Ultrasound Daily Digest Sun Aug 15 00:07 Volume 5: Issue 14 Today's Topics: About playmidi and 808 patches Could it be my disks..... Custom patches, banks, etc. Efficiency in Patches MIDIMON doesn't work Patch suggestion: guitar chords. Power Chords Controllers The new sound card (what's REAL and what ISN't!) .... Sorry for wrong informatio Standard Info: - Meta-info about the GUS can be found at the end of the Digest. - Before you ask a question, please READ THE FAQ. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1993 21:52:43 -0400 (EDT) From: dionf@ERE.UMontreal.CA (Francois Dion) Subject: About playmidi and 808 patches Message-ID: <9308150152.AA21731@brise.ERE.UMontreal.CA> For playmidi to work correctly with the TR 808 patches i made, you have to include them in the cfg in this way: for example you want to put the 808kick1 in perc position 34: 34 ultrasnd\midi\808kick1 This is because the playmidi parser is broken (or sscanf flaky...). You could also use a separate directory for custom patches: 34 ultrasnd\custom\808kick1 So this should fix the problem. BTW, when you want to distribute any of my patches with your midi file, please contact me. Basically i dont think it's a good idea, cause it makes big files and defeat the purpose of the small midi files. However, if you really need to distribute them along for some reason, contact me and i'll arrange something. Last, if someone wants a challenge, try to do 808 State's Cobra Bora song... with the upcoming patches it should be feasible (combined with the 808 drums). Ciao, -- Francois Dion ' _ _ _ CISM (_) (_) _) FM Montreal , Canada Email: CISM@ERE.UMontreal.CA (_) / . _) 10000 Watts Telephone no: (514) 343-7511 _______________________________________________________________________________ Audio-C-DJ-Fractals-Future-Label-Multimedia-Music-Radio-Rave-Video-VR-Volvo-... ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1993 23:25:42 +1000 (EST) From: Michael Daniel Subject: Could it be my disks..... Message-ID: Guess what!, I just recieved a bit of paper in the mail saing that there was a parcel waiting for me at the post office... Could i tbe my long awaited upgrade disks.. I certainly hope so!! (it's either those or a parcel asking us why we didn't enter Rally Australia again this year...) anticipating even happier GUSsing, MPD 8-) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Michael Daniel| mdani@wilbur.mbark.swin.oz.au |Maths and Computer Science| | Swinburne University, Eastern Campus, Lilydale, Victoria, Australia. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Aug 93 2:29:16 PDT From: Christopher Jon Wilkins Subject: Custom patches, banks, etc. Message-ID: <199308140929.CAA05489@power.Stanford.EDU> On the topic of how to organise custom patches ... The current idea being thrown around is to create a `bank loading' program to swap ultrasnd.ini files. This might be O.K. as a temporary solution, but I think we should really seriously lobby Gravis to modify the windows drivers instead. The idea is this: implement midi sysex commands in the Ultrasound driver to allow a dump request / bulk dump of the 128 patch names. Also modify patch manager so that you can double click on any patch number and it gives you a full list of possible patches in your patch directory which you can use to replace the existing patch reference. To put it another way, the 128 patch limit is quite arbitrary on the GUS. It refers only to the number of different patches that can be obtained by midi program change messages during playback of a file. This should have nothing to do with the number of patches readily available on your GUS. The reason a sysex implementation is most desirable is that no other special GUS software would be necessary: all major sequencers already support some form of automatic sysex loading with files (although now I think about it I'm not sure it's part of the GM standard?). Otherwise we're going to be stuck back in this ridiculous situation of loading in a midi file into the sequencer and then loading in a matching patch set file with another program. In other words it will be the inconvenience of patch caching all over again. In fact, if we pursue this line of getting the digest programmers to knock up a `bank loader' we're going to be stuck with the following procedure whenever we want to modify a file: open the sequencer program and load in the file; open patch manager and again load in the file (extract from file command); open the bank editor and AGAIN load in the file (or its counterpart). In other words THREE loads whenever you want to load in a file. This sort of procedure is beyond a joke (although I admit it's better than the existing system of modifying ultrasnd.ini !). Sound sensible? Suggestions/modifications? If we can get an absolutely clear idea of what it is we're after I'd say we've got a fair chance of convincing Gravis to do it. Gus musicians of the world unite! Chris. PS: BTW, anyone managed to make a GUS patch with a name that Patch Manager recognises or is Patch Manager faulty? And why are my patches supposedly 0K long? