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A request to amateur composers who visit this page

Topic started by Vijay (@ 212.137.205.127) on Thu Nov 16 16:58:22 EST 2000.
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

I'd like to request amateur composers who visit this page to tell me if they've uploaded any of their work onto the internet and if they have, please tell me where I can listen to it. Thank You.

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Some composers to check out (in no particular order): Jay, Srikanth, Ganesh, Eswar, Sridhar Seetharaman, Kumar, Rjay.

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Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: Aditya (@ 24.4.252.137) on: Sun Nov 25 10:32:29 EST 2001
  
  Srikanth:
  
  Any new tracks to listen?
  
  - Aditya
  
  
• From: pardhu (@ 202.54.26.125) on: Mon Nov 26 01:32:57 EST 2001
  
  Hi aditya,
  Thank you very much for the info on n-track studio.
  pardhu.
  
  
• From: Vishvesh (@ 63.65.68.246) on: Mon Nov 26 09:37:04 EST 2001
  
  Srikanth,
  
  Glad to see an expert composer offering assistance. Well, I am a guitarist basically and I am afraid I don't have a keyboard/synth which you guys seem to be using. Mine is a Casio CTK-533 but it has MIDI capabilities. The manual has only a single page reference to MIDI and it is entirely inadequate. I called up the help desk of Casio and told them about my issue and they conveniently ignored it saying that it is an issue with cakewalk express ! (Not to mention that Cakewalk helpdesk shifted my issue to Casio earlier !). I would appreciate if you could elaborate a little on what you mean when you say "if you have casios , it can be swithced on in the setup". I posted the same issue in the "Noteworthy composer" forum and I got a reply that one guy had used a Yamaha keyboard and didn't have any difficulty in recording the rhythms. As you have rightly guessed, I too feel that I need to set up some way for my Casio keyboard. In fact I found two Casio keyboards CTK-601 and 470 mentioned in the "Import Instrument definitions" and I imported them too only to find them not producing the rhythms. I would very much appreciate your assistance, for I am very much overtime in doing a radio program here.
  
  
• From: Vishvesh (@ 63.65.68.246) on: Mon Nov 26 09:45:17 EST 2001
  
  Pardhu,
  I was in the same boat as you are and I was looking for assistance left and right. Well, I bought a cakewalk express software (which is pretty inexpensive here ; $25 with a MIDI cable to the PC). I don't know about other softwares but I found this pretty simple to use. You could easily mix MIDI with wav in it this way : mute and arm the track which you are going to record and play all the other tracks when you are recording. The track you are going to record must have its source as teh soundcard of your PC, just as you record any audio source. Hopefully, this may be the way it works with other softwares too.
  
  
• From: rjay (@ 209.166.172.34) on: Mon Nov 26 12:43:08 EST 2001
  
  Visvesh
  
  I have a casio 470 and I think these keyboards do not transmit the midi of the accompaniment patterns out at all! They only transmit the midi of what you play on the keyboard. On the other hand, higher end keyboards do transmit it.
  
  RJAY
  
  
• From: Krishnamurthy (@ 198.102.112.201) on: Mon Nov 26 13:15:07 EST 2001
  
  Vishvesh
  The idea is not to transmit patterns but trigger patterns on the keyboard. Try something like this.
  Select any track and arm recording (if you have cakewalk) - now start accompaniment. If cakewalk icon in the system tray lights up, then it means your keyboard is transmitting a midi signal for that event, which is accompaniment ON. Now turn off accompaniment, If you see the icon light up - it means theres an OFF Midi transmit event. If these things happen, it means you can record them with cakewalk. The point is which patch number and bank to choose. You must have to experiment with sending sysx (as srikanth suggested) to see if at startup you can set a track to send On/Off signals.
  
  
• From: Aditya (@ 160.231.5.197) on: Mon Nov 26 14:09:08 EST 2001
  
  Try if this works...
  Add 16 MIDI tracks and assign each of them to channel nos in succession like 1,2,3, etc.,
  Arm all these 16 tracks. And then start recording while ur kb plays songs with the accompaniments. I am sure the onboard songs can't be used for this purpose...so play something with the accompaniments on. Before that check your setup too. I believe it's possible. Because people exchange the roland styles with korg vice versa.
  
  
  
• From: Vishvesh (@ 66.24.214.34) on: Mon Nov 26 18:19:04 EST 2001
  
  Krishnamoorthy and Adithya,
  
  Thanks. I tried my level best but it seems that my Casio keyboard is unable to send the rhythm and accompaniment as MIDI signals(as rjay suggested). But what do you guys mean by checking my "set up" ?
  
  By the bye, I saw this at the cakewalk home page:
  
  Cakewalk doesn't include an Instrument Definition for my MIDI instrument. Where can I find one?
  
  
  If Cakewalk doesn't currently have the definition for your instrument, you may have to create the definition yourself. We do offer step by step instructions on how to do so here.
  You might also consider posting a request for the definition on our General newsgroup, which you can access from our Newsgroups page. Often, another Cakewalk user has already created the definition, and will email it to you. (Back to top)
  
  
  The instructions for creating a new instrument definition is found at
  http://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Docs/InstrumentDef.html
  
  I thought I might need to define my casio keyboard as a new instrument defintion. Am i right there ? I went through the page but wasn't able to make much of it too.
  
