
GUS Musician's Digest       Tue, 26 Oct 93  3:25 MDT     Volume 1: Issue   7  

Today's Topics:
                             Aftertouch ?
                   A list of new PATCHES , anyone??
                     GUS Musician's Digest V1 #3
                            here we are :)
         keyboard with 88 keys [GUS Musician's Digest V1 #4]
                                misc.
                        Piano.Pat and Answers
                             Some answers

Standard Info:
	- Meta-info about the GUS can be found at the end of the Digest.
	- Before you ask a question, please READ THE FAQ.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 25 Oct 93 12:48:58 +0100
From: "Alexander Majarek, Sascha, SAM"  <Alexander.Majarek@uibk.ac.at>
Subject: Aftertouch ?

Yep, here's another one (silly question :-}):

I'm wondering since I read the first article about keyboards (not the
ones with a......z, 1.....9, etc.) what AFTERTOUCH is.

If I'm right Midi-controler send a NOTE ON, when a key is pressed and
a NOTE OFF when it is released, so for what do I use aftertouch?

Please excuse my ignorance, but I *really* don't know that and I'm
going to buy a keyboard in the next weeks and therefore I should at
least know for what to look.

Thanks in advance,
SAM

*********************************************************************
*Alexander.Majarek@uibk.ac.at * There are 3 ways (fast, sweet, sure)*
*Perthalerg. 1c/11            * for a man to ruin himself:          *
*A-6020 Innsbruck             * 1. Gamblin'   (fast),               *
*AUSTRIA (EUROPE)             * 2. Women      (sweet) &             *
*Tel.: 0043-512-84-26-15      * 3. Computers  (sure)                *
*********************************************************************

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 10:49:09 EDT
From: ciabatto@esc.syr.ge.com (David Ciabattoni)
Subject: A list of new PATCHES , anyone??

I also noticed how 'untrue' some of the acoustic patches are. But.. 
I do remember something about a collection of new patches being uploaded
(over the last 4 months or so), actually a few instances. Ive looked in some
of the archive.epas directories and found a listing of patches, but I have
not personally d/l any of them. 

	What Im getting at is if someone who has d/l many (or all) of them,
put up a list of which patches they think are good, and what files on epas
they can be found in.  Im sure someone has done this. Then we have a good base
of which to start to find and create 'new' ones.

This is only a idea...????

I would personally like a patch for a 'muted' guitar (that great muted strum sound)

ciao..
	- Dave

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 19:09 -0400
From: WADLEIGH@PROCESS.COM
Subject: Re: GUS Musician's Digest V1 #3

I uploaded GJBLUES1.ZIP to the epas submit directory.  It's a .MID file
set up for SESSION with four empty tracks and two "scratch" tracks to be
 replaced by later revisions.  Drop me some e-mail if you download an
 iteration with intent to add or replace a tr{ck
(!!!!LINE NOISE!!!!!>
I'll let you know if somebody else is already working on the current rev
so we don't get self-cancelling revisions.
{_
"We be jammin'."

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 11:20:00 PDT
From: "Ford, Richard            x2056" <rford@infocomp.csir.co.za>
Subject: Re: here we are :)

Morning all, before you continue, there is nothing of interest here, just a 
few comments...(a little late as I posted to the wrong group!)

First off - here we are! - I'm impressed with the approach taken by all to
            get this off the ground - especially you, Dave - thanks...

Secondly - it's nice to see Phat and Dave McM on this group (feel much better
           now...)

Thirdly - thanks to Bryan ( 'Patches?  We don't need no stinkin' patches!') I
          think i'm going to feel at home with the humour here :)

have a weekend - Richard

==============================================================================

------------------------------

Date: 25 Oct 93 12:15:47 +0100
From: "Alexander Majarek, Sascha, SAM"  <Alexander.Majarek@uibk.ac.at>
Subject: Re: keyboard with 88 keys [GUS Musician's Digest V1 #4]

