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-
- GUS Musician's Digest Thu, 18 Nov 93 3:39 Volume 2: Issue 18
-
- Today's Topics:
- Linear Volume
- midi FAQ
- MOD creation
- New windows driver beta
- pitch bend
- Portamento and Pitch Bend
- Slur/Tongue
- slurs
- windows driver opinion
-
- 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.
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 03:22:18 -0500 (EST)
- From: gt5543b@prism.gatech.edu (Antonio C. Rodriguez)
- Subject: Linear Volume
-
- I'm not such a techie on the subject, so could someone fill me in on what
- is Linear Volume compared to (..what was it called?..) Logarithmic.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Wed, 17 Nov 93 17:24:48 GMT
- From: james@maths.exeter.ac.uk
- Subject: midi FAQ
-
- The gus midi faq wont be posted now.
-
- There were several problems with it which I was working on resolving- and doing
- okay. However more than one person had reservations about the structure, and
- given that the new drivers will need a whole lot of new stuff to be written
- about them Im putting it all on hold until the info about the new drivers is
- sorted.
-
- If you want a copy of the drivers they are in
- gus0035.zip on pub/pc/ultrasound/submit at 128.100.160.36
- I had to frig about with the ultrasnd.ini file to make them work on my D:
- drive and the old patch manager doesnt work with them, so beware...
- --
- James Andrews, Computer Development Officer, Exeter University Maths Dept
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: 17 Nov 93 10:22:41 EST
- From: "Eric Bell, Howling Dog Systems" <71333.2166@CompuServe.COM>
- Subject: MOD creation
-
- I've recently gotten into listing to MOD files. I have the Sound Site CD ROM
- with over 1300 MOD files on it, plus 669, MED and other files (some of which I
- havent figured out how to play yet).
-
- Some of these are just terrific, and I've decided I want to learn more about
- MODs and try to create some.
-
- First off, what's the best program for MOD creation?
-
- Second, how do you get samples into a MOD file?
-
- Third, is there an easy way to extract samples from MOD files, and turn them
- into UltraSound patches, or even .WAV files? It seems like there would be
- piles of patches there if this process was simple.
-
- Eric
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Thu, 18 Nov 93 11:25:41 +0100
- From: f93-maj@nada.kth.se
- Subject: New windows driver beta
-
- Hi, gussers!
-
- The new linear volume is great, but should have been there from the beginning
- since linear volume is Very Much the standard (someone asked...) :-)
-
- Does anyone know how this (long awaited) bank switching feature actually works?
- You can type in severan [Melodic Patches n] where n is bank number in the
- Ultrasnd.Ini but how do you activate them?
- I thought it would have been implemented in the Roland GS-style, i.e.
- * Control change 0: Bank
- * Program change: Patch
- but having tried it in CakeWalk I got no response whatsoever to Ctrl-Ch 0.
- Maybe that
- 's (yet another) problem with CakeWalk and Patch-Caching or is it done in some
- other way (SysEX, or what?), the updated mixer app as a menuitem that reports
- active drum and melodic banks wich would imply that yopu can only change
- banks globaly and not local for each midi-channel (and that wasn't what I wanted).
-
- In a previous msg, I had some thought about wheter a 'real-time' patch-editor
- would be possible in Windows, since then I've figured out that the Roland GS
- standard has something called real-time parameter selection that defines a
- standard-way for modying ASR-envelopes and such, that might be a good way...
-
- As far as I know there's no royalty for adherring to the GS-standard (or is there) so just let's hope the Gravis will implement it!
-
- Cuddle your GUS!
-
- /FMJ
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: 17 Nov 93 10:22:32 EST
- From: "Eric Bell, Howling Dog Systems" <71333.2166@CompuServe.COM>
- Subject: pitch bend
-
- >to go from -1 semitone to +1 semitone in units from 0 to 8191. It would be
- > nice if GUS would have a 'settable' pitchbend sensitivity
-
- It does! It's settable via the standard RPN commands for PBS. (pitch bend
- sensitivity).
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1993 11:00:13 GMT
- From: Clarke Brunt <CLARKE@lsl.co.uk>
- Subject: Re: Portamento and Pitch Bend
-
- >>By the way, the GUS doesn't support portamento, either. (Moreover, it
- >>only has one tone pitch bends - as far as I know, anyway).
-
- >The older I get, the worse my ears get: I could have sworn that several
- >of Chris' mids had pitch bends greater than two semitones!
