[Coco] General Midi was Drivewire VHD's

[Bill Pierce]

I just got through with a disk set of Lyra songs a few minutes ago and I guess I have to eat my words. Not that I'm wrong in what I was doing but in the time it was taking me. The original author of the music, Cecil Houk I think, didn't bother to change the names of instruments or channel numbers from the default. The only thing changed was the actual program number of the patch. Talk about confusing... then he sends system exclusive messages to the synth making changes that no one else would need or understand without that synth. With no knowledge of the synth ( a Casio of sorts) the only thing that allowed me to redo the instrumentation was that I knew the songs (80s pop) and could pretty much figure out the instrumentation. Now here's the kicker... these songs would not have played on any synth I know of except the original, especially with the SysEx messages going on... they could possibly pull a factory reset on another synth. These were a disk collection that was SOLD for a decent amount of money by Rulaford Research. $15-$25 a disk!!!  They have another set called the >>>Trax<<< collection that `is done a little better... they were getting them from a BBS that specialized in Midi. It goes to show ya... let the musicians make the music LMAO

In what you are saying, the biggest problem is all the different synths that were used... there is no list... because it changes from song to song. The instrument list could say trumpet @patch12, then send a bank change byte sequence later and be playing an accordion. Most disks seem to be by one author or were collected by one person and changed to thier synth. Some of these files have to be gone through completely as both Lyra and Ultimuse have a "byte" function that you can insert anywhere to send midi data between notes... ie... turn the reverb on ect. Some people were using them to send SysEx and bank changes that change the whole synth midway through. Usually there is a function to turn SysEx off so that's not as much a problem as FX changes and such. I was running into these problems with stuff I was getting from Delphi even in the 80s. The closest you will ever come to hearing these songs in thier original format other than finding manuals for the Synth (if they even listed what synth they used) is to "best guess" at the general midi equivilant. Most songs I can do pretty fast... especially if I know them, drums are trickier as NO two keys from the 80s-90s had the same percussion setup. Even the Yamaha PRS series. You would think they'd stick to some format in a series of synths... nope. No two are the same. I used to have charts on the wall around my workstation of all the synths that I came across and could get the instrument / percussion list for. The more exspensive the synth, the longer the list. The Yamaha PSR-500 that I owned was (at the time) the top of the PSR series so it had tons of Sounds, percussion and FX, so I could pretty much match anyone's stuff I downloaded. It was semi-close to GM when GM came out a few years later, so I didn't have to change too much to get the songs to work on GM.
As I said, there is no easy way. If I had all the info needed for any synth I ran across... then I could make a list for that synth and a filter could be written. But finding that info now is hard.Some synths had a community following... kind of like the Coco and you can find sites that have the info. Yamaha actually has a Japanese site that has a manual for almost everything they've ever made. It's just a lot of trouble for something so simple. I do it because I love doing it. I also make my living working with Midi and sound. So it comes natural to change the distorted guitar to #30, the Piano to #00 or #01. I do it all the time.
I will look around and see if I can find anything, but I doubt it'll be much more than the most used synths... the Casio CZ-101, the Yamaha PSR series ect. If I find some lists, I'll send you a chart with the GM equivilants. Me? I'll keep doing what I'm doing because it's fun. And besides... I get to listen to the songs as I work :-)

Big Update coming soon!!
Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3 
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Bill Pierce
ooogalapasooo at aol.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Mon, Apr 16, 2012 10:21 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] General Midi was Drivewire VHD's


On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 9:54 PM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:



 If you could share this knowledge, either by making new DW filters for
 hese keyboards, editing the existing ones to be more correct,  or
 ven as a simple list of "this instrument # should be changed to that
 nstrument #", then we could really improve the automatic translation.
 Failing that, I can just compare the results of your conversion to the
 riginal if that's OK, but seems like doing it the hard way.

 The whole reason General Midi was concieved was cross campatability on all 
idi capable machines. Let's say I download a Ultimuse file composed on >a Casio 
Z-101 from a website, then I use Ulitmuse's "save to Midi" function (it dos 
ave one) then I transfer this file to my PC then to a CD to give to a >friend 
or him to use. Not being into Cocos, Drivewire or Ultimuse... he would know 
othing of our "filters" and the song would sound completely wrong on >his 
achine. Now if the file was in GM to start with... I could play it n ANY Midi 
layer and it would be correct. The only difference would be the quality of 
sounds from machine to machine based on the quality of the soundcard and Midi 
ound engine. But the sounds would be the same. A piano would be a >piano, a 
rumpet, a trumpet and so on.

 As for making filters for drivewire... that would be easy, if I wanted to 
esearch about 19 or 20 vintage synth manuals and wade through the midi spec of
 each and HOPE they have an instrument list (some don't, it's not part of the 
ld Midi spec, another reason GM is standard) then the filter would be the
Ok.. I got the impression you already know what these translations are
upposed to be.  You mention it only takes 5 minutes to swap out the
racks in a song.. wouldn't those same 5 minutes let you make a list
hat could be used to translate every song containing those
nstruments automatically from then on?  Or am I missing something?
As a long time (very amateur) keyboard player, I understand general
IDI, why it exists and how it came to be.  The reason I am interested
n creating filters to translate from the encodings commonly used in
usic of the CoCo era to today's modern general midi spec is that I
ant to listen to the creations of artists from that time period as
ccurately as I can with a reasonable amount of effort.
It is useful to me, and I would assume anyone else interested in
earing this music, to be able to download some random disks full of
mf or ume or whatever files from some random collection of CoCo
tuff, just hit play, and get *reasonable* results.  I understand that
erfection is impossible without having the original synth or some
mulator, but thats OK.
Very few of us are going to just know how to translate sounds from a
articular synth into general midi, and even fewer are going to bother
o do it.   This means that all the content sitting there in those
oCo archives is essentially not accessible.  However, if its just a
atter of playing the thing and picking the right translation out of a
enu, then for me at least it becomes an enjoyable way to spend a few
ours instead of a useless collection of bytes.  There is a lot of
reat stuff created on the CoCo that just isn't easy to explore
ithout such a tool.
So, long story short, any info you have that can be used to improve
he existing profiles or to create new ones would be much appreciated.
The examples I provided cover the most common synths I see used in
oCo stuff (like the yamaha pss480, very strange cheap FM beast that
as quite popular, but good luck guessing what any of those voices
eally sound like! ).   However, like I said these included profiles
re just guesses based on the one or two word description of the voice
n the synth's manual.  They are undoubtedly inaccurate, but they can
sually make things that sound ridiculous sound mostly like music.
'd love to make these translations more accurate and add new
ranslations for other content that people are likely to find in our
ollective archives of CoCo content.
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