Francois Dion wrote:
    '
> For 300$ CDN you can get a MIDI controller keyboard: The Roland PC-200. It has
> 49 keys, velocity, pitch bend and mod wheel. A Fatar studio 61 key is around
> 500$ and 88 key is 800$ which is quite reasonnable. If money is not an object
> and you want the best midi controller, get a Peavey C8. I didn't even bothered
> to ask the price because it is automagically outrageously priced. You could
> also go for toy midi keyboards but usually dont have full size keys and/or
> lack velocity, bender and wheels. Mid ranges casio will get you what you want
> but for more than 300$ CDN. If you dont need velocity, go for a used midi
> synth like Roland synth plus or stuff like that. You can get them under 200$.
> Also a used PC-100 is probably 50$. It's only 49 keys, no velocity, no bender,
> no wheels but it is very cheap and portable. You can even use it as a trigger
> input when you are tired of it (or resell it) by removing the key switches and
> minimal circuitry.

Concerning the Fatar studio with 88 keys: Any idea how the keys are
weighted (are they heavy weighted [equal to a real acoustic piano], do
they even have wooden keys [exactly like a real acoustic piano], or
are they only light weighted or not weighted at all) ?

Any help greatly appreciated.

SAM

*********************************************************************
*Alexander.Majarek@uibk.ac.at * There are 3 ways (fast, sweet, sure)*
*Perthalerg. 1c/11            * for a man to ruin himself:          *
*A-6020 Innsbruck             * 1. Gamblin'   (fast),               *
*AUSTRIA (EUROPE)             * 2. Women      (sweet) &             *
*Tel.: 0043-512-84-26-15      * 3. Computers  (sure)                *
*********************************************************************

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 24 Oct 1993 20:26:25 +0100
From: oliver_rock@solaris.oche.de (OLIVER ROCK)
Subject: misc.

Hi folks!
Does anybody know how i can play the panic.s3m file which is 
really big...;-)...well, s3mplay can't handle it (even if i
remove all drivers) and pmp/dmp give me parity errors or don't
work at all.
BTW, about the new piano.pat, have you noticed that gmgood.mid sounds
really bad (!!) with it ? Why ?
Ciao...Olli

------------------------------

Date: 25 Oct 1993   14:16:48 PST
From: chrisw <chrisw@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Subject: Piano.Pat and Answers

------------

First thing: I've redone (yet again) the envelopes on piano.pat. 
All those who have been complaining will be pleased to know that the 
new versions:

1) fade away to nothing on long notes
2) are much better on passages of very quick notes
3) have a substantial `fake reverb' built in.

They are, in fact, improved a lot. Part of them problem was that I 
misunderstood something in the Gravis envelope mechanism.

On the other hand, there's a new weird property of them. If you hold on notes
for a very long time then when you release them they'll have a little 
upsurge of volume after note release. In practice this is seldom a problem 
except on final chords of tracks.

If anyone can figure out how to correct this, go ahead. (Although the 
constraint is that you're not allowed to kill off the fake reverb - which
is the obvious solution).

Apologies to all who have already downloaded the other version on a slow
modem. If anyone is severely inconvenienced I'll post the new envelopes
here with instructions on modifying them yourselves.

BTW, I also decided to add a 7th range up the very top. Perhaps this will
stop the problems people were having. Could someone who was previously having
problems check out if it's better now?

Now, for some answers:
>>From: David Mitchell <davidm@hparc1.aus.hp.com>
>>Does anybody know when the 16-bit recording daughtercard will be released?

No. It is currently being beta tested, though.

>>I'm certain somebody has probably posted the specs before, but if anybody
>>could repost/send me the details I'd appreciate it.

It has a 16-bit stereo ADC and it's own 16-bit stereo DAC (seperate from the 
GF1 music DAC). There is hardware based compression / decompression 
associated with these using either a-law, u-law or adpcm compression systems.
The maximum sampling/playback rate is 48kHz. The daughtercard also
replaces the mixing system of the GUS with a new mixer with adjustable
levels for line-in, microphone, CD-Rom in, as well as the outputs from
the two DACs. 

>>My personal wish list (in order) for GUS stuff is:
>>- patch bank loading utility (not that I *hate* editing ultrasnd.ini, but...)

In progress.

>>- a *friendly* patch editor

In progress.

>>- software emulation of filters, etc. for GUS patches similar to those
>>available on high end dedicated samplers (i.e. Why can't my GUS do *everything*
>>a K2000 can do?)

Not a chance. (Because it doesn't have enough hardware level processin power).