-
- I expect that's due to Chris doing something damn clever! Must involve
- starting off another note when you reach the bend limit of the previous
- one. I remember Chris once posting some suggested techniques for
- getting fancy effects.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Wed, 17 Nov 93 09:03:33 EST
- From: "Burns Fisher, VMS Engineering 17-Nov-1993 0905" <fisher@skylab.enet.dec.com>
- Subject: Slur/Tongue
-
- >>Just to straighten things up: portamento has nothing to do with tonguing
- >>woodwind instruments (or `slurred notes' for that matter). Slurring
- >>refers to the type of noise (in particular the sound of the attack) not the
- >>pitch of the noise.
- >
- >Dunno about this 'tonguing' thing (although I SHOULD: I've been a Herbie
- >Mann fan for about thirty years..:-) but isn't a 'slur' a half-tone slide
- >up to or down to the desired note on attack?
-
- No, most certainly not. On a clarinet, a slur simply means "do not tongue". It
- is BADness to hear other notes between the two notes that you are slurring
- between. If the music wants you to slide from one note to another they will put
- a glissando mark or some such. With instruments like a slide trombone it is
- somewhat difficult to slur without sliding (but surprisingly not impossible).
- However, not sliding is the ideal.
-
- One might be able to use pitch bend, to accomplish this within the range of bend
- available on the synth. You would want to send it a single pitch bend command
- to switch up the the higher/lower note; not a series of bends. This would be a
- real pain to do for any significant number of notes, though. You could not
- easily read what was being played when looking at the sequencer!
-
- I don't think portamento fills the bills. Portamento, in my understanding, is
- explicitly a slide under the control of the synth. I.e., you give it A B, and
- it plays A--slide-->B.
-
- I still think we need either two patches, or a clever driver that can skip the
- initial transient if notes are close together. (Of course, with this, then you
- can't play tongued legato. Sigh.)
-
-
- >***********************************************************************
- >Lee DeRaud Will program Windows for food.
-
- Burns
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1993 09:36 -0500
- From: WADLEIGH@PROCESS.COM
- Subject: Re: slurs
-
- Slurs are one of those acoustical instrument effects
- that just aren't handled too well on a synth basis. It
- is actually a change in the attack profile of the
- instrument. There's a range from slurred, through
- normal tonguing to stacatto/accented. The difference is
- that an accented note gets a high attack with a normal
- release. A stacatto note gets both a hard attack and a
- quick release. I don't think you can really do this in
- MIDI unless you actually defined different patch maps
- for the different attack profiles and implemented the
- release velocity.
-
- Incidently, this is exactly why it is a mistake to treat
- note velocity as the primary volume controller. If you
- were to implement a synthetic reed instrument "properly"
- for the best imitation of the acoustic instrument, you
- would use velocity to set the attack profile, release
- velocity to set the release profile, and aftertouch for
- the volume control. Even Casio used aftertouch for
- their DH-100 MIDI saxophone. They didn't build in the
- other controls thay you would need to make it sound like
- a "real" sax (pitch bend with coupled modulation
- changes, etc.) but they did use aftertouch for volume.
-
- ------------------------------
-
- Date: Thu, 18 Nov 93 0:09:03 EST
- From: dmcintyr@muselab.ac.runet.edu
- Subject: windows driver opinion
-
- OK, I'll throw in my opinion of the new drivers...
-
- I didn't notice anything particularly wrong with the MIDI implementation,
- but I didn't get much of a chance to play with it.
-
- One complaint is that due to space limitations I have of course killed off
- all the original un-vmapped MIDI files... (*sigh*) ..and as such I would
- like to have control over liner/log volume from the mixer instead of
- having to go into the control panel driver setup.
-
- Also a sysex command for the GUS to switch between volume modes might be
- nice, as I could then just imbed the message in all... Oh hell, that's
- right.. You can only do that with .WRK files anyway. Ikxsne that idea..
-
- My other bitch is a pretty severe one. I never had any trouble before
- with the .WAV player. Now, instead of a smooth play I get:
-
- *KERPOP!!*[.wav plays OK]*KER-DA-DA-CHUNK!!!!*
-
- So it seems like they forgot to lower the volume before starting and after
- finishing.
-
- And of course the new Mega-Em is wonderful... X-Wing is finally as it
- should be! Too bad I solved it already... :( Time to replay all my
- games AGAIN...
- --Michael-- << dmcintyr@muselab.ac.runet.edu >>
-
- ------------------------------
-
- End of GUS Musician's Digest V2 #18
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