Herbert Chong

i don't mind getting a hardware programmable controller if that's the most flexible solution. it's been 30 years and tons of things have changed since i was active doing this kind of thing. i didn't have to worry about virtual instruments not having enough controls. the rack was big and heavy but all the sound modules had ways to configure realtime controllers to different parameters by entering numbers. the other thing i can do because i'm actually decent at programming CAL scripts is to write one to change or swap controller numbers. it's not ideal but if an incoming MIDI file is full of controllers already sometimes that conceptually is easier. the vast majority are CC1 or CC11 and it turns out about half my virtual instruments want CC11 to control dynamics and the other half want CC1. Herb...

i mostly do orchestration which means i work on other people's MIDI files and mix to a final audio track. it's just for fun and these are mostly downloaded MIDI files. I've run into a problem with my virtual instruments that don't have a control panel where i just enter the CC numbers to be used to control certain aspects of the instrument, say vibrato. my most frequent problem is that the incoming MIDI file expects to use Controller 11 for one thing and Controller 1 for another exactly opposite to the default for the virtual instrument. the only way out is to Learn because the specific software doesn't have direct controller configuration entry. my digital piano doesn't have anything other than pedals and the wind controller only lets me choose between CC2 and CC11 for controller outputs. inputting a long stream of controllers into a Cakewalk track and playing it seems to not work because Cakewalk is outputting a volume controller as it starts playback. all my virtual instruments in learn mode are learning CC7. i am thinking i need to get a hardware controller device of some kind where i can program it with an arbitrary CC number. then i can just have the instrument configured on a track, put it into Learn mode, and cause the device to send whichever CC number i want. am i missing something in Cakewalk that lets me have an instrument in Learn mode and play a track full of CC events? otherwise, what's a good programmable controller i can use for this. i'm never going to perform with it. Herb...

already have one such tool. that's what did the final mix conversion to dry vocals and MIDI. that mostly works but i'm missing the guitar riffs which are just as important. i decided for now i am just going to keep the final mix and learn more before diving deeper. Herb...

it's livable. all those years ago i had a close friend who was an opera trained coloratura soprano singer who enjoyed working with me creating demos for local songwriters. i did it for fun and the learning experience. she liked trying these new songs, and the song writer got way better than usual vocals. my stack of sound modules worked together with that. it's a couple of these demo songs that i want to revive by reorchestrating from MIDI tone generators to virtual instruments. i have the MIDI sequences in the WRK files but aside from the lead and accompanying vocal tracks i recorded, i had a friend from the Berklee College of Music occasionally contribute a guitar riff or two. i briefly searched and yup those song writers from 30 years ago were aspiring songwriters then and are still aspiring song writers today. the guitar riff guy now works for Kurzweil. when i extracted the dry vocals the stem program gave me the option of creating a MIDI file so in theory i could replace the vocal WAVE with a virtual instrument and at least get the melody across. if it becomes too complicated i'll just live on memories and the final mix digital files i captured. Herb...

drives are long gone though i did clone drives and folders from computer to computer for a long time, probably through to early Windows XP days. somewhere along the way i stopped installing Cakewalk when i built new computers because i had to put my MIDI gear into the storage locker. that would have been when those files were lost. i have a WAVE file of the final mix for the most important set of MIDI files. i know i can pull the vocals from them using a stem extractor and i have done that but there are a couple of guitar riffs that seem like they would take a lot of work to isolate given the tools i have come across so far. also working with the original vocal WAVE files would have been nice though the extracted dry vocals are decent. Herb...

The current Cakewalk by Bandlab opens the attached file no problem but when I look at the WAVE data it's totally flat - as in zero sound volume. I'm pretty sure the actual WAVE data is still in the WRK file but since I created the file about 30 years ago, it would take a great deal of work to find and load Cakewalk Pro Audio 5 or 6 that I used to create the file and double check to be sure the WAVE data is there and intact. Given the song I am pretty sure you can guess what the WAVE file contains. This happens to be an example file from that long ago that has audio data embedded. I have a couple of other files with larger and more embedded audio clips that all look the same when opened in Cakewalk. These other ones are more important to me because they contain a couple of original and unreleased songs I was working on for a friend including the vocal track. It would be great to figure out how to open the WRK file and hear the embedded audio as when I saved them. There is a possibility I saved the Cakewalk Pro Audio retail box from that long ago that I could install into a Win 95 or Win 3.11 virtual machine (I have these available to run inside Oracle VirtualBox) but that means doing a deep dive into my storage locker's software boxes to see if I can find that version of Cakewalk. I'm hoping to avoid that. Herb.... WIPEOUT.WRK

true but that leaves hundreds and hundreds still worth working on and the really interesting ones to me are the classical pieces. things like the entire Beethoven symphony collection is available as fairly high quality MIDI files. and yes i have been collecting music -1 files for a long time. a fair number of what i have are clearly better than what's on BitMidi and Midis101. i came across PSR Tutorials and if that's any indication lounge music however well performed is still lounge music but there are some gems in there. too bad they require a Yamaha XG device to work properly and i am trying to stop using mine because its really old. the goal to me was always to develop an interesting and eclectic collection of music where i can replace one or more tracks with something i can play with my WX5 and a good physical modelling synth. i have the VL70-m from when it was new but i am moving to virtual physical modelling instruments. after all is said and done messing around and having fun is more important than performing for anyone else but me. Herb...

