Multiple midi ports - monz question????

This is a strange question, which I may not have understood.
The media players seem to play left and right channels of a midi file
(*.mid) with up to 16 different instruments at any one time.

I am not familiar with using media players as anything other than as
a way to sound midi files (.mid).

I don't understand what you are attempting to do, although you could
run your midi info. into your system through a midi filter (either in
hardware or software)
e.g. MidiPipe or a sequencer.

If you're looking for more than 2 channels audio out you might look
at the Fraunhofer 5:1 Surround compressed audio protocol, which AFAIK
is still in beta test.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3550833.stm

http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm/techinf/layer3/index.html#3

Maybe what you want to do is to mix two midi files together?

I would just use any old sequencer application to do that; but
beware the channel assignments if you wish to use dreaded midi
pitchbend.

Sorry to be so unhelpful;-)

>
>
> I'm looking for media players which can use
> multiple MIDI ports. Apparently, Windows Media Player
> can only use one ... if i'm wrong, someone please
> correct me and explain.
>
> Are there others? Thanks.
>
>
> -monz

Charles Lucy - lucy@...
------------ Promoting global harmony through LucyTuning -------
for information on LucyTuning go to: http://www.lucytune.com
for LucyTuned Lullabies go to http://www.lullabies.co.uk
Buy/download/CD from: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/lucytuned2

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Charles,

{you wrote...}
>This is a strange question, which I may not have understood. ... Sorry to >be so unhelpful;-)

I think we're all kind of guessing at what Monz wanted. *My* guess is that he wants a playback-only application (and apparently one that is simply a freeware media player) that can address midi information from *multiple* ports, allowing one to expand pitch-bend microtuning strategies to break out beyond 16 channels.

Many of the attempts to create microtonal midi music utilize some form of round-robin assignment, where a midi stream is broken up into single notes going successively to one of 16 midi channels. Naturally, this breaks down with either large degrees of polyphony or multiple individual instrumental parts, basically any time you are going to get more than 16 notes. It also completely breaks if you have sustaining sounds against moving sounds, as you can get pitch bend artifacts showing up in the sustained notes if too many moving notes occur.

One possible way out is multiple midi ports. I happen to use a Midiman 4x4 (hardware) midi box (when I'm using hardware, which is rare these days), which would mean that after using up channel 16 on the first port, I could then address channel 1 on port 2; this would, effectively, allow me to muck around with up to 48 notes simultaneously. It would be more prudent to develop an algorithm to round-robin the ports as well, starting with channel 1, port 1, then c1 p2, etc; this would slow down the buildup of notes in each port, thereby delaying the pitch bend artifact problem.

Anyhow, that's my guess. But if I'm correct, Joe hasn't begun to tackle the next part: are the soundcards that he is targeting going to be able to accept information going to multiple midi ports? I don't think so...

And, to finish, I don't know of any such media players.

Cheers,
Jon

hi Jon and Charles,

--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Jon Szanto <jszanto@c...>
wrote:

> Charles,
>
> {you wrote...}
> > This is a strange question, which I may not have
> > understood. ... Sorry to be so unhelpful;-)
>
> I think we're all kind of guessing at what Monz wanted.
> *My* guess is that he wants a playback-only application
> (and apparently one that is simply a freeware media player)
> that can address midi information from *multiple*
> ports, allowing one to expand pitch-bend microtuning
> strategies to break out beyond 16 channels.
>
> <snip>
>
> One possible way out is multiple midi ports. <snip>
>
> Anyhow, that's my guess. But if I'm correct, Joe hasn't
> begun to tackle the next part: are the soundcards that he
> is targeting going to be able to accept information going
> to multiple midi ports? I don't think so...
>
> And, to finish, I don't know of any such media players.

Yes, Jon, you got it right. Chris and i ("Tonalsoft")
have now implemented MIDI export in Tonescape, so that
Tonescape users can compose a microtonal piece in
Tonescape, then have it spit out a MIDI file that can
be played by any MIDI player.

Tonescape does use pitch-bend and yes, we do want to
take advantage of the ability to address up to 8 MIDI
ports simultaneously, which effectively gives us
128 MIDI channels to play with. However, i have not
yet found any freeware media player which will handle
more than 1 MIDI port ... and i haven't a clue about
what soundcards do in this respect, so thanks for adding
that into your comments.

I did find a shareware player which claimed to be able
to use multiple ports ... i'll have to search for it
again and do some research.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com
Tonescape microtonal music software

Monz,

{you wrote...}
>Yes, Jon, you got it right. Chris and i ("Tonalsoft") have now implemented >MIDI export in Tonescape, so that Tonescape users can compose a microtonal >piece in
>Tonescape, then have it spit out a MIDI file that can be played by any >MIDI player.

Ah, but it *can't* be played by "any MIDI player".

>Tonescape does use pitch-bend and yes, we do want to take advantage of the >ability to address up to 8 MIDI ports simultaneously, which effectively >gives us 128 MIDI channels to play with. However, i have not yet found any >freeware media player which will handle more than 1 MIDI port ... and i >haven't a clue about what soundcards do in this respect, so thanks for >adding that into your comments.

Ummmm, I'm going to answer about this in a more appropriate place... :)

Cheers,
Jon

Joe,
You may want to consider an interface to Csound. It might be possible
to create a rudamentary Csound instrument that took your note
positions and generated a .wav file of the composition. Here's the
basic outline of what Csound would need:

; start time - duration - frequency
i1 0 .5432 264.7865
i1 .5432 .5432 330.9831
i1 1.0864 2.1728 397.1798

Then you wrap that with a Csound instrument as in the example below
and route it to Csound for processing.

<CsoundSynthesizer>

<CsOptions>
-W -m2 -+y -G -o test.wav
</CsOptions>

<CsInstruments>
sr = 44100 ; typical sample rate
ksmps = 10 ; set to 1 for better resolution
nchnls = 1 ; set to 2 for stereo

instr 1 ; let csound create more if it needs them
istart = p2 ; the second parameter is the note start time
idur = p3 ; the third parameter is the note duration
ifreq = p4 ; the frequency in Hz
print ifreq, istart, idur ; list the inputs as the processing goes
a1 pluck 10000, ifreq, ifreq, 0, 6 ; guitar like sound
out a1 ; send it to the output file
endin ; you're done!
</CsInstruments>

<CsScore>
; start time - duration - frequency
i1 0 .5432 264.7865
i1 .5432 .5432 330.9831
i1 1.0864 2.1728 397.1798
</CsScore>
</CsoundSynthesizer>

This is a simple instrument with a guitar like sound. Csound will
automatically generate a new instrument if more than one note sounds
at a time, and there is no real limit to the number of instruments
playing simultaneously. For more interesting sounds, you can replace
the "pluck" instrument with a sample based instrument, and add
interesting envelopes, volume information, and other parameters.

Prent Rodgers

> > I think we're all kind of guessing at what Monz wanted.
> > *My* guess is that he wants a playback-only application
> > (and apparently one that is simply a freeware media player)
> > that can address midi information from *multiple*
> > ports, allowing one to expand pitch-bend microtuning
> > strategies to break out beyond 16 channels.
> >
> > And, to finish, I don't know of any such media players.
>
> Yes, Jon, you got it right. Chris and i ("Tonalsoft")
> have now implemented MIDI export in Tonescape, so that
> Tonescape users can compose a microtonal piece in
> Tonescape, then have it spit out a MIDI file that can
> be played by any MIDI player.
>
> Tonescape does use pitch-bend and yes, we do want to
> take advantage of the ability to address up to 8 MIDI
> ports simultaneously, which effectively gives us
> 128 MIDI channels to play with.