[OT] midi - was Re: [CentOS] Forum Decorum: a reminder seems appropriate.

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 22:42 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
> > On Wed, 2006-03-29 at 22:29 +0100, Peter Farrow wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> Snip
> >>
> >> Have you heard the music on your website recently........
> >>     
> > ----
> > no - and I forgot the login to my webhost years ago and haven't been
> > able to change a thing on the website - not to mention that I don't
> > think I've had a midi player on my linux system for quite some time...
> >
> > Working? Not working?
> >
> >   
> unfortunately its working....
> 
> :-)
----
depends if you are a Genesis fan...if you are, they are interesting
though there are one or two songs that can sound cheesy on some poorly
instrumented midi systems, I recall them all to be superbly arranged and
very lightweight considering that they are midi - and let me assure you,
they take a lot of time to create. The piano work on Fifth of Firth was
absolutely superb.

In fact - a funny story about those particular midi files. One day, I
picked up a real cheap midi keyboard. I got a cheap midi interface and
downloaded a few midi songs from the internet (still using dial-up) and
dumped one to the keyboard. It sounded like crap. Figured out that my
cheapo midi keyboard didn't support general midi so I had to manually
assign the instruments to the tracks.

Downloaded one of these songs and my keyboard went into "OVERLOAD" - I
cracked up. Decided to actually buy a decent keyboard. Went to expensive
store in town, they had me looking at Yamaha keyboards. Went to cheap
store in town, they directed me to same Yamaha keyboard, $100 less. I
asked if I could bring in a midi file and dump it to keyboard to see how
it sounded - they said sure.

I brought back 2 floppy discs...same midi songs, 1 on Macintosh format,
1 on Windows format floppy (I didn't know - they didn't know either).
Hooked up midi floppy disk drive, they didn't know how to make it work.
That was up my alley, so I got it to read the disk (Windows) and dumped
the first song to the keyboard...sounded good. Dumped the Fifth of Firth
song (same one on my Internet page) on the keyboard...after about 2
minutes, there was a crowd around the keyboard...Dumped the final song,
the acid test...Cinema Show (I believe the midi is one of the random
songs played on my web site) and the song started to play - now everyone
in the entire store is over at the keyboard wondering who is playing
this...Needless to say, I bought the keyboard and the store salesman
asked if he could keep the disk.

The Cinema Show midi was a collaboration of like 6 different artists and
took months to do - it's like a 15 minute song. From my keyboard, it's
awesome...I take out the guitar track, plug in my guitar and I am a rock
band  ;-)  I was even able to generate the sheet music from the midi
file...technology can be an incredible thing.

I'm glad it's still working - sorry it isn't your cup of tea.

Craig