Getting Started With Midi Sequencing

[brandondrury]

Check out my member's only guide:

Getting Started With Midi Sequencing

and

MIDI Troubleshooting 101

Brandon

[DT Chris]

Very nice. Good job.

[brandondrury]

I'm glad you like it!

Brandon

[richiebee]

Your section Virtual Instruments vs Samples is inaccurate. A software sampler IS a VI. A better comparison could be made between samples vs synthesis where a sampler uses audio segments of real instruments, whereas a synthesizer mathematically models an instrument to replicate a sound. A synthesizer may use any number of different synthesis models - subtractive, additive, FM, physical modeling are just a few. What is important is the difference in demands on your computer and the accuracy of the result. A sampler requires more memory to allow the audio segments to play back on demand... the more memory you have, the larger sample collection you can use. A synthesizer works mathematically, so requires more processing power than memory. Generally, even the raw waves used in synthesis are not generated by samples.

As to accuracy of sound, generally sound types will be more suited to one type of generation than the other - acoustic pianos tend to sound better sampled, synth emulations tend to be better synthesized/modeled. This often comes down to the organic nature of the instrument being replicated. The more organic the original, the larger the sample required to emulate it. One of the things that is hard to do with samples is accurately crossfade changes. Take a hammond organ. If samples were used, it would be really hard to emulate the ramp up and ramp down of the leslie speaker. Since a real hammond organ uses tone wheels to generate its sound and these are pretty easy to replicate through physical modeling, a synthesized hammond actually sounds better than a sampled one. Samplers are becoming more and more complex, and the line between sampling and synthesis is being blurred. You could use for example, samples for the tone wheel generation, and synthesis to model the leslie speaker. This is of course just one example.

I know I tend to be harsh on typos and stuff (thanks for pointing out mine - KVM/KVR!), but you could probably do to read your article closely and fix a few words there... not just typos, but the wrong words.

Rich

[brandondrury]

Your section Virtual Instruments vs Samples is inaccurate. A software sampler IS a VI.

This is a bad habit that I let myself get into. I realize that anything that falls under the F11 menu in Cubase SX3 is a virtual instrument. Over time, my brain sort of blurred the meaning of virtual instrument to refer to synths and not to samples...for whatever reason.

Thanks for pointing out my flaw in vocabulary. I've now fixed it.

[philips107]

Hello All Iam Hear To Learn

[sicksgun]

hey,
I hate to be "that guy" but i am new at this blogging/forums kinda deal. I am trying to figure out what software to use on a computer for recording, I intend to use MIDI to plug in but would like to get some advice please shower me with some advice. I respect opinions very much...i have a computer with 75GB hard drive and I believe a 512 ram...hold on let me check..sorry I lied to you....1.50GHz and 960 GB of RAM (AMD sempron), please help me find out what to use...
thank you for your time and help....

[richiebee]

Are you expecting to use internal virtual instruments or external midi devices (like ROMplers, samplers, synthesizers etc...)?

[sicksgun]

we wanted to plug in and play, then edit with the computer.

[sicksgun]

we would like to keep all things open though. so if we decided to sample something, we could.

[richiebee]

Well, in my opinion you need to decide to go one way or the other. Both ways require a fairly significant investment so it doesn't make sense to go both ways - you'll end up spending much more money, or doing without.

If you go with internal sounds (and I would... it makes life so much easier), you'll need a computer upgrade to do any signficiant amount of work without constantly freezing tracks to give you back processor overhead or RAM. Then in terms of software, you want a good DAW (like Cubase), a good sampler (Kontakt), a good few libraries, and possibly some synth plugins (maybe Reaktor or Absynth or one of the billions of others out there).
What style of music do you do?

[sicksgun]

we play punk, a little ska and some rockabilly kinda style.

[richiebee]

So it seems like external synths might do you then, and then use the editing capabilities of your DAW. Unless I'm missing something, you don't actually have a need for a sampler. Do you have a full band, or are you making up for something missing - like drum machine instead of a drummer or whatever...

[sicksgun]

it is just two of us, I am the drummer and I also play some guitar and some vocals. he plays most all of the guitar on other songs and plays bass, it is like musical chairs a little. we would not mind being able to sample maybe some speeches or weird random stuff, but we don't need any instruments.

[mmaduonyeuwa]

Hello, everyone. Today is my first day on this forum. This is a totally new experience for me so be nice to me, please. Thanks.
I came here hoping that someone would help me solve a problem that I have with one of my PCs. Let me say that I have two PCs and that I use the same MIDI software on both. On the first computer there is absolutely no conflict. Yet the second PC freezes for an instant as I begin sequencing. Could this be a timing issue or what? I hope that someone out there will be able to help me. Thank you very much.

mmaduonyeuwa.