The History Of Midi Electronic Home
Studio Recording
By Bob Miles
For electronic musicians, 1982 was the Year Zero – that was
the
year that MIDI
first came on the market. It was designed as
freeware – it was not patented, and was intended as a
universal
standard usable by any brand, so that
MIDI could be used in a
studio incorporating components or devices from many
different
manufacturers. The first of these was called
MIDI 1.0, of
course. Soon after that, musical instruments with MIDI
jacks
started appearing.
One of the early problems was that the
MIDI messages that
instructed the different instruments which sounds to play
identified these sounds only by number (“play patch #16”),
and
“patch #16” might refer to different sounds on instruments
made
by different manufacturers. Since a MIDI
studio is composed of
different electronic instruments strung together in a line
over
cables, if the instruments and devices were made by
different
manufacturers, a musician might have gotten a drum sound
when he
intended a flute sound. What the electro-universe needed was
a
“patch-mapping” standard – a standardized correlation
between
patch numbers and the sounds that these numbers represented.
Keep in mind also the problem that the musician would have
when
recording a song. Unlike WAVE files, a
MIDI file does not record
the actual music itself – it records only the electronic
MIDI
commands that are delivered to each instrument, like “Play
Parch
#16, “Adjust Volume to [X] Level”, and so on.. So even if he
used all of the same brand equipment to produce his
masterpiece,
if he tried to play it back on another brand of equipment
the
sound would be different, because the command “play patch
#17”
would play a different sound on one brand of equipment than
another. So if he took his composition and played it on
somebody
else’s MIDI sound module, his beautiful piano solo
might become
a harpsichord solo. Bummer, dude. In order to correct the
problem he would have to go back into his recorded
MIDI file and
change the commands to harmonize them with the other sound
module’s “patch mapping” (unless he miraculously discovered
that
the harpsichord solo sounded better anyway!).
In response to this problem, the General
MIDI (GM) patch bank
was created, standardizing the correlation between Program
Change numbers and sounds for 128 MIDI patches
(instruments).
Because of this, there are only minor variations in the
sounds
created on different sound banks for these 128 patches.
About the Author: “MIDI
Software Guide” at
http://midisoftwareguide.blogspot.com offers readers
comprehensive information about MIDI based home recording
software. See also
http://midisoftwareguide.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-set-up-one-man-band-effect-with.html.
Source: http://www.isnare.com
|
|
Everything You Need To Know
(Plus What You Don't) About Ringtones
By Gabriel Adams
If you've browsed the internet at all, you've likely seen
many
advertisements for ringtones.
Some of them are free, some are
not. Of course, they are ringtones
for your mobile phone. Other
phones just use plain ringtones,
and are usually not
customizable.
Mobile phone manufacturers originally designed mobile phones
with customizable ringtones so that you could easily
tell if if
it was your phone ringing when you're with a group of
people.
Things change though, and mobile phone ringtones are
now much
more than a convenience – they are an art form, even a
fashion
statement (“I'm cooler than you 'cause my
ringtone is cooler
than yours...”).
Mobile phone ringtones
come in three basic varieties:
Monotone: Most monotone ringtones
are something akin to your
plain old ring that you might find on a touch tone phone. Or
perhaps they are a beep, beep, beep. Either way, these are
your
Plain Jane ring tones.
Polyphonic: These ringtones
use multiple tones to create
melodies. Polyphonic, of course, just means “many sounds”.
Polyphonic ringtones are
usually MIDI files.
MIDI files are not
actual audio files. Instead a MIDI
file is a set of instructions
that tell the player (in this case your phone) what
instrument
sounds to play and when. Polyphonic
ringtones are a great
upgrade on standard ringtones,
but they still don't really sound
like a real audio recording.
MP3: These are the Rolls-Royce of
ringtones. They are
actual
MP3 audio files of the original recording. You can usually
purchase and download to your phone MP3
ringtones of your
favorite songs for a couple dollars each. They will sound
nearly
identical to the original recording, just lower quality. The
recordings are also often edited to make them suitable for
use
as a ringtone.
Customized ringtones can
provide you a lot of fun with your
phone – you can make your phone “you” with
ringtones.
About the Author: Check out our
site for ringtones, polyphonic
ringtones and more! http://www.bingoringtones.com/
Source: http://www.isnare.com
|