i tried Google song identification and it mostly didn't recognize anything. i thought Shazam was paid. i didn't come across Soundhound. i will check them out more carefully.

given the file name that's a strong possibility. I've got probably a couple thousand or so of these unidentified to me songs collected away. a good chunk are just poor sequences that i'll keep in the deep archives for now but some like this one are worth looking through and tuning to sound their best. my collected MIDI files are highly biased towards popular and well known songs with a small mixture of original compositions. the most difficult to figure out are the classical pieces because there are hundreds of allegros in the classical music repertoire and i'm just not that familiar with some composers so unless it's something I've liked listening to it's just a blank. the next most difficult are the ones that seem to be General MIDI demo released by companies to show off their new tone generators. the early 90s were when a wave of GM devices were just coming out and wavetable synthesis was just becoming mainstream. i was one of the early adopters getting a Roland SC-55 when it shipped. i just put it back into storage last week after verifying that it still works. having said all that, i do know and have identified a few thousand already and moved the best performance sequences to a place to spend time working on. piles of the others are bad performances and i don't care what they are but i am reluctant to just discard them. disk space is cheap and MIDI files are small. modern MIDI file download places thankfully use long file names and give the entire song name. some people creating sequences even fill in the song title and composer along with their name on their MIDI files.

i've been poking through my collection of MIDI files i downloaded in the early 90s (over 6000) and trying to identify some of the more obscure to me songs. i know some are original compositions too but between being a long time ago, no documentation, not being familiar with many genres of music, and 8.3 file names, i really don't know what a good number of these files are supposed to be. for instance this attached General MIDI file seems like it's an arrangement of something successful but trying to play the file and using Google to listen and identify the song doesn't get me anywhere. i have created WAV files and uploaded to some free services and they either come up with nothing or clear nonsense. is there some online service that does decently in identifying songs differently arranged than any of their commercial releases? Herb... M_SALLY.MID

turns out there was a latency problem with one of my MIDI interfaces but eventually i did get it updated. Herb...

i have been hunting all over for something like this. the keywords needed in Google really brought up bizarre things. thanks so much. i also have the Advanced Orchestral ROM on its way to me to fully populate all of the ROM banks. it will be interesting playing with the classic Proteus sounds i liked and have access to them on my current setup. the 1+Orchestral and 2 were my go to synths once i started working on files intended for my own enjoyment. i won't delete anything from the definition but instead will create a new instrument with just my ROMs installed. this way if i get ambitious and purchase a second Proteus 2000 series synth i won't have lost anything. i was getting close though. only needed the MSB for the Advanced Orchestral ROM. i had all the preset definitions. that was pretty easy actually. and the next big quest? how to upgrade the firmware from 1.21 to 2.26. i need to put the 2000 into firmware update mode so i will be searching for that. Herb...

i'm using just the free Cakewalk so i don't know how much different it is from Sonar. what i do know is that i have installed TTS-1 following various instructions and some downloading and i also have Kontakt Player installed. a long time ago when Compuserve MIDI Forum was still a going concernt i mostly downloaded other people's files and looked for the good performances of pieces that i liked and then orchestrated them using my set of synths. looking over my file archive i mostly stopped downloading in 1994. the only hardware from back then i don't intend to sell is my WX11/VL70-m but I've also upgraded from the WX11 to a WX5. what i am settling down with for hardware is a pair of Roland SC-88VL, Yamaha VL70-m/MU-80 combo for some things, and a E-Mu Virtuoso 2000 with its two orchestral ROM and the Protozoa ROM. i probably will break out my Roland M120 mixer at some point but for now i am using a very inexpensive passive mixer because only part of my gear is out of storage. the next interesting problem i am running into right now is looking for an instrument file that defines the specific set of ROM i have inside the Virtuoso 2000. that's another topic will begin if i can't find an answer here. i got it used and it's just the tone generator, the power cable, and the manual. it seems from searching that it should have come with Cakewalk instrument files. i searched the Cakewalk installed emu.ins file and although it has a Virtuoso 2000, it is with the Composer ROM and doesn't include the three ROM that i actually have inside. i suppose i could map the patches i want into User1-4 but that sounds like a very big job. Herb...

that must have been it. i definitely didn't see it when i wrote this but eventually i did create some projects where its visible.

Ok, I tried to do step 1 but I don't see Clock as a Project preference. I wonder if the free version of Cakewalk has this? I didn't pay for my Cakewalk, just downloaded the free version and registered. For step 2 I might have known that the duration on a percussion track doesn't affect anything but it's long since vanished from my memory. Eyeballing the event list with a reminder of what to look for, I manually edited the few dozens events with really screwy durations. I've so far been doing minimal tinkering with these General MIDI files I've downloaded but I'm actually targeting either the TT1 that I found and configured for Cakewalk or my Roland SC-88VL that I recently got, or the Roland SC-55 that I bought many years ago. I understand that the TT1 is a superset of both my Roland hardware synths but there's a certain nostalgia playing with the boxes and getting them to work. I've got maybe a thousand MIDI files to sift through and spend time working on the ones where a) I can mute the lead track where I can play it using one of my wind controllers and my WX5/VL70-m combination, or b) play with it a lot to create something more like James Last/Dick Bakker sound. I want to add a MOTU Symphonic Instrument to my instruments to do b. Call me a modern day lounge lizard 8-). I think this MIDI file of Toto's "Africa" is something I can try a. Herb...