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Author Topic: Sound fonts  (Read 3666 times)
sciurius
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« on: June 25, 2021, 06:20:48 AM »

The sound of an instrument depends very much on the soundfont that is used by the midi synthesizer. This becomes an issue when sharing styles (grooves): What sounds nice with my font may sound unsatisfactory with your font.

For production work I split everything. Using "mma -T" I create midi files for the individual instruments, run them separatey through a synthesizer (timidity or fluidsynth), often with different soundfonts for different instruments, and mix all audio files in the DAW (Ardour). Sometimes I import the raw midi files as well and synthesize them in Ardour.

How do you do it?
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bvdp
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« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2021, 04:01:38 PM »

Ah, the curse of MIDI ... of course, this really has no MMA solution, but it's a problem for some!

Fortunately, for me, I use MMA to produce files that sound good on MY equipment (which is NOT the latest and pretty much low end). But, there are something you can do using different INCLUDEs in your MMA source files, namely different patch sets for different synths.

Other than that, the OPs idea about creating different tracks which are then converted to audio is probably the best. I think that MIDI should be looked at as an intermediate format.

Lets get some other ideas here!
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sciurius
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« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2021, 01:13:14 PM »

It would be helpful to have a command line option to generate separate midis for all tracks.

Not necessary, just helpful  Smiley .
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bvdp
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« Reply #3 on: June 26, 2021, 04:05:55 PM »

Does the the command MIDISplit already do this for you?

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sciurius
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« Reply #4 on: June 26, 2021, 07:02:44 PM »

Yes, but you still would have to split the tracks out. My hypothetical command line option (e.g. -U) to generate separate midis for all tracks would produce multiple files:

Code:
$ mma -U song.mma
$ ls
 song-Drum-HiHatOpen.mid     song-Drum-Kick2.mid     song-Drum-HiHatClose.mid
 song-Plectrum.mid           song-Bass.mid           song-Piano.mid
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bvdp
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« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2021, 09:28:33 PM »

Yup. I've added this to the request list.

I suppose that one would most likely do a MidiSplit in the file to split the channels (unless you want all the drums packed into a single file) and then when creating the midi files it would simply start a new file after encountering each Meta TrkName.

Does this already do it? http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/midi_splitter.pl
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bvdp
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« Reply #6 on: June 29, 2021, 05:21:49 PM »

Thinking about track splitting ...

Could do with with 2 different options:

    -xCSPLIT  ... split output by midi channels
    -xTSPLIT  ...  split by tracks ... need a flag to combine all drum tracks?

Check to make sure user isn't setting both options.

The tracks would be named Foo-C10.mid, Foo-C9, Foo-C16, etc or Foo-Drum-1.mid, Foo-Solo.mid, Foo-Chord-Sus.mid.

I had a quick look at the code and don't see anything making it too hard. Just one thing: Meta track data. I think it'd be a coding choice: just skip all meta data (probably not a good idea); write the meta data to each track (needless duplication?).

Love some comments ... no promises on results Smiley

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sciurius
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« Reply #7 on: July 02, 2021, 08:57:51 AM »


It splits into track/channels but doesn't split multiple instruments that share a single channel (in particular, percussion instruments).
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sciurius
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« Reply #8 on: July 02, 2021, 09:05:13 AM »

Thinking about track splitting ...

    -xTSPLIT  ...  split by tracks ... need a flag to combine all drum tracks?

Yes, if "split by tracks" means MMA tracks, not MIDI tracks.

I don't see use for a combinethedrums flag but other people may have different views.
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bvdp
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« Reply #9 on: July 02, 2021, 04:18:06 PM »

You do know that the meta track (including lyrics) would be written to each split off file ... the meta track is needed for timing, volume, etc.

Anyway, I have added this idea to the TODO file. Hopefully I can do this over the next few weeks. Right now we are all dealing with our heat wave ... 40+ degrees is not my idea of a nice summer day (for my Fahrenheit friends that is 105+) nor is it motivation for coding, even with a/c in the house. 
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bvdp
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« Reply #10 on: July 14, 2021, 03:53:23 PM »

Just a heads up. I have coded -xTsplit and -xCsplit. These split the file by track (including a separate file for each drum) or channel. I still need to do a few sanity checks and the docs, but it's very close. Hopefully I can do a devl release before the weekend. Stay tuned to this space!
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