Re: Wow, My GS made that noise?????

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article Dave Tribby <tribby@cup.hp.com> writes...

>Mitchell Spector wrote:
>
>>     Still, if you'd like to hear a better sounding piano from within
>> synthLAB (at least better than Apple's 'piano.bnk') go over to this
>> URL and try some samples I just uploaded of Jazz music using my own
>> custom piano patch:
>>
>> ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu/apple2/upload/Nov97/jazzbank.shk
>>
>>     It still sounds pretty awful compared with any modern wavetable
>> cards out there, but you should find it more realistic than what
>> you were listening to before. :)
>
>Mighty glad you put this together, Mitch.  I'm looking forward to
>hearing the results of the download tonight since you always do a
>first-class job.

    There is nothing really unique or new about it, I just combined
some decent instrument patches into one bank (percussion and slap
bass from Ian's "Europe bank", the piano from my "GrandPiano bank", 
trumpet from Apple's "Synth bank", bright wave from your "MIDI bank" 
and squeezed in a bit of the marimba from Apple's "Inst.A bank").

    I was just playing around with different combinations of existing
instruments, though I have thought of maybe taking a shot at creating
a good saxophone or guitar (unfortunately I know they won't fit into
the above bank, unless I removed the piano and drums. The 64K of DOC
RAM really is a major barrier). I figured why should Diversi-Tune be 
the only program that can play jazz music. :)

>Any plans to tinker further with the GrandPiano instrument bank and
>waveforms? It would be great to be able to fully replace Apple's
>piano instrument bank with it.

    I was tinkering around with sampling the piano from my SCC-1,
but it came out a bit too sour for my tastes. I wonder if it would
be possible to sample a low, middle and high piano note across the
keyboard span. As of now, I'm using just a middle sampled note and
if you hit really high or low notes they sound very artificial.

    The GrandPiano bank could use some changes though, I noticed if
I play it at the same time my SCC-1 is playing, the piano sounds out
of tune (Apple's piano does not have that problem). Of course when
playing my Roland SCC-1 I can't help but notice how poor any sound
coming from MIDIsynth is in comparison. ;) 

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca