trident, I think you are right in your assessment of how Bandstand would respond from a USB or Firewire device.

Rikki, wow you are way ahead of me technically on all of this music software. I have made a copy of your comments which will come in handy as I slowly but surely get everything setup.

Rikki if you have the XG to GM.con files for the following drum kits I will buy you a beer if you provided me a copy of them:

Standard Kit
Jazz Kit
Brush Kit
....the rest I can do on my own later.

My email is:
flr@mts.net

Even if you may think that you are not finished converting these drum kits it will be way good enough for me to get started.

The good thing about OMB among others it finds all the channels with drums loaded and transfers them all to channel 10....I think.

In addition, to instrument loading time problem in Bandstand revolves around the fact that styles often have more than one drum kit. OMB or any other sequencer will load all of the kits including those found on empty tracks. This would cause a noticeable hesitancy while playing such styles. Similarly, when there is a different sax or trumpet required for an ending you would experience an interruption while playing such endings. This is all fixable if you load such instruments in the introductory part of the style.

I have not tried this but I suppose you could develop an empty midi/style file in OMB or other sequencer calling for all the instruments you believe you will be using during live performance and load them before your performance. This should eliminate interruptions caused during loading of the required instruments. The best thing may still be the advice provided by trident.

Rikki thanks for all your help.

Frank L. Rosenthal


[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 12-04-2005).]

Frank,

This empty midifile is already present in each style and is called the control changes part. You can access it in OMB by double clicking in the control data column in the stylemaker. This data is sent when a style is activated.

In original Yamaha styles all the bank/patch data is usually in the control changes part and not in the variation parts (mains, fill-ins).

So if you want to use different instruments you could put each instrument in a separate channel. In Yamaha keyboards you can only use channel 9-16. In OMB you can use all channels but of course you would reserve a few for melody.

If you need more then 16 different instruments in the style then you would need to switch bank/patch in a variation now and then. If the delay is mainly caused by the loading of the instrument font from harddisk then you can preload all instruments in the control changes part. Just place the controllers and patches for the different instrument subsequently in the control data of the same track.

Jos

Here's the start of my input information for the development of the drum kit translation table:
Note #'s
XG GM/GS

14 87
13 86
30 85
22 34
21 33
20 32
32 31
18 30
17 29
16 28
15 27

Still part of XG Standard Kit but would
need to call up GM Brush Kit to do the
following:

XG Std GM/GS Brush

25 Brush Tap 38 Brush Tap
26 Brush Swirl L 40 Brush Swirl
27 Brush Slap 39 Brush Slap
28 Brush Swirl H 40 Brush Swirl
29 Snare Roll I don't care

39 Hand Claps Stuff them somewhere!!!

XG Brush Kit GM/GS Brush Kit

31 Brush Slap2 39 Brush Slap
36 Kick Small I don't care!!!
38 Brush Slap3 39 Brush Slap
40 Brush Tap2 38 Brush Tap
41 Tom Brush1 Well?
43 Tom Brush2 "
45 Tom Brush3 "
47 Tom Brush4 "
48 Tom Brush5 "
50 Tom Brush6 "

The first part of the table I got from the Sonar Drum Manager.

Now Rikki if I built a translation or conversion table from this information would you buy me a beer??? As I noted if there are brushes used with XG Standard kits then in those styles one would need to use the GM Brush Kit. The Same would apply to the Jazz Kit. If you are into Toms then you may have to give up!!! .... At least I can't find them???

The only drum kits I plan on using would be the Standard, Jazz and Brush Kits....anything else is to noisy for an old man.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 12-04-2005).]

Jos, thanks for your advice. I tend to agree with your approach. I could use all 16 channels given I use a different midi port for my melody or lead instruments in kontakt.

The other consideration is the amount of memory you have to allocate for this purpose.

As an aside, I had the numbers lined up in columns when I perpared the above response concerning drum conversions. I hope you can still make out what I am saying.

Hi Frank,
I tend to think the drums that are possibly going to cause you the biggest problems are
XG
25 brush tap
26 brush swirl
27 brush tap swirl
they probably won't exist anywhere else in your gm kit except for the Brush Kit. So any style that has brushes , you're going to have to use the brush kit & hope that the style doesn't also use snares, because there's no snare drums in the GM brushkit.

