Hi all,

I'm hanging on to v1.4 until V2 appears but in the meantime I was wondering if anyone can help.

I wish to use general midi to create tunes and I want to set up a general midi list so I can select a midi instrument from a list, like a normal sample.

Can anyone point me in the right direction, any help would be appreciated.

Hi,

I think I can help you, though I haven't used general midi for a while. Let me give it a try.

Step 1: Under the MIDI menu, open the MIDI PATCH NAMES SETUP dialog.
Step 2: Click the load button.
Step 3: Provided your copy of MED has been installed properly, it should have some basic patch lists provided. Choose Patchnames_XG.txt, and click open.
Step 4: Choose the desired "port" for the device under THIS DEVICE USES PORT.
Step 5: Choose the channel or channels that will be used by this device. A common method of using GM is to allow all 16 channels to be used. If you are in doubt as to what channel you will use, or what your device responds to, click all 16.
Step 6: Make sure PATCH NAMES dropdown reads GM STANDARD.

OPTIONAL: If you will be using more than one device, you can add them at the top. You can optionally name the device you are using, even if it's just one. Just type it in the text are to the right of "Device 1/1".

Step 7: Close the dialog box.
Step 8: Under the MIDI menu, open the MIDI SETTINGS dialog box.
Step 9: Make sure that the devices listed to the right are correct. The ones you might want to pay attention to are GM Modules and Input Port. GM Modules should be routed to the Port that your GM source is using. Input port should be set if you are hoping to trigger, preview, or record these midi sounds with a keyboard or the like.
Step 10: At the right side of this dialog, make sure the "Use Running Status" and "Automatic GM System On" boxes are checked.

OPTIONAL: You can click the box marked "Set instrument name to patch name", if you want the GM patch name to be displayed where you would normally see the name of your sample or other instrument.

Step 11: Click Okay.
Step 12: Under the MIDI menu, click MIDI ACTIVE, and if you are using an external input (MIDI keyboard or other conroller) then you shoudl click INPUT ACTIVE as well.
Step 13: Create an instrument. In the SONG menu, you can enter the INSTRUMENT PROPERTIES dialog, or you can click the small button with the trumpet and question mark (top right area of the main sequencer page). Move the INSTRUMENT NUMBER scroll bar to an empty instrument. Click MIDI under INSTRUMENT TYPE.
Step 14: Choose device for this instrument. At the bottom of this dialog there is a section called MIDI Properties. Choose the device that you would like to use in the DEVICE drop down. If you enabled more than one channel in STEP 5 then you can choose a channel this way. The output port and transmit channel should change to be accurate to the device settings, but double check. You can set and input channel here as well, if you will be using a controller device.
Step 15: Choose patch for this instrument. At the bottom of this dialog are drop downs entitled BANK and PRESET. Many true GM models only have one bank. 1 is often a good setting for bank. If you click the preset dropdown, you should see the list of GM patches. Go ahead and choose one to test.
Step 16: Set Volume, hold and decay. These are in the GENERAL PROPERTIES of this dialog box. I like to start with volume of a MIDI instrument at 100 or so just as a personal preference. Hold and decay will gave a shaping of the envelope of your sound. I would give these a setting to begin with, maybe 3 for hold and 1 for decay, just to begin with, and then adjust to the specific sound you want. If you do not set a decay, a MIDI sound will sustain forever in my experience.

If all of these steps were followed, you should be able to return to the sequencer screen and play it or enter note event, just like other types of instruments. If you don't hear anything, make sure your GM module is turned on, that you have the correct MIDI channels on both the module and MED, and check through the steps to make sure that you didn't miss anything. You should be able to leave the INSTRUMENT PROPERTIES dialog open while you choose your sound, and change it's general properties to suit your taste.

I hope this will be of help to you and others. I know it seems like a lot, but after a couple of successful tries, it becomes pretty easy. If you have any questions, I'll try and answer them, and if anyone noticed anything amiss in my steps, then please speak up, as I am not an expert.

Take care, and let us know how it goes!

Thanks, I've tried it and sort of got it working, what I was after though was a list of midi names / instruments I could click on so i know the name of the instruments instead of them being numbers. Is this possible, has somebody set this up already do you know?

If you loaded the Patchnames_XG.txt file in step three, then your dropdown called Patch in the instrument properties window should have the names of the 127 gm patches in it. Is this not the case for you? Strange...

Step 4: I can't choose the desired "port" for the device under THIS DEVICE USES PORT as it is greyed out.

Steps 14 to 16 I can't seem to get my head round. I've followed your steps and in Device (under step 14) I chose (Ch 1) but when moving to the next instrument and moving back, the Device is empty.

Also, no names are appearing in the instument Name:

I'm not using any external device at the moment.

I'm probably missing something but could you possible explain steps 14 to 16 a bit more?

Thanks.

