Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Instrument Choices (Read 6028 times) previous topic - next topic

Instrument Choices

I love NWC but I'm pretty new to electronic composition. I
composed a piece of music that I thought was beeeeeutiful!!!
(On my sound card, that is). I exported it to MIDI and e-mailed
it to a friend. I have an AWE32, he has a SB16. At a later
time, while at his house, I heard his playback - It was monstrous.
Worse than that, other friends reported the same thing!
Could someone please enlighten me? Am I missing something?
Are some instruments consistent across different sound cards? Does
Noteworthy Player do something to the GM set that MIDI players
don't? How do you stop strings from turning into piano accordians?

Re: Instrument Choices

Reply #1 –
Trouble is - you composed on a Porsche and your friends played back on a Volkswagen.
You have wavetable synthesis and they dont.
Buy'em an AWE64 for Xmas.
They'll love your composition then!

Re: Instrument Choices

Reply #3 –
Thanks Barry:) But what about the net? I'm setting up a music site. Do I only compose using piano or can I convert midi to another waveband-friendly format? MPEG3 looks promising but finding inexpensive 'drag & drop' software is proving difficult. Now wouldn't "export NWC to MPEG3" be a nice addition.

Re: Instrument Choices

Reply #4 –
When creating a composition for electronic distribution, there is no way to guarantee the performance level of the equipment in which your piece will be played. You should probably construct your song such that it uses General MIDI patch assignments, and then test it in this configuration. When distributing it, state that General MIDI support is required to get satisfactory playback results. In the end, your piece will almost always sound better on premium equipment, and authors of MIDI files will always be faced with trade-off decisions based on the target audience of their song, and the minum level of MIDI equipment required to hear a MIDI work as the author intended it to be experienced. Good luck.

Re: Instrument Choices

Reply #5 –
I think "NWC->MPEG3" would not be the way to go.
Think of midi as a file of musical instructions; what instrument to play, when to play it and how loud, etc... Now depending on the quality of the sound card (and let's face it, they're getting better all the time), you can get some very very very good sounds.
MPEG, WAV and AU digitise sound, much like - say - a CD. Let's say it's 16bits per sample (8 is too noisy), and recorded at 20,000 samples per second (less is too noisy). That would make an uncompressed file size of 40kbytes per SECOND!
That's why most WAV files are very large for only a few seconds of low quality sound, and MIDIs are (normally) fairly small (~10K for several minutes of music but this varies ENORMOUSLY) with music that is only limited in quality by
a) the composer
b) the sound card.
That's why everyone should buy good sound cards! ;-)
Hope that partially explains your Newsgroup posting, as well.

Regards,

Andrew

Re: Instrument Choices

Reply #6 –
Thankyou all, and yes, Andrew your comments on file size have cleared that up. Unfortunately, amongst most people I know, the sound card is the last thing on there list. Oh, by the way, nice site Andrew - If you and your ensembles ever burn a CD, post the news. :).

Re: Instrument Choices

Reply #7 –
At the risk of being redundant, even a cheap SBPro turns out terrific sounds when you play games. Get someone to write a decent driver for us, and the sound should be game quality. What do they do, set up a virtual disk? Just a custom driver? It's done all the time, and the sound is great. Or am I missing something here? Any gamer/programmers out there?
I've always said, hire a 14 year old programmer or two, and they'll solve the problem (If if relates to games or sounds, they'll get it done). Offer a prize.
Sorry about my attitude, but I think the approach is always backwards on these issues. Maybe I'm wrong. At least it's a creative approach, yes?

Re: Instrument Choices

Reply #8 –
Most of the really great music you get from games comes
from the programmers using WAV files which are digitized
versions of recorded music. This simply doesn't work
with a compostiion program such as NoteWorthy. You are
left with few options. Your sound card can either use
FM synthesis (ugh!) or a MIDI output to a MIDI instrument
if it is a non-wavetable card. For MIDI output to sound
good, it has to use some form of a Wavetable "look-up".
What this does is select the desired instrument, go to the
table, find the instrument's patch, select the pitch, and
play it. If your card has a wavetable ROM, this is done in
hardware and all you have to do is set it up in Control Panel.
If you don't have the ROM (SB16 equiv.), you have to do it
by loading a software look-up table. This is what Wingroove
does. It simulates the wavetable lookup in RAM. Granted,
it is no perfect substitute for the hardware, but it has the
virtue of being cheap. Take a look at my web music page:
www.cst.net/~rpineau/musicpg.htm
There is a subpage I put there where you can test your card
and hopefully make the right adjustments.