General MIDI

doctorzeus · Post by **doctorzeus** » Thu Jun 13, 2002 9:19 pm

Hello all,

As a Pulsar user, I am wondering if there is any way I can write a song for General MIDI. As of now, the only sound card in my machine is a Pulsar 3, which as far as I know has no General MIDI capabilities. Also, it should be noted that I also use Logic 5.1, so if anyone knows of a General MIDI workaround for that, I'd love to hear about it.

THANKS!!

--doron

junklight · Post by **junklight** » Fri Jun 14, 2002 2:12 am

IF you really want to go down the evil general midi route (spit spit) then get a decent GM Soundfont and pop it in the STS (there are a few about - use google). There are actually some quite good ones around - but remember that most of the ones people actually listen to (I presume that you need to write a .mid file for distribution here) are complete sh*te.. In fact you would be better off buying a very cheap soundcard with general midi and writing for that - the pulsar sounds too good compared to anything your target audience will have.

Oh - I am sure both Roland and Yamaha have cheap software GM players

mark

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junklight - dark experimental electronics
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<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: junklight on 2002-06-14 03:12 ]</font>

Gregory · Post by **Gregory** » Fri Jun 14, 2002 6:58 am

Actually Edirol.com, a Division of Roland, has two VST instruments that work in Logic that are actually quite good (I didn't say spectacular, just good). Download the demos. One of them is a 16 channel General MIDI specced virtual module. Be warned though, they take a large bite out of your processor power and need you to assign lots of additional RAM to Logic or whatever host you have.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Fri Jun 14, 2002 2:41 pm

you could (with some effort) collect soundfonts and pick out the best ones to build your own special set.
But the tuning inside the set is a lot of work too.
A versatile and cheap hardware solution would be the old Yamaha DB50XG piggyback.
The 'waveblaster connector', where it's usually plugged upon, is just a powersupply(5,+12,-12V), a stereo-out and a midi-in.
There isn't even a soundcard required if you supply these, you can use it like any midi expander.
What makes the DB50 interesting (besides perfect GM and XG implementation) is that you can turn it into a Yamaha QS300 by a 20 bucks shareware (XG-Gold).

It's worth checking out, the thingie is generally underestimated. Nice layers together with Pulsar.

cheers, Tom