  
• From: Krishnamurthy (@ 198.102.112.201) on: Mon Nov 26 19:05:05 EST 2001
  
  Vishvesh
  If they dont send signals for accompaniment on/off, you cannot record them with cakewalk.
  The instrument defintion file is to assign patch / bank numbers of your keyboard a name, so that you can control them from your computer instead of changing them through your keyboard. I don't know about Casio, but synths like Roland and Korg have so many instruments assigned to banks. Each bank can have a maximum of 128 (0-127) numbers assigned to each patch (or instrument).
  So once again, instument defintion will not help if your keyboard does not transmit MIDI events for accompaniment on/off.
  
  
  
  
• From: Vishvesh (@ 63.65.68.246) on: Tue Nov 27 11:19:15 EST 2001
  
  Krishnamurthy,
  Thanks again. I have decided to go for a higher end key board.
  I have another issue. From cakewalk I record audio in a few tracks and the MIDI stuff in a few other. Finally, I mix them all as one track of audio data to be exported to a .wav file. I am able to export that particular track into a .wav file, but the sound is very very feeble. Should I need to set the sound volume somewhere ? I have also noted that if I export an audio track from cakewalk which has not been mixed with any other MIDI track, I get the same volume in the .wav file. I tried to set the "volume" column from cakewalk, but I find whenever I mix MIDI data with audio data and export it into a .wav file, the sound becomes very feeble. Not only that, but even when there are only two tracks of audio data alone in my cakewalk and when I adjust their volume from cakewalk and mix them and then import it to a .wav file, I get only the same kind of feeble .wav file. Am i missing something?
  
  
• From: Krishnamurthy (@ 198.102.112.201) on: Tue Nov 27 13:00:23 EST 2001
  
  Srikanth can answer this better as I have never mixed audio with cakewalk.
  
  
• From: Vishvesh (@ 66.24.214.34) on: Tue Nov 27 18:55:12 EST 2001
  
  Well, I sorted out the issue I posted earlier. It was an issue with the windows mixer and not with Cakewalk. I set the volume from the slider in the "Mixer" options of the "Record" properties of my windows mixer and it seems to work fine. Though an arts student, I could learn client-server and later Java much more easily than all these weird MIDI settings and audio mixing !
  
  
• From: pardhu (@ 202.54.26.125) on: Wed Nov 28 02:04:39 EST 2001
  
  Hi aditya and vishvesh,
  Thanks for responding to my previous mails. I have still
  some doubts regarding mixing of percussion loops with
  the tune. I have created some drum-beat loops using Fruity
  loops and I composed the main tune on a Piano software and recorded
  it in various instruments using a software called
  timidity in LInux. But when I try to mix the loops with the tune, it's
  not coming out effectively. I can visualise that the
  tune that I recorded would be matched by the drumbeat. But when I mix them they
  appear like two seperate things or they mix badly. Am I wrong at
  my visualisation that they suit each other or Am I
  doing some fundamental mistake at mixing ? May be
  I am asking a very sub'standard question , but I would be happy if you guys can help me out.
  How to provide a well-matched synchronized percussion loop
  for a tune and mix them well ?
  
  
• From: Aditya (@ 24.4.252.137) on: Wed Nov 28 08:08:30 EST 2001
  
  Pardhu:
  
  Since u're just in the design stage of composition, using fruityloops sequencer is advisable. Make ur percussion loops in the fruity loops. Then ur software for maintune whatever it's, look if it can export ur tune into MIDI file or WAV file. If u're using the latest version of Fruityloops, u will have something called Piano roll view which can import MIDI files. If ur maintune is in MIDI file, just import it into that track. This main tune track is in a new pattern other than ur percussion loop pattern. Then get into song mode, open pattern sequencer...then layout the maintune pattern with the percussion based patterns. SINCE U're USING ONLY SOFTWARE...I AM SURE U WILL FIND IT TERRIBLY DIFFICULT TO PLAY THEM IN SYNC. Good idea will be to play the main tune and record it in whichever software while fruity loops plays the percussion loop. Then u're sure that from whichever software u have the MIDI file, it will still work as simple as mixing. To make ur job easier, Buy a simple keyboard which gives MIDI and play it while u record. Otherwise this mixing job from various sources will be a nightmare for u:-))
  Why don't u use the fruityloops itself for everything...it has some virtual instruments like piano etc., use them along with ur percussion loops...everything in the same s/w and assured good mixing in the current scenario.
  
  Good Luck.
  
  Aditya
  
  
  
• From: srikanth (@ 65.9.136.158) on: Wed Nov 28 09:11:17 EST 2001
  
  Vishvesh :
  Check the volume level for line-in,I belive you should have connected the sound source to line-in of your sound card,
  1. Click speaker in your system tray (once again I belive you are using Windows)
  2. Goto to the properties in the window that pops up.
  3. Then select the recording in the check box, this will display your inputs to the system, increase volume to desired level for line-in.
  
  My advice for starters would be to spend about $100-$300 and get a good (USB based) audio interface (eg:MAUDIO, TASCAM, Roland Edirol have good DAW interfaces check their websites),
  This makes life easy, sound cards are too elementry and it is bound to create such problems. They are not designed for hi-power midi and music recording at the same time.
  
  Without the proper Interface, tools and knowlege of how to use to them, Music recording using a PC is somewhat "complicated".
  
  keep experimenting till you get it right...Have fun..:)
  
  

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