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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.
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