|
In the previous
Chapter I left the Midi subject with
the reminder, that midi records notes
and other information, not the sounds.
Midi lets the computer record the
notes and play it back, optionally
after processing the notes in various
ways. I also came up with the word
"Sequencer". In the next
chapters you can read much more about
the subject. To start, this chapter
contains a short history of my early
years with computerized dub, a time
before I came online and started the
Dubroom in 1997, as well as a more
detailed description of the Sequencer
and other basic MIDI knowledge.
For a long time, midi
was the only way I could use my
computer. I had two soundcards,
Soundblasters 1.0, that both had one
output. The funny things of these
soundcards was, that they had a little
synthesizer chip, a very cheap
synthesizer onboard, which could be
played by midi. Now what did that
mean, especially having two? I used
the FM-Chip on one SoundBlaster to
play a drum and bass part, and the
other card played some chords. The
sounds were terrible, those of you who
remember the early 1990's surely know
about it. It's the sound you get in
very cheap children's keyboards.
I had a line with bass
and drum, and another with the chords,
which I connected to my mixing table.
The only effect I had was a tape
recorder, which I used for echo
creations. I used midi to create the
riddims. Now what exactly did I use
for that?
SEQUENCER
As you probably know,
in a studio you have multi-track
recording devices. Instruments are all
recorded on a different track, and the
complete song is mixed over a mixing
board and recorded to a two track
(stereo, left and right) master tape.
Although this is all audio (sound
recording), midi uses a similar kind
of technology. The multi track device
is a Sequencer. Sequencer software
(there is also hardware, but I will
not discuss that here) has different
tracks. You can assign this track to a
certain instrument, and then you can
start recording or programming notes,
which can later be played back
together with other tracks and
instruments.
CHANNELS
As you might remember,
I wrote earlier I used one
SoundBlaster 1.0 for drum and bass,
and the other one for chords, the
skanks. One SoundBlaster can play
different instruments at the same
time. In the sequencer you can record
the different instruments apart from
each other, and mix them to the stereo
line-out of the Soundcard. Every
SoundBlaster had 16 different
channels, so in principal I could use
16 different instruments out of a bank
of 127 and an equal amount of
percussion instruments. I had a lot of
limitations back then, but almost
every MIDI device has different
channels, in order to "be"
different instruments. But I used two
channels on the first Soundcard, and
three on the other one. Then how did
the computer know which notes he had
to send to which soundcard?
PORTS
A sequencer doesn't
only assign instruments to a certain
MIDI Channel, it also possible to
assign PORT numbers. You can connect
different MIDI devices to your
computer, and your sequencer can play
a song (a midifile) using all
connected devices. The drums would be
played by a drum computer on one port,
while there are also different
synthesizers and sound modules
(keyboards without keyboard, only the
sounds) play on different ports. Every
port can have 16 MIDI channels. Most
of the time, your computer will let
you connect only one MIDI device for
input (usually a keyboard to play
notes on), and one for output, and
therefore you only use 2 ports most of
the time. So you would have only two
instruments available for playback:
the midi synthesizer/sampler on your
soundcard, and an external device,
such as a sound module. There are
devices that will enable you to
control more different ports over one
computer, but to keep it simple I will
stick to the most common
configuration. It is still possible to
connect more external devices through
just the one midi out that your
soundcard will give you, you'll have
to assign them all with different
channels and chain-connect them. But
that's also getting to deep for now,
so I will leave it like this.
BASIC CONFIGURATION
For the next Chapters,
I will use the next basic
configuration: A computer, an external
midi keyboard and one SoundBlaster
Live! 1024. It has a midi sampler on
it, and a midi out, as well as a midi
in for recording notes. In principal,
this is all you need to create a
reasonable Dub, especially when you're
just starting. I am grateful to know
that I have created Dub only with a
SoundBlaster (then still the AWE, but
that is comparable to the Live), so it
is possible. I use the SoundBlaster
Live, because it has a sampler (look
left for deeper explanation), but you
can use almost any contemporary
soundcard with an onboard synth. |