>>From: apervazo@sas.upenn.edu (Andrian Pervazov)
>>I've noticed a strange thing - when playing a midi file under Windows,
>>some (or maybe all, buth with some patches it's more obvious) patches
>>sound sort of distorted and muddy. For example - cymbals, flute, guitar

What's happening (probably) is that you've got more voices enabled in windows than
playmidi does which takes away your high frequencies and potentially
gives you nasty aliasing problems. (Of course, it also lets you play more
notes).

>>Francois writes:
>>The waveform itself cannot be copyrighted but a patch is software and 
>>so can be copyrighted. 

Which is astounding really since there is much more work in a sample than in
the extra bits to make a patch.

>>Let's try GUSjamming. Included in the message is a powerchord file uuencoded.

Is posting stuff to the digest going to the method of communication
for GUSJAM?

>>From: adriano ennio raiola <adrianr@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU>
>>Just listened and compared piano.pat to the exisiting ones, sorry Chris,
>>but I think piano.pat sounds a bit artificial compared to the acpiano,
>>which has a much more natural sounding decay. And for that matter i wouldnt
>>really substitute it for any of the other pianos (at 180K its not worth it)

Well Adrian, since you're the only person I know who was happy with the
original acpiano.pat I guess I'm unlikely to be able to convince you 
otherwise. But if it's the decay that worried you so much, check out the
new version. Also, how many files do you have that use the GUS 1M to
within 120k of the limit (particularly ones that use the piano at all)? 
Playing all the others there's no `cost' of the larger patch.

>>what sort of piano is it representing anyway?

Not sure I follow: one with strings and shit like that?

>>From: Francis Li <fli@nermal.santarosa.edu>
>>I got the patch from epas, but when I edit it into the default.cfg file,
>>whenever I play a MID that needs it, I get a "Load patch error piano - 6"
>>or SOMETHING like that. What's wrong? I have a 1meg GUS...

Not sure. Did you copy the patch into the ultrasnd/midi directory?

Chris.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1993 11:54:16 +0000
From: Clarke Brunt <CLARKE@lsl.co.uk>
Subject: Some answers

> Does anyone know if it is possible to ask Midi-Mapper for the names of
> the patches currently available?

I wouldn't have thought so. MIDI Mapper is just a device for
re-vectoring MIDI messages to the actual MIDI device drivers. The
correspondence of patch numbers to file names is a matter for the GUS
driver itself, and it uses the contents of the .ini file. It has just
occurred to me to wonder if what you meant was which patches are
currently loaded into the GUS? There is a Windows API call to do this
(something like MidiOutQueryPatches) which I'm sure would work whether
the MIDI output device was MIDI Mapper, or the GUS itself. This will be
what PatchMan uses to list which are loaded. 

> I've noticed a strange thing - when playing a midi file under Windows,
> some (or maybe all, buth with some patches it's more obvious) patches
> sound sort of distorted and muddy. For example - cymbals, flute, guitar

Could this be the 'number of active voices' setting? If you set this
greater than 14, then the GUS cannot sample all the voices at 44kHz,
of course if you keep it at 14 then you can only play that many notes
at once. The effect of setting a high number varies from patch to
patch - I remember saying once before that harpsichord is terrible
with a high number. I forget what the default number of voices in
Playmidi is - if you use the debug option, you see a graphical display
of the notes being allocated to the voices. Someone a while ago told
us about a Playmidi switch to set the number - I don't know of it is in
the manual - you could experiment with that.

> I know this is probably a FAQ but there isn't a music FAQ as yet so
> I'll ask now.  What are good FTP sites for MIDI files and patches?
> Also where can I get demos of Cakewalk, Musicator etc? 

I was going to include a list of sites for Cakewalk demo (cwdemo.zip)
from an archie server, but it won't work today for some reason - maybe
tomorrow. I'm quite impressed by cwdemo, despite the lack of patch
cacheing - so much better than Recording Session. I repeat my question
of the other day - Is there a demo of version 2? Does version 2 do
patch cacheing?

Finally - I hope we don't see the Digest filled up with uuencoded
binaries as part of the NetJam. There must be some other way that
the NetJammers can exchange their efforts.

------------------------------

End of GUS Musician's Digest V1 #7
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