I need some help with my MIDI sound!!!

[Emil Landin]

Maybe someone who is into this can answer because it's really important for me...

I'm a musician who creates songs on my computer. Unfortunately my MIDI sound sucks. I use those simple programs which use MIDI as playback... Is there better programs who doesn't use MIDI???

I've some wave-files that other people have sent me where you can hear their MIDI sound... And their sound kick ass! It almost sound like it is recorded with real instruments. My question is: "How can you make your MIDI sound better" Some use Sound Fonts to get a really good sound, but what exactly is Sound Fonts and how do you use it???

Otherwise from that can you use software to make your midi better?

It would be really good if someone know an answer to my provblems! Thanks!!!

/Emil Landin

 

[YaYo]

Well i use VST instruments in Cubase... it samples wavs or whatever in place of the midi notes...

So sometimes it IS real instruments, like in the case of drums, its just whenever a midi bass drum is triggered it knows to play the wav file of a bassdrum instead.

As for sound fonts i believe those are different sets of midi sounds, so your soundcard has to accept soundfonts, and then it uses that bank of sounds instead of the ones on the card. This is something that has to be set up with the card itself, i think.. and then all midi programs wont need any special plugins or setting up. but my soundcards have never supported it so i dont know for sure.

 

[Pancakes]

MIDI is evil

 

[Emil Landin]

Originally posted by YaYo
As for sound fonts i believe those are different sets of midi sounds, so your soundcard has to accept soundfonts, and then it uses that bank of sounds instead of the ones on the card. This is something that has to be set up with the card itself, i think.. and then all midi programs wont need any special plugins or setting up. but my soundcards have never supported it so i dont know for sure.

Well okay, I've heard somewhere that Sound Fonts is hardwarebased but if you have a soundcard that supports it does your MIDI sound get a lot better automatically then? Do you use it in ordinary Midi-Programs but you set "Sound Font-etc" as playback device???

Isn't there anyone who know much about Sound Fonts?

 

[Aborted Fetus]

Here's how it works:

MIDI data is instructions, NOT sound. It's basically telling your computer/sequencer what to play, i.e. which note, its duration, its velocity, etc. etc. Everything about the music except for which sound to play. It's essentially like written music.

A soundfont, on the other hand, is the actual sound that plays the instructions. If your soundfont is a drum sound, your music will be played back sounding like drums. If it's a piano sound, it'll sound like a piano. Going back to the written music analogy, your MIDI file is the written composition, and the instrument you actually play it on is the soundfont. So if you take some Bach and play it on guitar, the guitar sound is your soundfont; if you play it on your stomach, your stomach is the soundfont, etc. etc.

Basically what you need is a sequencer and different soundfonts to get good/pleasant/better sounding MIDI playback. Like YaYo said, cubase uses VST instruments, which are basically soundfonts/instruments used to give a sound to MIDI data. If you own or have played a keyboard with MIDI capabilities, you're using the same procedure. The keyboard has it's soundfonts (strings, bongos, etc.), and when you play a note, it plays the sound. If you connect your keyboard to your computer via the MIDI I/O, all you'll be getting is the instructions of what to play and how to play, NOT the sound to be used. If you record using the LINE OUT on the keyboard, you're recording it as a .wav (or .aiff) file, and it'll have the keyboard soundfont on it.

So, to answer one of your original questions, to get better sounding MIDI, you need to get better soundfonts and better sequencers for your computer.

Hope that helped.

 

[Juggie]

Mod trackers might be able to help you. Mod plug tracker is a good prog that can do midi's

 

[YaYo]

"SoundFonts" are a name for something more specific, i think. They are specifically files which certain soundcards use to generate their midi notes from.

A soundcard obviously has a file or hardware which stores what the actual midi sounds are like... (since like you say, midi is just basically instructions, no sound.... its the soundcard that produces the sound). A few soundcards were designed so that you could download other "SoundFonts" and use them instead of the ones that the soundcard was designed with. So all thats happening is that when the card recieves a midi signal it uses a different file to generate the actual sound from.

In my previous soundcard i could chose between 4 different sets of midi sounds, it was all done within the setup program for the soundcard... no changes were needed anywhere else. These weren't "soundfonts" but were the same idea..

No sequencer is needed to use these soundfonts. Changing the soundfont will make ALL midi on the computer (ie even just playing a midi file through winamp) use the sounds from the soundfont.

 

[Morningrise]

A program called Harmony Assistant is VERY good, and DOES NOT use midi. The newer versions have a bad sound base, but I use version 7.0.1 which has a really nice sound base. Try searching for a place to download THAT particular version, and if you can't find it contact me, I will send you the setup file.

 

[Katatonic]

harmony assistant is d/l'able here:

http://www.myriad-online.com/win/harmeval.exe

 

[Morningrise]

Yeah but that is a new version, which I said sucks...

 

[Morningrise]

Try this link....
http://www.monitor.hr/software/softod/2000/04/24/
about half way down is the download link, it should work.

 

[Katatonic]

no, its version 7.0.1 you fool. thats what it says on the parent site...