The situation is confusing me a bit, but one thing caught my eye;

Do you mean that you are not using an input device, or are you meaning a general midi device.

Seeing as you could not choose a port for a device, do you not have any midi drivers installed on your computer? That's one of the few reasons I can think that you would not be able to choose a port. This ties in with the problems you are having with later steps, because if you have no device(driver) installed, then it would probably not stay selected in your instrument. What midi sound source do you have?

Does anyone else have some suggestions as to what could be going on here?

Maybe you should get v1.5 and see if it works better for you, if all else fails?

We'll get it working for you!

I mean I'm not using an external general MIDI keyboard, just using the computer to enter the midi notes.

Even though the DEVICE is greyed out, it does say Microsoft MIDI Mapper

In the Preset drop-down box in the Instrument properties, I do get a list of numbers corresponding to MIDI instruments; 1 - 128.

I'm using Windows XP Pro, 512mb, Yamaha PCI FM Synthsizer sound card.

Thanks for all your help.

Well,
I just did the smart thing and popped my old reg keys into v1.4, and sure enough, I saw the same issue. Here's what you should do;
-Under the MIDI menu, click MIDI PORT MAP.
-This should give you a list of assigned ports, some of which will say unassigned, and a dropdown for assigning. You should go ahead and click one that says unassigned.
-Now click on the dropdown at the bottom of this dialog, and find your yamaha synth card. Click on this, and the unassigned should now change to read your yamaha device.

Those steps are just to insure that your device is available to med. The real discovery I just made is next;

-Go to the MIDI PATCH NAMES SETUP dialog under the MIDI menu.
-In the area where it reads Device 1/1 click the DELETE button. It should now read Device 0/0.
-Now you should Click INSERT NEW or APPEND NEW to create a brand new device.
-Strangely enough, the device automatically created with a new mod in v1.4 does not allow you to set a device port, but the new one that you added should.
-Go ahead and choose your yamaha port.
-Proceed with the other steps for setting up your settings and instruments.

This should take care of your problem, I hope. This seems to be a difference between 1.4 and 1.5, so I guess there were some nice improvements

Hope that helps!

THANK YOU!!!!!! I've now saved the patch so I can just load it again.

*Damn, another reason to upgrade*

Sweet!

I'm glad we worked that one out! I don't know why I didn't think there would be differences like this between 1.4 and 1.5.

Enjoy the midi capabilities! It really does improve the range of med power!

Can't wait to hear some tunes!

One of my tunes is in the Plug It (non Med) section.

Ok, I can now create midi's (yay!) but the problem now is that after i've saved it (as midi) and load it back, all the instruments are empty, the midi instrument settings don't seem to be saved with the song.

Even when selecting the midi instruments again, they all sound like the Acoustic Grand Piano (which happens to be the first midi instrument on the list).

How do I save the midi instruments with the song?

*Using V1.4 - registered*

Hi,

Sorry for the slow reply here...

And also sorry, because I don't know how to get around this. I think it may be the way 1.4 and 1.5 works. Maybe someone else knows for sure. The things I find that I need to reset when opening a song are; MIDI>Midi Settings, MIDI>patch names (which includes channel for each device, and port used). And that's all, so try setting both of those the same time, and you shouldn't have too much trouble.

It's definitely something that needs work, and I am sure it's getting the attention it deserves.

Hope that someone else can give better advise in this situation.

Hi,

I've come across a couple of the issues mentioned here and have found that the following helped me: -

If MED doesn't load your MIDI patch names when it starts up, create a shortcut (if you haven't already got one) to MED.exe and set the 'Start In' property to the patchnames directory i.e. C:\Program Files\MED Soundstudio 1.5\Patchnames.
Make sure your patch names are stored in this directory as Patchnames.txt (not Patchnames_txt.txt) and then MED will load them.
Unfortunately there does seem to be a couple of items which don't load back in correctly. The 'This Device Always Uses Port:' option always defaults to the first device in the Port Map (MIDI Menu->MIDI Port Map) and all the MIDI channels get switched to off. I would recommend switching these back on again before loading your MIDI file.

To make sure MED saves your MIDI instrument settings when saving as a MIDI file, set instrument 1 to a 'Synthetic' type and call it something like 'dummy'. Then create all the other instruments as your MIDI ones and they should get saved correctly. I'm not sure whether MED's MIDI file format is exportable, maybe someone can confirm this.

If you've done the above things and loaded your MIDI file into MED and all the instruments sound like a piano, goto the MIDI menu and click on the 'Reset Presets and Pichbenders' item. That should fix it.

Use the 'Open' option and not the 'Open Song' option when opening your MIDI files as there seems to be a problem where 'Open Song' doesn't load in the MIDI instruments.

I hope some of this info may be of use.

Best wishes!

Hey,

Thanks for the good tips... Once I get back to creating I'll have to try that out.