Re: Titanic synthlab seq posted to comp.binaries.apple2

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) wrote:

>In article supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer) writes...
>
>>I posted the Titanic movie theme, My Heart Will Go On, to cba2.
>>It sounds great!  It is a synthlab rendition of the theme...
>
>    Just a couple of suggestions: It would be more efficient
>(space wise) if you did not include the instrument bank/wave
>within the archive.

Hey Mitchell, glad ya liked it.  ;-)

I discussed it with Dave Tribby and we came to the conclusion
that it was better to include the bank/wave within the archive
so that anyone who did not have those files could play the
song immediately...he suggested I leave the names the same
so that people could remove duplicate bank/waves and that's
what I did...

>The only time it's necessary is if you
>happen to create a new set of instrument patches or modify
>an existing one, since obviously, no one else would have them.
>Also, I should point out renaming existing banks _without_
>making any changes shouldn't be done (that practice just
>causes confusion when there are duplicate MIDIsynth bank/
>waves circulating).

Titanic uses an unrenamed MIDI.bnk and MIDI.wav as Dave
Tribby requested.  All subsequent songs used the same.

>    Finally, I don't like to usually criticize, but I think 
>you may find the conversion more worthwhile if you reassign 
>the instrument mapping in the sequence. If you just run it
>through MIDISurgeon, your going to get a random assignment
>of instruments to each track (rarely does that ever sound
>good ;).

That sequence was HEAVILY reassigned by swapping a
bunch of channels.  What makes you think I just ran it
through?  ;-)  In fact, it sounds better than the MIDI ver.
played on my Wintel (I have a cheapo FM synth card, the
AD1815/6...if you have $19 American dollars to burn, go
to Surplus Direct and get the card to compare)...

>For example, "Synth-Lead" got assigned the vocals
>of the song, which would probably be my last choice for
>that track.

I liked the way it sounded this config...if you don't, you can
reassign to your heart's content.  I have not got any other
complaints...besides, a very similar instrument got played
on my AD1815/6 so that's what I had to compare...(hmm
...the AD1815/6 instrument sounded NOTHING like vocals
and EVERYTHING like "Synth-Lead" except weaker)...

>(Hmm, speaking of vocals, I once met the
>now-famous woman who sang the Titanic song. Well, that
>is, we rode in the same elevator. :)
>
>Mitchell Spector
>spec@vax2.concordia.ca

Would this woman be native to Quebec?  Did you get her
autograph?  ;-)

You should understand my conversion philosophy...
simplify, simplify, simplify...many MIDI sequences sound
terrible on the AD1815/6 so when I take them to the GS,
I discover they are using a bunch of unnecessary
instruments.  Often, the songs are taken right out of a
piano book and SOMEONE had the bright idea to split
different notes into different instruments...yuck!  What I
usually do is collapse as many channels as possible
into several key instruments, usually keeping the drum/
percussion track.

Some people, I would imagine, might not like this.  I
mean, if someone "complicated" the sequence in the
first place by splitting different notes to different
instruments, obviously some people like it that way.
I do not...

I also have a program on the Wintel that scans sheet
music and converts it to MIDI (which can later be
converted to synthLAB)...naturally, I limit the number
of instruments in these scanned sequences...they
were meant for a single instrument, the piano.