One very effective way to prevent flanging and phase cancellation, as well as give your arrangement a richer sound and relieve ear fatigue is to stereo pan different parts left and right to simulate the physical placement on the stage of the players in an ensemble. For each staff, F2 to the MIDI tab. In MIDI the pan values are: 64-center, 0-pan full left, 127-pan full right. For example, a combo might be panned: bass-30, piano-40, drums-55, guitar 1-75, guitar 2-90. For solo piano, pan the right hand staff 80 and left hand staff 50. Pan your string and wind parts according to the physical placement on the stage and hear your phasing and flanging problems vanish as well as increase the clarity and transparency of your entire arrangement.
Doesn't have to be too very much money. Get a Yamaha PSR-293 keyboard (about $200 US) or whatever the cheapest Yamaha is that has a USB interface. You'll have great sound (even with a laptop) and a keyboard to input all your masterpieces into NWC. Or you could search on the internet for the discontinued softsynth Yamaha S-YXG50 if you are using Win XP, 2000, or NT. If you are still using Win 98 try to find the Yamaha S-YXG100 softsynth. If you want to render a piece from the keyboard to an mp3 file to send as e-mail or store, or as a wav file to burn to CD, download and install Audacity (www.audacity.sourceforge.net), a free audio editor, and record your NWC files as they play back through the synth. For a softsynth no additional cables are necessary. For a keyboard, get a cable with a 1/4" stereo plug on the keyboard end and a 1/8" stereo plug on the computer end. Plug the keyboard end into the headphone jack on the keyboard and the computer end into the Line In jack on the sound card. Adjust the record levels in Audacity, keep the volume on the keyboard at about 2 out of 10 and record your masterpiece!
Bugman, after all the re-installs and reboots you've done, this probably doesn't apply, but I just read a tech tip on Musician's Friend about using USB ports with music devices and applications that might hold a clue. Here's the link:
Here's the section I thought might possibly apply:
"Let's add a couple tips for Windows users. If the little USB icon appears in your taskbar to indicate a USB peripheral is connected, pay attention.
Never disconnect a USB device simply by unplugging it if this icon is in the taskbar. Click on the icon, and choose "Safely remove [device name]." Shortly after you do this, you'll be told you can remove it. Only then should you disconnect the peripheral.
Another tip involves the "case of the unrecognized peripheral." Here's the deal: You install a driver for a USB device plugged into a particular port. At some point you disconnect it. A few days later you come back, plug it in, and . . . oops, nothing happens. This usually means you plugged into a different port. Disconnect, and plug into the port you originally used. This time, it should work."
Hope you get the chance to try the Keystation on another PC to see if there is a problem with the device itself.
Bugman, one other remote possiblity. If I remember right, the Keystation can be powered from the USB port alone or powered from an AC adapter. Just maybe if you are depending on the USB port power alone from your laptop, it is not providing sufficient power. Try powering the Keystation with an AC adapter and see if that makes any difference. Not likely, but maybe worth trying.
Thebugman, are you running Windows XP or 2000? If so, you should at least have "Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth" as an available playback device in NWC. If you are using Win XP/2000 and that synth does not show up, try rebooting, especially if you have not rebooted since installing the USB driver for the Keystation. If using Win XP/2000 and still no synth shows after reboot, or if you are running an earlier version of Windows, you need to get some sort of synth. In that case, use a keyboard with a MIDI sound module (any keyboard with speakers) and MIDI In and Out ports for the synth. You can pick up used ones cheap or get a Yamaha PSR-292 with the USB port to interface with your computer. Or search the posts here for "Yamaha S-YXG 50" softsynth for a site to download and install it on your computer. Sorry if any of this seems basic or obvious. It's usually the basic and obvious stuff lurking unnoticed that causes our problems!
Lawrie, you said, "G'day Milton, are you sure it won't show?"
Pretty sure, since NWC seems to be able to detect and differentiate between MIDI I/O ports that do or do not have actual playback devices attached. An exception might be a MIDI Yoke port (installed in MIDI OX) or other virtual patchbay such as Hubi's Loopback. I have MIDI Yoke installed and those ports do indeed show up as both Available Play Devices and as Input Devices. Thebugman, Lawrie is absolutely right, "BTW, you must have at least one working device in your MIDI tab or you wouldn't be able to play anything back in NWC..." Unlike, say, a Yamaha PSR keyboard which has its own MIDI synth inside, the Keystation can't playback sound or produce its own sound as a free-standing unit, it must control a synth of some sort. So NWC can't use the Keystation as a playback device either.
Thebugman, your Keystation 49 is not a playback device since it has no MIDI sound module, that is, no synth. It is an input device only, intended to control or trigger a softsynth or hardware synth. Look under Tools-Options on the Record tab and it should show up as an input device. It will not show up on Tools-Options on the MIDI tab. Instead, use whatever synth you were using before you got the Keystation.
Fitzclan, check your NWC scores that you are saving as MIDI files for the F2 Instrument properties for each staff. No matter what synth plays your MIDI file back, you will get more consistent results on a variety of playback synths if you stick to General MIDI patches in your NWC file. You may even want to save 2 or more versions of your NWC scores if you use patches unique to Yamaha XG or Roland GS and indicate what synth the piece is tailored to in the file name.
Is the extension (.mid) not visible in the file or is Windows stopping you from adding or changing it? You may have to go into Tools-Folder Options in the folder where your MIDI files are stored and change the view options. Look for 2 things especially here. Click the View tab and under Hidden Files and Folders uncheck the box "Hide extensions for known file types" if it is checked and click the radio button "Show hidden files and folders". Also check the box "Remember each folder's view settings".
