Apparently-To: john.smith@gravis.com


GUS Musician's Digest       Wed, 6 Apr 94 16:20 PST      Volume 6: Issue   6  

Today's Topics:
                         "The Very Best" ...
                        'Sticking' midi notes
                              Aftertouch
               Better Piano/Elec. Piano patches?  Amps?
                  Cakewalk Patch Caching Bug - Not.
             Multi-MIDI driver & concatenating MID files
                       Patch Manager additions
                 Question about using custom patches

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.

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Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 08:36:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: "George A. Montemayor" <gmontem@eis.calstate.edu>
Subject: Re: "The Very Best" ...

Try out the zip file, AWESOME.ZIP. It contains some pretty good midi 
files. I do believe they are found in the ultrasound mirror sites like 
garbo.uwasa.fi.

Happy hunting...

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 18:57:20 +0100
From: graham_john <graham_john@bt-web.bt.co.uk>
Subject: 'Sticking' midi notes

Help! 
I've just acquired a Roland Juno-106 to hook up to the GUS, which  
sounds great on its own, but when I record and play back via MIDI I get 
some notes missed and some stuck on.  Having done some back reading, I beleive 
it might be due to older synths not being compatible with 'Note-On/Note-Off' as opposed 
to 'Note-On/Note-On with velocity zero'. (I may have that back to front!)
Anyhow, can anyone tell me how to get round the problem, or could I have 
a faulty MIDI interface on the Juno-106? I've tried another synth over 
the same MIDI and that works OK, so I reckon the GUS MIDI port is behaving 
itself. BTW, I'm running Cakewalk Pro 2.0 on a 486DX50, with the 
latest GUS drivers.

Cheers, John

------------------------------

Date: 06 Apr 94 10:30:29 BST
From: John Wexler <wex@festival.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: Aftertouch

My thanks to those who responded to my enquiry about aftertouch.  Your
answers were useful and informative, but WADLEIGH@PROCESS.COM identified the
crucial question which remains unanswered: do the GUS drivers respond to both
kinds of aftertouch?  My observation is that they don't, at least by default.
However, the GUS drivers seem to have some controls which adjust their
sensitivity to other messages - for instance, I can adjust the sensitivity to
pitch bend.  It seems possible, therefore, that there is some control
which will adjust their sensitivity to aftertouch.  Does anybody know
about this?

Why do I want to do this? Example: I use Recording Session to capture a
few bars of performance on a wind controller.  The player uses normal
saxophone style to achieve expression, varying attack and breath
pressure.  While he is playing, he uses a wind synth attached to the
wind controller to "hear" his music, and it sounds fine.  If I play it
back from Recording Session through the wind synth, then of course it
still sounds fine.  But if I play the recorded midi file on the GUS
itself, then all expression is lost; also if I incorporate the recorded
music into something I am composing on the GUS.  The loudness of notes
is determined by their initial attack (velocity), and remains constant
for the length of each note.  Yeugh.  So, I would like to set the GUS
driver to respond to aftertouch, and I would need to set its
"sensitivity to aftertouch" to match that of the wind synth. 

I don't have the same need to handle note aftertouch, but I'm curious to
know whether that could be done.

    John Wexler
    Edinburgh

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 06 Apr 94 07:44:43 -0500
From: "David Grayless" <grayless@shell.com>
Subject: Re: Better Piano/Elec. Piano patches?  Amps?

> Is there a good replacement for the GUS/GM Piano patch(es)?  Patch 0
> doesn't hold together very well at +/- 2 octaves from middle C.
> Sadly, my Casio CT-700 generates a stabler piano sound (or is it my
> amp?).  I'd sacrifice the whole meg of patch space for a really solid
> piano patch.  Any pointers greatly appreciated.

The piano sound of my Yamaha PSR-500 is far superior to the GUS piano also.
The problem could be that a really good piano patch is just too big to
fit in 1 meg along with all the other GM patches.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 05 Apr 1994 10:40:00 +0100
From: edwinvo@dragons.nest.nl (Edwin van Ouwerkerk)
Subject: Cakewalk Patch Caching Bug - Not.

