honed, you can go into production for better sounds. This is why I held on to my Roland hardware synth for so long: it was faster and easier yet good enough.

Mario, yes, that’s a good point and my other post just now supports it. I do not use VSTis in BIAB, either.

Even back in 2008 it was difficult using RealDrums then RealTracks because of the delay in regenerating a song, as opposed to MIDI. You used to hit Play/Regenerate and go make a sandwich then come back as the song was finishing. Sort of like handing the computer center a deck of punched cards in the 1970s and having them say to come back next Tuesday.

One of the really cool features in Multitrackstudios was the ability to drop sound fonts on midi tracks with ease. i use that program for a couple years and i have to say it was so darn easy to mix good sound fonts with audio tracks when you can just add one and run it through FX in that track. I would venture a guess but one may be able to do that in BiaB.

lots of good points.
(i agree Matt...lets not forget coyo is free.)

imho theres room in song creation for many diverse opinions re what sound pictures and sound choices are the correct ones.

i bet if you got various top music producers in a room to recommend what instruments should be in a song...
ie...song pre-production phase....there would be various opinions.

its sorta like different people in an art gallery looking at a well known picture. each person might have different perspectives.
eg i was in an art gallery once with friends looking at a picture. some of us liked it but some didnt.
some neither hated it or liked it.

in summary i'm not sure one can be definitive, human nature
being what it is. what is 'wow' for one person might not be for another. many times ive fallen fowl of the enigma.
such as thinking a particular wonderfull sound i had slaved over
people would love. only to be told by a 'normal music consumer'...
what happened to that 'ratty sound in the previous version...
i liked that much better.'..lol.
what i'm trying to say is what us song creators might think was a great sound...the normal music listener might not from my experience.

ie...its like anything in life we all have different tastes...
whether its houses or cars or anything else eg songs.
all i can say is many times ive found the 'mongrel dog sound' was preferred over other sounds. yep its weird.

i used to lie awake nights worrying if a song i was doing had some validity re sound picture etc or was it c**p until a producer in good ole usa said..
'just keep yourself happy and if other people like your song thats a bonus'. i found he was right. less stress that way.
one does the best one can and thats all one can do.

anyway my wife tears me a big one if i screw up a song...lol.

ps...i often wonder if pg might be successfull doing its own plugin like a tts-1 on stereoids etc with a ton of great patch settings.
and with each sound patch the user has a choice of the pristine sound or the mongrel alternative.
(ive still got in the basement a old loads of sounds roland midi unit from my midi madness days...lol....remember those ?)

PS...@Rob Helms.
yep mtstudio is pretty darn impressive for many reasons. i agree.

happiness.

om

I'm certainly no MIDI expert.... back in the day I was a solid user of TTS which is similar. I believe Coyote is the default synth used by BB to give sound to the MIDI instruments in a style which uses MIDI.

As to whether or not Coyote or TTS is "sufficiently good enough" for a final mix..... it's not the tool as much as it is the person using the tool.

I've heard some pretty horrendous renderings of some top quality MIDI sampler instruments and on the other side of that equation, I've heard some absolutely stunning orchestral compositions using nothing but TTS.

Having BB, I do have Coyote in the machine but having Sonar, I also have TTS and selected it to be my default synth for BB.

Even semi-current Roland GM sounds are much better, FWIW.
Hook up a real hardware GM synth for BiaB .. then move to DAW and replace as desired.
At least that's how I work.

Juno-G, Juno-DS, Yamaha .. any inexpensive GM capable synth from the last 12 years will have better patches without a lot of the artifacts of the looping in Coyote sounds.
Coyote uses a *very* compressed GM sound set that Microsoft licensed from Roland many many years ago, and then made it a Windows file.
Plus hardware synths contain a ton of other sounds.

