sysex in sequencers [was: Hey JdL]

> You both hint that it's hard to insert sysex's via a
> sequencing program.
> That's too bad; don't really understand why, unless it's
> rarely done by
> most sequencers.

Rarity and the use of hexadecimal are the main reasons.
For most users this is considered a super advanced
feature they stay away from. And not all sequencers
support editing so if it is the only access into your
plugin, there is that limitation. But I think it might
be reasonable to say that most people who would be
advanced enough to use your plugin/blackbox/whatever
would be capable of figuring it out.

In Cubase, you can set up MIDI Mixer Maps. These are
sliders and knobs and buttons which you can assign to
just about any kind of MIDI message -- CC, [N]RPNs and
sysex are three possibilities I use these things for.

Then you can use the sliders during sequencing ad even
graphically edit the curves you have, etc. The latest
versions of this feature are not as good as the
original version that was an the Atari but it's still
quite workable. So far, Cubase of all sequencers has
the best abilities in this field that I've seen. It is
certainly not perfect but is workable and extremely
useful to me as a composer.

Perhaps others can catalogue their own experiences with
the sequencers they favor.

- Jeff

Jeff wrote:

> Perhaps others can catalogue their own experiences with
> the sequencers they favor.

I don't know about sequencers, but SysEx are a PITA to work with using the
Windows API. The problem is they're a different format to other messages,
not fitting 3 bytes, and so have to be treated differently. I never did
work it out from the documentation, but do now have a book telling me how
to do it.

Even using raw streams or files, SysEx messages need that bit extra work
to get right, so it's convenient if you can ignore them.

Graham