[Coco] 83,797 MIDI Files..........

[Michael Brant]

Glen that seems to be a fun project.  I am looking forward to seeing it.

On Nov 9, 2017 9:21 PM, "Glen Hewlett" <glen.hewlett at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Yes Allen you get it exactly!
>
> My converter started out as a command line utility but then I realized
> that the user is going to need more control over which tracks to select for
> the song.  So it currently displays all the tracks that have music data and
> shows them on screen, similar to how GarageBand shows the tracks. Then for
> each track you can select which voice you want to use or not use for the
> conversion.
>
> Once you’ve picked the tracks you want and what voices you want to use for
> those tracks you hit the space bar and the program asks which output format
> you want (one of the three I mentioned earlier) and then it will generate
> the music in a format that the CoCo can play back.
>
> As per Bill's comments, I’ve been testing my converter with many MIDI
> files already and many of them can be converted into something enjoyable to
> listen to on the CoCo. These sound devices aren’t made for replicating an
> orchestra but they can add some nice simple music to the CoCo.  Using MIDI
> format we can hopefully inspire some musicians to write music and have fun
> playing that music on their CoCo.
>
> I can see it is possible for the CoCo to do the conversion directly of an
> entire midi file with tons of multi note instruments including drums and
> playing it all back with all the voices!
>
> This is how I see it working… You would need to have all the instrument
> samples in RAM on a 512k CoCo 3 loaded from the CoCoSDC.  Then read the
> MIDI file off the SD card in Logical Sector mode as a regular file stored
> on the SD card in the CoCoSDC (just like Ed Snider’s CoCoSDC video and
> audio player reads files off the SD card directly, not files inside a .DSK
> image) go through the midi data and mix all the notes from all the
> instruments that are playing at that moment in time and output the mixed
> samples as the song data to the CoCoSDC.  Then continue along processing
> the entire MIDI file into multiple .DSK images (if it’s a very long song).
> Then you simply playback your converted song that was created on the .DSK
> images as samples of data through the CoCo DAC.
>
> This would take a ton of work to write including some heavy duty math
> routines to get the mixing of all those instruments.  But this technique
> would allow for almost any amount of musical notes to be played at one
> time.  I’m not saying I’m going to write such a program, it’s just a method
> I think that would work and something I thought would be incredible to see
> the CoCo do!
>
> Cheers,
> Glen
>
> > On Nov 9, 2017, at 5:07 PM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Nov 9, 2017, at 3:02 PM, Glen Hewlett <glen.hewlett at sympatico.ca>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I’m currently working on a MIDI converter that will take both MIDI
> format 0 and a format 1 and convert them to music data that can be played
> back on the CoCo using either of these methods:
> >
> > I *LOVE* this idea, and here’s why ...
> >
> > While, as Bill pointed out, it’s not useful for playing a modern big
> MIDI file, it is a GREAT way to create music for CoCo projects. I can
> create music in GarageBand on my Mac, using a few tracks, and export that
> to a MIDI file that could then be data for the CoCo. Excellent.
> >
> > (The stuff I am working with John Strong on is also using MIDI as the
> format for music to feed the sound chip.)
> >
> > My first MIDI synthesizer, a Casio CZ-101, could only play 4 notes at a
> time (8 at lesser quality). There were a ton of MIDI files that targeted it
> back in the day, so there’s likely still a ton of things out there for the
> early years of much-more-limited MIDI devices, too.
> >
> >               — A
> >
> >
> >
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