| poeTV | Submit | Login   |

Reddit Digg Stumble Facebook

Help keep poeTV running


And please consider not blocking ads here. They help pay for the server. Pennies at a time. Literally.

Comment count is 21
The God of Biscuits - 2010-02-05

canyon.mid was the best thing about Windows until Windows Vista's happy startup jingle.


phalsebob - 2010-02-05

Sounds like a Canadian PSA.


UmbilicalFiend - 2010-02-05

almost as good as Mark Salud


Enjoy - 2010-02-05

LJ: Seven or eight years ago I met the composer of canyon.mid in an airport. He was a jazz teacher and thought he should be getting royalties on the song. I still have his card.


pastorofmuppets - 2010-02-05

Something tells me he must have had a rockin' moustache.


Enjoy - 2010-02-12

No but he rocked a pretty long black pony tail.


augias - 2010-02-05

Mark Salud does it again.


cognitivedissonance - 2010-02-05

You should imagine a canyon while listening to it. IT TOTALLY WORKS, MAN.


HarrietTubmanPI - 2010-02-05

MIDI is one of those things which when done properly isn't noticeable. In fact, most recordings that involve any electronic keyboard or drum track involve MIDI in some way. The difference is most pcs don't have MIDI hardware that is capable enough of making it sound like real instruments. But if you get a decent Roland GM Synth and a MIDI cable capable sound card you can do some very neat things with it.

One of the strangest demonstrations I've ever seen with MIDI was with a Yamaha wind controller. You play it just like a saxophone and yet with a proper synth it sounds like any instrument you want it to sound like.

Of course it involves feathering, dynamics, and things beyond just on and off that most sequencers get by with.

The more you know!


fluffy - 2010-02-05

Yeah, MIDI has gotten a bad reputation because of crappy GMIDI synths playing .MID files. MIDI itself is just a generic control protocol which, while flawed, is pretty decent over all, as long as you're dealing with keyboard or woodwind instruments (although it falls flat for things which have subtle hard-to-encode nuances like violin or guitar).

It bothers me much more than it should when people refer to a console game as having "cheezy MIDI music" because there is absolutely no MIDI involved except *maybe* as part of the original authoring environment for the music.


Syd Midnight - 2010-02-05

Thomas Dolby developed a plug-in that flopped but I really liked called Beatnik, that used reverb and a good sample library to make midi files sound like real instruments. No idea why it didn't catch on, it sounded great (for a 1999-era MIDI plugin)


freedoom - 2010-02-05

Creative Labs started including instrument samples in their midi chip on the higher end soundblasters at some point. i kept upgrading my sound card because of it. then all video game music became CD Audio and the midi chip on my sound card became irrelevant. then when all video game music became a compressed format like MP3 it became even more irrelevant.


Smellvin - 2010-02-05

AWE 32. I remember when that was the absolute top of the line you could get in a sound card. Now these kids today with their newfangled elf MMO's and their zombie shooters have no appreciation for the classics.


pastorofmuppets - 2010-02-05

Yeah. The characteristic sound of this stuff is caused by FM synthesis, not MIDI. I love the sound of the old Yamaha & Roland FM keyboards.


Old_Zircon - 2010-07-21

MIDI has a lot of problems. the main one is that it's a serial protocol, and the data rate is woefully inadequate for sequencing complex arrangements - you don't need more than 20 or so notes triggered simultaneously before you start hearing the latency between the first few and the last few (since "simultaneous" midi events don't actually happen simultaneously, it being a serial protocol and all).

Also, the resolution of control data is horrible - 128 steps isn't nearly enough for smooth response across a wide range (try doing a fast, wide filter sweep on a midi controlled synth using a CC message and you'll hear really a pronounced "zipper" sound in most cases (unless the synth interpolates between the CC values - I've never known one to, but I imagine it's been done)

Midi is a usable but extremely underpowered (even back in the 80s it drew criticism - probably more than now, since people tended to push its capabilities a lot farther back then, where now most of them do everything on a computer and don't rely on MIDI communication between devices nearly as much.


Old_Zircon - 2010-07-21

This IS an AWE32, I'm pretty sure. It's definitely not an FM model.


kingarthur - 2010-02-05

Nowadays you just pre-record the instrument and use midi as a trigger.


AmericanAir - 2010-02-05

i play guitar


socialist_hentai - 2010-02-05

So that's what i had been missing all those years that i had no speakers.


zatojones - 2010-02-05

Windows Jingle or NPR Morning Call In Show Intro?


Old_Zircon - 2010-07-21

-1 because they didn't use a Sound Blaster 16.


Register or login To Post a Comment







Video content copyright the respective clip/station owners please see hosting site for more information.
Privacy Statement