Re: MID <--> SEQ Converter...

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Tony Cianfaglione <ab616@chebucto.ns.ca> wrote:

>Is there a midi to sequence converter to convert the aforementioned midi
>files (common all over the internet) to sequence file format for use with
>SynthLab (not so common)?

MIDISurgeon works pretty well.  It was published in GS Plus magazine
some time ago.  The other user posted a link to a file containing it.
I hope someone asked the author to release it rather than just put it
on some site.  (Ok, enough of that, no need to start a whole can of
worms.)

The program takes a bit of skill to use though and if you don't use it
properly (ie. you just run a MIDI through it on automatic) the result
will sound terrible.  On the other hand, if you have the author's full
documentation as in GS Plus magazine, you can do a good job in
translation.

Without getting too much into the intricacies of MIDI surgery, you
have to learn how to merge tracks because the MIDI format has a
lot more of them than synthLAB.  I did quite a bit of these some
years ago and even the author of MIDISurgeon liked them.  You
can find my conversions either on the ground ftp server or archives
of comp.binaries.apple2 (if such archives exist).  You might also
have to use the author's wave and instrument editing program to
create customized waves and instrument banks to suit particular
MIDI translations.

Some users also misuse MIDISurgeon by throwing out too much
MIDI information thinking synthLAB has too few tracks.  Again,
this is not the way to go.  The combine tracks feature is the
most powerful, merging the MIDI data into synthLAB format
rather than throwing the data out.  To me, my own translations
sounded much better than most other translations for this very
reason.

It has been some time since I last used MIDISurgeon.  As
soon as I get my IIGS back up and running, I'll do more
translations.