Re: Midi composing

[lownthl <lownthl...>]

Jeff,

Hardware you will need to purchase:
1. A midi interface adapter that attaches to the multi-pinned port on your
sound card. (cost: $20 to $40).  As an alternative, you could purchase
either a parallel port or a USB port midi adapter, but these would certainly
be a lot more expensive.
2. Two midi interface cables (one for midi in and one for midi out) to
connect the midi interface adapter with the midi in and midi out ports of
your Yamaha keyboard. Estimated cost is $15 to $35 for the pair of cables
depending on its length.  The cables must be long enough to reach from the
back of your Yamaha to the back of your PC.

Installing Drivers:
Hopefully, after connecting the adapter and cables, the windows plug and
play facility will recognize the new device and prompt you for external midi
interface drivers (the keyboard and the midi interface leading to it is
external to your sound card).  Your sound card may have come with a diskette
or CD with the appropriate external midi interface drivers.  If not, you may
be able to download external midi interface drivers from the sound card
manufacturer's WWW site.

Assigning Drivers:
Your midi sequencing (recording and playing) software (Lime?) should have a
setup option for pointing to the newly installed external midi interface. If
Lime is already installed on your PC, it may have already assigned "default"
device drivers for the sound card's internal midi interface. Hopefully, Lime
has some online help to show you how to change this setting.

Music Software:
Quality Midi software (such as Cubase, Cakewalk, Logic, and Performer) can
be very expensive and difficult to use if you have no prior midi sequencing
experience.  You can get demo versions of each of these to try out before
purchasing them.  I would recommend that you first familiarize yourself with
the midi concepts by playing with your freeware if you can get it to work.

I've used Cakewalk Home Studio, which is positioned at the lower end of the
Cakewalk line, for the past four years and found it to be both easy to use
and a very capable midi sequencer.   You could probably purchase it for less
than $100.  On the down side, its musical transcription feature is weak.  I
use another product called Encore to print out my creations in sheet music
format.  I'm currently looking for a product that is both a strong sequencer
and a capable transcriber - Emagic's Logic Audio Gold is currently at the
top of my list.

If you have a Mac, I've heard that Digital Performer is the best product
overall.

Keep me informed of your progress.

Regards,

Steven Lowenthal


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Miller/Burden of Proof Research" <jefmil (at) interlog(dot)com>
To: "World music from a Jewish slant" <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2000 7:38 AM
Subject: Midi composing


> This might be a dinosaur's question -- if so, I apologize in advance --
and
> it is not "Jewish."  However, I thought that at least a couple other
people
> on list might benefit from the comments of the computer mavens in our
midst.
>
> I acquired some music composition software, Lime, as shareware off the
Net.
> It is perfectly serviceable, but I've been working with it via a mouse,
> which is about to drive me crazy.  It's so slow and cumbersome, I've
almost
> gone back to pencil and paper.
>
> I own a Yamaha keyboard -- a modest one (I'm no keyboardist), but with
midi
> functions -- and I'd like to plug it into my computer and do composition
> that way.  What else do I need?  I have a "midi player" loaded on my
> computer, but my guess is that I need some other interface?  Is that
right?
> Does anyone know approximately how much it would cost for any necessary
> upgrade?  And would I be better off using other software, such as Cuebase
(I
> think it's called)?
>
> Thanks,
>
> J
>
>

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+