/I remember the days back when you could rename a Soundfont to replace the Windows source sound file (GM.dls) .. even that was an improvement to what MS did to that library of sounds. The whole sound set in Windows is a whopping 3MB for 128 sounds. <giggle>

i really wish that the coyo folks would bring out a new coyo version with super duper improved sound sets. i love its simplicity of use.

ive been fooling around with some vsti's i found for rb.
eg synful orchestra...kind of interesting.synful.com.

the problem i find with various vi's is some can be too time consuming...
which is a prob when im working fast. whereas i can just whack in coyo in
rb and away i go.

happiness.

om

I'm doubtful that Coyote still exist. Their internet domain coyotes.bc.ca is presently defunct and is described by WhoIs as "available". Theres is a registered domain coyotes.ca on GoDaddy, but it's not up and running. PGM used to sell ForteDXI, but I think they may now no do so.

Maybe when PGM eventually get VST3 support in BiaB and RB, we'll get some other options that are a little less fiddly to use and/or tempremental.

Gordon.

re 'fiddly'...you hit the nail on the head.
the reason i suggest it would be nice to have a product like coyo but with better gm sounds is i'm not trying to be selfish but i'm coming from the perspective of a new user.

i suspect you are like me and like the tech challenge of 'digging' re tech. but many people/musos i note on the net and new songwriters want 'gimme now'.
without digging or even reading the manual often...lol.

(i wish someone would gimme the new uk caterham car gordon.
gotta wait for a lottery win...lol.)

thus i'm coming from the marketing perspective of how to satisfy the 'gimme now' market for music apps etc etc.

one reason i like coyo when useing rb is i find a midi style demo i like...
then load up the demo in rb tracks view and voila coyo is loaded with patches on the tracks and away i go then entering my own chord song arrangement. someone in pg was really thinking when this was implemented.
kudos to them.
in other daws ive tested ive got to futz around with plugins sometimes and setting up patches etc etc blah blah.
in summary the use of coyo/rb allows me to work fast when the muse strikes.

in summary i hope people see why i like coyo when i want to work fast.
i would just like some of the gm sounds to sound better.
sometimes i fluke it with coyo..for example i was creating a song a few weeks back and lo and behold it gave me a nice piccolo sound that cranked me up.

imho those pg midi styles are a 'goldmine' for getting ideas down fast and laying out a chord sheet song skeleton/bed guide tracks for a new song.
plus i have sooo many tracks and track generation options in rb it gives me loads of flexibility to get a rough demo going/flushing out a song.
(also i can gen drum fills/solos in rb easily useing tricks.)

i hope i make some sense gordon. to come back to your 'fiddly' comment.
thats what frustrates me with some plugins....ie 'fiddly'.
i'm a simple soul...lol. give my regards to blighty.

happiness.

om

I agree. I use BiaB as a scratch pad using GM. Then I bring the song into my DAW and use my much better sounds there.

But be careful about what you wish for! GM has 128 different sounds and to have better sounds could have a huge impact on the file size.

Have you checked out SF2s as I suggested in an earlier message? That may be a possible solution for you.

When GM was new it was a God sent as we could pass songs back and forth and have them sound OK. Today MP3s have taken over, putting GM sound sources only for programs like BiaB and MIDI files, thus not a huge demand anymore. Most people I know use GM like I do and then substitute them with better sounds. Even PGM now has SFZ and the ability to use VSTis to accomplish that task.


I agree.

As a conversation piece, Coyote WT default for my BIAB is perfect for creating midi data that I use to apply Playable RealTracks to any media BIAB recognizes.

The attached screen shot is a playable Nylon strumming guitar RealTrack replacing a Nylon strumming UserTrack created by Musocity that didn't have any midi data to the track.

The blank piano roll area is playing the UserTrack and bars 10 and 11 replace the UserTrack with the Playable RealTrack. Midi data courtesy of Coyote WT.

Charlie.

SUPER BLINKIN' WOW re useing coyo and playable real tracks.
what a fantastic tip for a new user to bb....kudos.
this should be in the tips section.

ALL.

heres something else.
for a looong time in rb ive been trying to get vstsynthfont 64
to work as default instead of coyo...BUT i keep on getting a nag screen for synthfont. anyone else getting this ?
is this normal ? also compared to coyo it looks like if i use synthfont
supplied by pg i gotta manually put in patches compared to auto in coyo.

am i a dumb 'A' ? am i doing something wrong.

happiness.

om