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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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