I was originally going to do conversions for my Hypercanvas but in the end I opted for xg mapped drum soundfonts, so I never went ahead. What I had planned on doing was create 2 versions of the conversions for each of the drumsets
One that didn't include brushes ie Standard Kit 1 xg converted to Standard Kit 1 GM
and Standard Kit 1 XG converted to Brush Kit GM ( for styles that included ( 25,26,27 brushes)

Then do the same for the Jazz Kit, and the same for the Brush Kit . Even the XG & GM brush kits aren't the same.
ie 40 in the xg kit is a brush tap wheras in gm it's a brush swirl.

You've got 2 options as to which conversion to use , just say the original kit is tandard 1. either try both and see if the brush or the normal one is the correct conversion,
or you could check the event list before you convert, in each of the style parts and see if brushes 25,26 27 are present in which case you know to use Brush version.

Event List is on Stylemaker Page
Events ( 3rd colum from left).
Double click the event part you're editing & chhoose events. All your notes , controllers etc pop up in a list. ( This one you'll have to work out from note names not numbers)
ie 25 = c#2
26 = D2
27 = Eb2 etc

If you bring up a conversion table, you can click between ( Notation icon) notes & decimal and work out which numbers are the equiv notes.

I'll check your conversions later & get back to you. I've got to dash.

best wishes
Rikki

Rikki, in the end there is another alternative, abandon those styles which don't sound good or are to hard to fix, given we have thousands of other styles to pick from!!!!!

Again I appreciate all your advice. M. Bedesem is still working on Midi Player II to do these conversions. If he can then this would make for fast (batch) conversions of styles to the GM Standard.

All this is just to exciting for an old man. NI's Bandstand has all the right stuff (instruments, effects and adjustments). It is fully featured wavetable. I don't feel bad to do the work of conversion to the GM format. This will also make other wavetables available for auto accompaniment use.

It will be near impossible for me to leave kontakt and the big GBs virtual acoustic instruments. These sound just to good compared to other alternatives---for my lead or melody instruments.

[This message has been edited by Frank L. Rosenthal (edited 12-04-2005).]

It just occurred to me that there is another alternative, namely:

Leave the Styles unchanged
Use NI Bandstand for non-drum channels
Load up Soundfont XG Drum Kits in a separate VST utilizing something like LiveSynth Pro or SynthFont, etc.

This would work but you would need to know on which channels the drums are located for each to the Yamaha styles....a pain. and block those channels from going to Bandstand. Everything is possible and so is this. You might take a moderate hit in quality of the drum kits but the overall result may still be better.

Hi Frank,
how bizzare, I'd thought of the same thing ie use drum soundfonts, to save all the converting to gm, and just use bandstand for the rest of the backing instruments. Wasn't sure if you'd be happy to do that.

I'm pretty certain you'll find that the drums are on channel 10. ( or you may find some on channel 9. DON't CONFUSE TRACK No's with midi channel no's. Either way it should be fixable. The midi channel is DEST CHAN. Next to Track name. You may find 2 to 3 tracks with the same Dest Channel no. ( midi channel).


I think I read somewhere that you actually have a creative sound card. Are you able to load your drum soundfont into it??
OMB vers 8 has multiple outs. All you'd need to do is set channel 10 to to your creative card. I'm aware that maybe your set up won't allow you to use that soundcard.

I have used a mix of OMB out, consisting of usb ( Clavinova), audigy card ( for fonts) , & Forte for hypercanvas.
You may find using soundfont drums an easier solution than converting xg drums to gm.
No doubt you'll come up with a solution.

Just out of interest, can you actually convert Bandstand drums to Soundfont format using one of your conversion programs???
best wishes
Rikki
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Frank L. Rosenthal:
[B]

Yes, Frank, this was an approach I had
recommended to you quite a while ago when
discussing Forte channel filters and LiveSynth.
I didn't bring it up again, since I know
you want to use only the highest
quality sounds(including drums)available.
I have used it with reasonable success myself, but my needs for highest sound quality are more modest than yours(due to the obvious cost).
Like you say, if this lower drum sound quality is acceptable, then it is an
alternative. However, since I personally believe, the drums are the most crucial to giving an arranger as good a live sound as possible, your FLR2005 drums will not be up to par. If only Kontakt would get their act
together and have proper drum patch selection, then you will be a very happy man(flr2006?).