How are MIDI songs made???

[jacob5150]

I've always wondered this....and now its time to finally ask.... how do people manage to make MIDI's of songs...for example, i have a MIDI of the song "' Eruption" among all the other VH songs.. granit, it sounds funny and all, but how do people make it? is there such thing as a WAV to MIDI converter? do people manualy actually make these, and if they do, hows that possible?

[POD GOD]

Well, there's a few ways to do this. Some guys record from their midi keyboard or drum machine through a midi connection. Others edit using software such as Cakewalk, Fruity Loops or whatever. I've made midis both ways and either way, it's a lot of work.

[Metebelis]

I used to be really into midi - I used Cakewalk and a quality Yamaha sound card with 800+ voices. midi allows you to create sounds almost impossible to create elsewhere ( on a budget ) but ultimately the music is accurate but impersonal and an awful lot of work. Its much more satisfiying playing an instrument yourself . But I do use midi for backing ( especially drums ).

There are wav to midi converters - I tried one once in a shop - I played led zep - and classical piano came out of the amp -- wierd.

[coolez]

jacob,

I typically only do drums with MIDI since I'm not a drummer, but let me tell you, if there was a magic utility to convert WAV to MIDI, life would be so much easier! My drum programming consists for several days of listening closely to the drum pattern, accents, etc. and then as closely as possible recreating them beat by beat using a MIDI editor (I used to use Cakewalk SONAR, but now use Steinberg Cubase SX).

Basically, in a sequencer such as Cubase, you have a time grid set to a certain tempo. Visually on the grid you can see the different beats; 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, as well as any fraction in between. A simple drum beat would be kick drum on beats 1 and 3, and snare drum on 2 and 4, while a constant but dynamic sequence of hi-hat is played on every beat. You manually place notes at these postiions to create your pattern. Then you either repeat it for any number of measures, or create a new pattern for other sections of the song, varying each ever so slightly to avoid the track sounding too steril and fake. It can be quite maddening and it really takes a lot of effort and dedication to get something sounding halfway decent. But once you get good at it, it becomes easier.

The same goes for any other type of instrument. Music is mathematics, and you have to look at it from that point of view to do MIDI programming.

Now of course you could just bang out the drums on your keyboard and perform the songs live, thus eliminating the manual programming aspect. I do this for keyboards, since I can actually play that instrument, but drums are a different story. I think not only my fiance but the rest of the apartment complex would kill me if I brought live drums into my little studio room and tried to learn how to play them. [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I know this is probably way more information than you were looking for, but I could go on for days. I've contemplated doing a tutorial on how to do MIDI drum programming from scratch, much like POD GOD's tutorials on turning already composed MIDI into nicer sounding backing tracks. Some day...

Eric

Hmm. I know midi through the means of notation on cakewalk.

[jacob5150]

wow guys!! thank you soo much for all this information, it makes me appreshieat MIDI a lot more seeing how hard it is to actually program all that...wow [img]images/smilies/icon_thumb1.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/icon_thumb1.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[POD GOD]

[ QUOTE ]
coolez said:
I've contemplated doing a tutorial on how to do MIDI drum programming from scratch, much like POD GOD's tutorials on turning already composed MIDI into nicer sounding backing tracks. Some day...

Eric

[/ QUOTE ]

Dude, if you do get a chance to do this, that would be incredible! [img]images/smilies/woot.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/woot.gif[/img] [img]images/smilies/woot.gif[/img] I have been looking for a tutorial to explain this forever. I can program bass (using Cakewalk Sonar & Fruity Loops) but I'm no drummer and this would certainly help me out big time! [img]images/smilies/icon_thumb1.gif[/img]

[jacob5150]

i'm remixing a MIDI i have of the song "Dreams" , i'm new to this, so what i'm just doing is changing patches and levels, its souding cool, i wish i had fancy programs to add effects like reverb..but i just have MIDI mistro