Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!phigate!ehviea!leo
From: leo@ehviea.ine.philips.nl (Leo de Wit)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: MIDI beginner, STart disk, Sampsyn
Message-ID: <889@ehviea.ine.philips.nl>
Date: 18 Sep 90 11:09:35 GMT
References: <1990Sep17.205352.44@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
Reply-To: leo@ehviea.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Distribution: comp
Organization: Philips I&E Eindhoven
Lines: 77

In article <1990Sep17.205352.44@vax5.cit.cornell.edu> reyy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu writes:
|I have two questions that are somewhat closely related.
|
|First of all, I'm very interested in learning about MIDI.
|Some of my friends are musicians (although I'm not) with
|MIDI keyboards, etc., and I have an ST...  a match made in
|heaven!  I'm looking for a sequencer that's cheap, but can
|do all the basics, like editting and that stuff (you're the
|experts, you tell me!)  Is there anything public domain?

Since I suspect this might interest other people too, I'll give my
response here. I'm much of both a computer and a music fanatic, so that
explains my interest in MIDI. This is long, so hit 'n' when it isn't
appropriate for you!

It just happens that I am currently working on a full-fledged PD MIDI
recorder for the ST. It is already in a useable state, and I would like
to have some feedback before releasing it to the public. I'm looking
for alpha/beta testers for this program; preferably owners of both a
MIDI instrument and an ST. What I'd like to hear is what problems you
did find, what was unclear, what you couldn't do with it and also what
additional features you would like it to have.

If there is much interest (please reply by email), I'd rather send this
version to Steven Grimm and collect additional ideas and suggestions
from you all. I never used a commercial MIDI recorder - only read some
descriptions - but maybe that is just a strong point. To give some
indication of its (current) capabilities, a short description is
appended (Eric: this will sound familiar!).

Cheers,

    Leo.

--------8X--------8X--------8X--------8X--------8X--------8X--------8X--------8X

MidST has an unlimited number of tracks (well, memory is the limit)
that you can set each to record/play/protected. Each track has its own
input filter for MIDI messages (with which you can also control which
channels it listens to). You can set this filtering per channel
(en/disabling all messages for a channel), per type of MIDI message
(en/disabling that message for each channel) or enable/disable exactly
one message type for exactly one channel. You can define for each track
a channel offset (e.g. if it's 2, then channel 3 is sent as channel 5),
a tone offset and a time offset. You can also create so-called fake
tracks, that are tracks that have no data of their own, except for the
offset data. In this manner you can get a fuller sound by say having a
fake track on a different channel (by means of the channel offset) and
an octave higher.

It is programmed as a (I hope) well-behaved GEM application; there are
buttons for record, play, stop, fast forward, rewind, pause, eject
(write to file), insert (read from file) and off (leave the program).
Using these buttons will also send the appropriate messages for song
positioning, start/stop/cont sequencers. There is a metronome section,
that deals with timing, clicks and bells; it also sends MIDI clocks to
keep sequencers in pace. If told so, you can set it to listen to
incoming MIDI clocks and get itself synchronized with them (e.g. you
can use the speed control of your synth's rhythm box to control the
replay speed of your recording; very nice). There is also a counter
section that displays the current tape position in measures, beats and
ticks (I use a 'tick' unit that is 1/10 of a MIDI clock in length). You
can give a number of 'beats before' to get the right tempo before
recording, or even start recording on the first note played. The
display of both counter and metronome can be suppressed, which gives
greater accuracy in replay (standard GEM drawing is slow).

There is a section for setting the scale; this is handy when editing
note events. It also handles a global note offset which affects all
tracks.

There is also a section to edit tracks: edit single events, enter by
clicking on a keyboard display, wipe/cut out/merge/insert/replace
/quantisize portions of tracks etc.

Planned: a monitor function that plays MIDI messages over the ST sound
chip.