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1993 00:41:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Phat H Tran Subject: Efficiency in Patches Message-ID: <9308150441.AA07958@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> It's great to see all those new patches people are making. However, they are usually so BIG! Sometimes they need to be big, but often, better use of looping, enveloping, and compromises in sampling rate and/or bit resolution can yield a much smaller patch that sounds nearly as good as the larger one. Sampling rate. We don't need samples recorded at 44.1kHz for many instruments. The GUS will just skip a lot of the sample points anyway since most people use around 24-28 active voices. Don't be afraid to use lower sampling rates. The GUS' interpolating capabilities can fill in the missing points quite decently. Looping. Look for patterns in the waveform, capture one repeating unit, and loop it to fill in the sustain. The most complex waveforms are during the attack, and the harmonics tend to stabilize rather quickly. Sometimes bidirectional looping can reduce the size of the looped region by a half. Remember to discard all the wave data a few bytes after the end of the loop. (It's safer to leave a few valid sample points after the end of the loop so that the GF1 has something to use for the interpolation if the voice lands fractionally outside the loop. I don't know if a voice is ever allowed to go past the loop points before wrapping around or switching direction, but I'd leave a buffer zone, just in case.) Envelopes. Remember to use the enveloping and AM/FM features instead of sampling an entire note complete with sustain and decay. With a max of just 1 Meg, and a hardware limit of 256k for 16-bit samples, we should try to make our patches as compact as possible. Phat. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Aug 1993 20:45:40 +0000 From: Clarke Brunt Subject: Re: MIDIMON doesn't work Message-ID: <0097106C.70251B81.19464@lsl.co.uk> peter@netcom.com writes... > midim201.zip, midimon.exe. When I try to launch this executable > under windows very little happens, the egg-timer is> > instantaneously visible and then the application disappears, > normal service is resumed (so to speak). Is there something > environmental that I have forgotten to establish? The author > provides usmail and compuserve addresses (but no source :-) but > I am overcome with lazyness and wondered if the list at large > has had similar trouble. This is what I found as well, and I think someone else on the Digest did too. I emailed the author, but he had no suggestions as to what was wrong. He did not feel that he could upload the source code, as it was largely from MicroSoft's SDK. I know that some of these programs are said to require vbrun...dll (the visual basic run-time library) but I'm pretty sure that this one doesn't. It does use two other DLLs, but we've got them in the same directory as the .exe so should be OK. Any suggestions anyone? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1993 01:39:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Phat H Tran Subject: Patch suggestion: guitar chords. Message-ID: To all those out there working on patches, do you think you could come up with some guitar chords? Building up chords from individual notes just does not produce realistic results, at least on the GUS, as the resonance of the strings is lacking. I think great .mids can be made with the appropriate set of sampled chords. Phat. ------------------------------ Date: 14 Aug 93 08:21:40 EDT From: "Eric Bell, Howling Dog Systems" <71333.2166@CompuServe.COM> Subject: Power Chords Controllers Message-ID: <930814122140_71333.2166_DHQ35-1@CompuServe.COM> > STU_JABIRCHE@VAX1.ACS.JMU.EDU > > I have tried using the controller window to send a stream of increasing values > on controller 10, but I get nothing for my efforts. Any suggestions/comments/ > clues? > P.S. I have no keyboard or I would use CakeWalk. > The controls are not for doing continuous controller stuff. They are for > sending reverb or chorus levels, or pan info, or patch changes etc. as > opposed to pitch bend. > Get Power Chords Pro - it has a keyboard on-screen, and you can record > what you play on the fret-board or keyboard to any type of rhythm - melody > drums, whatever. > Eric ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 14 Aug 93 00:15:27 GMT From: thomasvk@blackhl.hacktic.nl (Thomas van Kuipers) Subject: The new sound card (what's REAL and what ISN't!) .... Sorry for wrong informatio Message-ID: Hi, I saw your reply about Diamonds Sonic Sound. I'm the guy who placed the artikel. A Friend of Mine has bought a card (SOLD his GUS) for about $250. I ALREADY found out that there wasn't RAM on it, BUT IT HAS CACHE RAM (64kB) and has the rom modules. Further it has an upgradubility to 8 mb rom (the dealer said) for about $120. Further It has SCSI-2 on board, it's totally 16-bit (recording and playing) and has HARDWARE comp. Soundblaster / adlib on it. So you have for about $50 more the two daugterboards (scsi/16-bit) AND hardware SB comp. (Oke i'll know dan that the aria isn't comp with gus totally) I know a lot about computers and i like MY GUS very much, but after that it is still a good priced card with an high performance and it DOES sound better than a GUS, you know. Oke, Guys, you musn't think i advice EVERYONE to buy it, but it is rather a push for GRAVIS to come up with something, perferably a GUS with 8 MB RAM and 16-bit + scsi in one (hopefully for onely $250 or so). Sorry for the misunderstanding about the possiblities i placed, but it came from my friend, because he had only an sort fax of it (and i posted that information). After 2 days i saw it and i know now that it hasn't any ram on it (shame). Oh yeah it had NOTHING to do with the post in that NEWSGROUP, because i don't read that stuff yet ......... Bye, Thomas van Kuipers Email: thomasvk@blackhl.hacktic.nl ------------------------------ End of Ultrasound Daily Digest V5 #14 *************************************