Some Windows users set file names to display without extensions a la Mac and perhaps if extensions are not visible to you they are not available to NWC either.
When I mentioned "selecting" the staff, in NWC this is not done as in a word processor, by dragging the mouse pointer over it to highlight it. One does this to highlight notes or other items within a staff and then to edit them. If your score has only one staff, it is always "selected". If your score has more than one staff, use Page Up or Page Down to navigate to the staff whose properties you want to edit, which shows up as blue, or simply single-click the mouse pointer anywhere in the staff. Now Tools-Audit Bar Lines should be available. Making an example like yours (in NWC 1.75), now that I actually try it, does nothing to rearrange the notes into 4-beat measures in 4/4 when I click Audit Bar Lines. Go figure! As with any sequencer or notation software, there's no substitute for actual musicianship!
Of course NWC allows the user to enter notation such as the original poster's example, stacking a whole note over a half note twice in a measure of 4/4, or any other "bizarre" combo you can think of. But try selecting the staff and going to Tools-Audit Bar Lines and see what happens. NWC should do the best it can to make sense of notation that violates the meter and make default choices that aligns notes into 4-beat measures. The main difference between NWC and programs like Finale or Sibelius is that NWC allows the user much more freedom to notate something that the other programs simply not allow, and so gives the user far more flexibility, IMHO.
"With regard to the MIDI file you must set the channel to 31 and score the MIDI with an additional octave, i.e., channel 31 + channel 31 octave (31 + 31 = 62) and this will give you the desired sound. You can hide the 2nd channel (31 + octave) to get the right "look" when you print. Note: If you try to go directly to channel 62 with this setup, then you will initiate a very annoying dynamic harmonic instability on playback that may damage your sound card."
Polmila, Debo is being a little bit impish and "pulling your leg". MIDI only has 16 channels! Lawrie Pardy gave you a serious answer, but I'm sure Debo meant no harm, since the only "instability" is in his tongue-in-cheek post, and the only way you can damage your sound card is to fry your power supply with lightning!
Neat trick! I'll have to try it. My suspicion is , though, that if you took this to a ridiculous extreme and tried to make a single staff play 15 or more different instruments simultaneously that your synth would steal them from channels already assigned to other parts. Unlike older synths, all newer MIDI synths run in a mode that automatically distributes the instruments playing at any one time to available channels. If your piece has, say, 10 instruments playing at once and you put another 6 or more instruments on another staff with the technique you described, the synth would turn some of the other parts off or change their instrument to one of the instruments in your multi-instrument staff as it assigned channels to the new notes. I think it's similar to what happens when you exceed the polyphony limit of your synth. If your synth can play 32 notes at once and your score temporarily exceeds that limit, some of the notes get cut off in favor of the new notes.
F2 Staff Properties will not change the size of the staff, only how much vertical space is allotted to it on the page before items belonging to the next higher or lower staff are laid out on the page. This is done on the Visual tab-Vertical Size, Upper and Lower. To change the size of the staff, go to File-Page Setup. Click on the Options tab. "Staff size (in points)" is the value to increase to make the staff bigger both vertically and horizontally at once. It may also be useful to make sure the box is checked for "Increase note spacing for larger durations" Also make sure the box is checked for "Extend last system". I think this will solve your problem.
In NWC 1.75, with the desired piece open, click File-Save As. Click the down arrow in the drop-down box "Save file as type" and select either Type 1 MIDI or Type 0 MIDI. I don't have the NWC2 beta but I think you click File-Export and choose the options from there.
As far as converting .nwc files to .wav files for an audio CD, I agree with Lawrie-start Audacity recording and then start NWC playing. Audacity lets you export from its native format to .wav, .mp3 or ogg Vorbis. The quality of sound you will get from NWC depends on your playback device. Synthfont gives good results but I think Lawrie would agree since we both use this primarily for playback that the Yamaha softsynth (S-YXG 50) is hard to beat with anything but the most expensive sample libraries or hardware synths. And now that Yamaha has discontinued it, it can be found free on some web sites. A search of the NWC archived posts will give you some web sites where it is available for download.
The difference between MIDI type 1 and type 0 files is this: Type 1 has a separate track for each MIDI channel; Type 0 has all events for all channels in one track with each Note On and Note Off and other event having its own channel ID byte. The data is not inextricable into separate channel-defined tracks in a Type 0 MIDI file as long as your sequencer supports this function, as most Win sequencers do. My school computer is an iMac, not powerful enough to run OSX, and most of the older Mac sequencers that will run on Mac OS 9.2 will not import Type 1 MIDI files, only Type 0 files. It seems from my limited experience with newer Mac sequencers (like Metro) that they will import and export Type 1 and Type 0 MIDI files equally well. There is actually a third type of MIDI file, Type 2, that is rarely used. It uses a separate track for each song in a multi-song file. Each of the separate tracks is a Type 0 MIDI file contained within the single Type 2 MIDI file. This is mostly used for MIDI "jukeboxes" and I think in some games.
A further possibility. Check to see if there are any hanging tied notes in the problem piece. That is, are any notes tied to nothing or past the last barline. That would have the same effect as a stuck pedal, at least for that pitch on that MIDI channel.
This is probably not a NWC bug, but just a pedal down mark that did not have a pedal up mark in the preceding piece you mentioned. This is why you will see in commercial MIDI files at least one, and sometimes several, All Notes Off commands for each of the 16 MIDI channels when the MIDI data stream is viewed with an editor such as MIDI-OX. Try adding a pedal up mark to the end of EACH staff in the preceding piece. Be careful to add it to any hidden staves there might be in the piece and if there are repeats, be sure the pedal up mark is at the end of the last bar actually played. This should solve your problem.