 > From: chrisw@popserver.stanford.edu (Chris Wilkins)
 > Actually, you can just use the Key+ column in the Tracks/Measures window
 > BTW, has anyone else noticed that if you use this to remap percussion
 > patches then 'cache update' or whatever it's called doesn't adjust for

I don't think it's *supposed* to do this. After all, nothing has changed in the
midi-data. The changes you make in the tracks/measures settings are more like a
filter for what CakeWin sends out. If you really want to change the midi-data,
use transpose from the menu.
So I guess it's more a design philosophy than a bug.

I find this way of working quite useful. In the choral music I write the tenor
line is traditionally written an octave higher than it sounds. A key-12 value
accomplishes exactly this.

CU,
   Edwin (edwinvo@dragons.nest.nl)

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 06 Apr 1994 14:19:14 GMT
From: Clarke Brunt <CLARKE@lsl.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Multi-MIDI driver & concatenating MID files

Sorry if these contributions are a bit stale - I've only just read my
mail after the Easter break.

First the Multi-MIDI driver - as someone said, the requirement of
dispatching different channels to different output devices sounded
like a perfect description of MIDI Mapper. Just set your sequencer
output to go to MIDI Mapper (Media Player always does anyway, and
cannot be changed - other programs may for example call this option
'Use MultiMedia drivers' or whatever), then set up MIDI Mapper to
manipulate your devices, channels, patches, keys as required.

Another message said that MIDI Mapper did not support patch caching.
It is my belief that it DOES. It is STILL up to the application to
make the correct calls to MidiOutCache[Drum]Patches, but if it does
so, then I believe that MIDI Mapper will correctly dispatch the
call to the output device drivers. If there is a problem, it could
be because these API calls require that the programmer specify on
which channels the patches are to be used - on the GUS this
doesn't matter i.e. once cached, a patch can be used on any channel,
so the programming here may be sloppy, and always specify channel 1
(say). This could result in MIDI Mapper not dispatching to the
correct device.

And as regards concatenating MIDI files, I concur with Eric -
YOU CAN'T - any more than you might expect to concatenate two
databases, two spreadsheets, two BMPs, or two anythings other than
simple text files. An intelligent program will be required to do this.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 06 Apr 94 10:29:00 MDT
From: Thomas Day <ThomasD@tps.com>
Subject: Patch Manager additions

How do I get the patches I create and others to show up in the Patch 
Manager?
I've saved them to the MIDI directory under the ULTRASND directory, where
the other UltraSound patches are located.  Still no luck.

Also, how do I create my own patch lists?  Patch Manager doesn't have a 
"save"
option, so that can't help.  And if I get the patch list created, is there a 
way to
automatically load my patches in AUTOEXEC.BAT or Windows start up?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Tom Day

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 22:48:47 UNDEFINED
From: aruggeri@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Anthony Ruggeri)
Subject: Re: Question about using custom patches

>From: BlackFunk <black@hacktic.nl>
>Subject: Question about using custom patches

>Greetings, fellow musicians. I am using my dear little GUS as an additional
>synth module to my other stuff and have the following question.
>   How can I use custom patches using MIDIFIER? I tried using windows but 
>   restarting windows everytime really sucks and since I don't use Cakewalk
>   I can't get the bankswitching working. So if there's a solution to my
>   problem I'd be thankful.

You can avoid the problem of restarting Windows by using MIDI Patch Browser 
(MPB).  I have a custom bank set as bank 0, and moved the General MIDI set 
over to 1.  If you switch from bank 0 to bank 1 and then back in MPB, any 
changes in ultrasnd.ini will be read in just as if you had restarted 
windows... apparently MPB can reset the windows ultrasound driver.  It makes 
changing patches on the fly MUCH easier.

Question for any of you who might know this: does the current driver only hold 
one bank at a time?  If it did this would explain how MPB works.  I assume the 
driver needs to access the .ini file whenever it gets the patches for a new 
bank.

Anthony Ruggeri                     \  Return to Jurassic Park would be
aruggeri@phoenix.princeton.edu       \  cool.  Yeah.  Huh, huh huh huh.
Molecular Biology - Princeton Univ.   \  Emu MPS+ + GUS = pretty cool
Weevils are intriguing but irrelevent. \  "What am I doing?!!!"

------------------------------

End of GUS Musician's Digest V6 #6
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