Re: MIDI files on IIgs?

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

In article pubpc1@library.ucla.edu writes...

>Ok, Mitchell, I found the solution to playing up to 32 voices or
>tracks of standard MIDI at once on the GS.  There is a program
>called Music Modifier that converts MIDI to Diversi-Tune format.

    If Music Modifier is that program that runs in text-mode, then
90% of the time you'll find it will simply fail in the converting
process. When it did actually work, the tempo was way off. Music
Modifier is close to worthless if it's what I think it is.

    That isn't the only way to get MIDI into Diversi-Tune though,
you can feed it live-MIDI from another computer of course (actually
that is probably how David Ong Tat-Wee convertered that bunch of Bob
Mace songs a couple of years back). It is also better since you can
make sure drum tracks aren't played by organs or something. ;)

>It converts 32 tracks and the resulting Diversi-Tune file can be
>played, with all 32 tracks, using Diversi-Tune.

    Actually, no. I was just speaking with Bill Basham, apparently
while it was possible to use all 32 oscillators separately in DT,
in most cases you'd have much less available because many of its
built-in "patches" would pair oscillators twice or more. I think
you did get more voices than with MIDIsynth, but not much. It does
cut voices, I know from experience.

    Even so, as I said, Diversi-Tune sounds very synthy. Quite nice
in its own respect, but not a suitable tool for listening to MIDI
files out there (well, maybe solo piano pieces, if you don't mind
the semi-artificial sounding piano). Actually Bill described DT as
sounding like a rich FM-synthesis.

>Although I don't own, Diversi-Tune, I've found a way to trick the
>Diversi-Tune _demo_ program to play any Diversi-Tune file.  :)  It
>turns out that the program is hardwired to play one song.  If you rename
>your converted MIDI file to the same filename as that song, you
>can select it, load it, and play it from the demo.

    Heh, the Music Construction Set Demo disk (included with every
SuperSonic stereo card sold) was in a similar position. Actually,
by patching a few bytes, you got the full-commercial version! I've
seen the same thing today with a few demo PC games actually. :)

    Speaking of Diversi-Tune, jump to http://members.aol.com/divtune
and you can see a Java version of it (that is if you have a PC and a
good sound card, or midiPlug; apparently Macs are too slow to handle
it according to the readme file on the page, but this came as no
surprise ;)

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca