[Coco] Drivewire VHD's

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 2:03 PM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>
> The oly problem with what you are suggesting is that there are quite a few Lyra / Ultimuse files that were created with "oddball" synths. To set up proper filters, one would have to aquire the original manual and midi spec for each synth. You can guess at the instrument by it's name and get pretty good results but some still sound wierd. Also, each manufacturer used it's own code sequences for doing effects (reverb, chorus, tremelo, pitch wheel ect) I would really like to have these collections in GM for my own purposes as I actually use a lot of them in my studio. I do not even use Drivewire to send my Midi data from my Coco, I use the Coco Midi Pak as my "Studio" computer isn't connected to my Coco with Drivewire, only Midi. I have an older computer I use for the drivewire host running Windows Server 2003. That makes it a little easier to run the emulators when I need them as well. It's pretty much dedicated to the Coco disks and emulators. I have a ton of virtual instrumen
>  ts on my "Studio" PC that are amazing in thier reproduction of the real instruments. Some with sample libraries a large as 100 gig, so it gets picky about too many processes running in the background. It's much easier for me to access them in GM format. Don't get me wrong, your work with the Midi implementation of Drivewire has been excellent. I just use GM as a general rule as I have no "real" keys anymore and GM is supported by almost every sound module/keyboard/soundcard made past 1988 or 89? Whenever it was that the MIDI Association decided that all MIDI "players" would support GM.
>
> To give you a good example... If I uploaded all the Lyra / Umuse3 stuff that I sequenced back in the 80s-90s, it was all done on a Kawia MS-710 and a Yamaha PSR-500. None of which there are filters for.

You can create any filter you like, the included are just examples I
made to show how it's done.

>A lot of these files use BOTH keybaords at the same time with program changes, channel hopping, and effects being turned on and off throughout the > music. To set up filters for these would be a little different... I just convert to GM as I know the settings for these keys by heart. I also pretty much know the the settings for most of the keys people were using in the 80s like the Casio CZ-101 and the whole Yamaha PSR series. These were inexspensive keys in the 80s-90 so they were real popular to the Midi hobbiest who didn't want to spend thousands on a keyboard just to play mdi songs on thier Coco. Also Secondcity Software (Ultimuse) and Speech Systems/Rulaford Research (Lyra, CoCoMidi Pro) sold these through Rainbow magazine as well.
>

If you could share this knowledge, either by making new DW filters for
these keyboards, editing the existing ones to be more correct,  or
even as a simple list of "this instrument # should be changed to that
instrument #", then we could really improve the automatic translation.

Failing that, I can just compare the results of your conversion to the
original if that's OK, but seems like doing it the hard way.