Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dr Teeth Hey, Parik. Do you still have any notes on the SoundSmith
format? File format, that is.
AFA Parik basically everything you need to play, edit, etc, etc both ss and
synthlab songs are in the ADV libs.
Dr Teeth Question---> What is the best file you've come across in your
listening years?
AFA Parik I love row-row-row your boat, Popcorn. Also HouseBeat (500k!)
AFC Eddie Why, Brite, how nice of you to say that! Thanks!
AFC Brite when I get my new hard drive, I'll have more room to play with SS
files
AFL JoyceM Jim, He (Dave) told me he would try very hard to make this event.
If he can't, I have the necessary information.
Dr Teeth I'm still here, really! It is kind of disconcerting when the Forum
leader leaves.....
AFL JoyceM Okay, as most of you all know, SevenHills will be releasing
SoundSmith in the next couple of months. It is still being beta
tested. Also, it will have (and does have) MIDI input
capabilities.
AFA Parik i'm told SS's midi input is, to put it nicely, awful. You need
to have a prerecorded song already playing or somesuch nonesense.
True?
Dr Teeth Does SoundSmith add any more and/or better editing tools in 1.0?
AFL JoyceM Parik, the inputting with MIDI right now is very awkward.
(difficult in my opinion), but with the beta version I have, that
'feature' will be changing.
AFL JoyceM I thought so too, Marty :) We are hoping that editing tools and
other utilites will be featured with SS (how do you like that
non-disclosure comment - I feel like Apple ) :)
AFA Parik it sounds like the only thing changed in ss 1.0 is awkard MIDI
input. and the owner.
Dr Teeth Well, I just wonder if there will be anything like Track volume,
etc.
AFL JoyceM Parik, I feel positive that the final release of SS will be a 100%
improvement over what we now have available. The Window menu is
really quite nice, and with input from the beta testers, I am
sure SevenHills will do the best they can to bring us a super,
easy to use, edit, program.
AFL Marty But MIDI input for SS is a big deal. It's such a drudge to input
tunes via that spreadsheet thing.
AFL JoyceM Agree, Marty. and designing MIDI input into a program that didn't
have it is difficult.
Dr Teeth SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, MARTY (from someone who canna play a note)
AFC Eddie MIDI capability for SS will mean conversion capability to and from
other formats.
AFL JoyceM No, Greg....not yet. I am sure the closer they get to a final,
releasable version, prices will be discussed.
AFA Parik i dunno, my feeling is that if NoiseTracker gets MIDI and editing
capabilities, or if SynthLAB get editing, it would kick.
AFL Marty That is correct, Joyce. Dave Hecker posted something to that
effect in the Seven Hills area.
AFC Eddie I doubt if SLab will ever get editing or NT will ever get MIDI.
AFA Parik you could, I guess, use SoundSmith to create your songs and
NoiseTracker to set the instruments.
AFC Eddie I doubt if SS will save or load in MIDI file format, Greg.
Dr Teeth NT doesn't support any commands other than volume and tempo.
AFL JoyceM Greg, I can't answer that....I don't know. I can't get the MIDI
thingie to work well enought.
KimBrennan OK. Under 5.04 I found that SS had to have the MIDI device ON and
connected. Otherwise it wouldn't work at all.
AFL JoyceM I did....that wasn't the problem, hmmmm, how do I say this, the
awkwardness of imputting with MIDI was beyond my
comprehension/ability.
Dr Teeth I would think that you would have to have a very fast playing song
to get any kind of an accurate input.
AFL JoyceM I use Floyd's FileTools, and have to disable it before I can run
SS - otherwise I get dumped.
AFC Eddie Yes, Filetools will not work with any program in MIDI input.
Dr Teeth SS .95 takes a LOT of room, I don't see that 1.0 will take any
less.
AFL JoyceM I know, Eddie...but I can't even run SS with FileTools active.
For some reason, those two are not compatible.
AFC Eddie One thing to note: SS MIDI will never allow changes in note
duration.
Dr Teeth The main EXE file is an image of some 700K or so (but only about
60-70k on the disk.
KimBrennan I noted some menu changes from .95 to 1.0b5
AFL JoyceM Yes, I did too. I really think that SevenHills is trying.
AFC Eddie Yes, Teeth, but you can't do quarter notes, half notes, whole
notes, etc. within a track.
AFC Eddie Because the basic note length is determined by the instrument
sample.
Dr Teeth All 'true musicianship' is is how less lazy you are to get the
accidentals perfect. What numbers?
AFC Eddie You can't say, for instance, that one note of a certain inst. will
be precisely twice as long as the last.
AFC Eddie Let's say you had a string instrument in Soundsmith and wanted to
do a one track tune (boring, I know, but just for argument sake).
And you wanted to play a melody which had some notes longer than
others. How do you do it in SS?
AFC Eddie But what if you wanted one note to be two or three beats longer
than the last?
Dr Teeth Er, what do you mean "longer than the last". In soundsmith, you
can set out how many spaces to a beat (versus beats to a
measure). To extend the length of the note you just put the Stp
or next note that much further down the line. Or are you talking
about having the decay of one note extend further than the
duration of the one following it?
SevenHills Hi! Gee, I didn't know you were billing me as an actual guest! I
woulda quit early to be here on time!
AFL JoyceM No problem, Dave - we are just glad you could make it. Dave, do
you want to tell us a little about SoundSmith....I am sure I left
out some important items.
AFC Eddie Sorry, Teeth, we should allow our guest to go now... I'd like to
continue this with you later, tho!
AFL JoyceM We did, and I know that some people had some questions that I
couldn't answer.
SevenHills I'll have to read the transcript when it's posted. Keep in mind
that this discussion is about a program that is NOT released, so
things are still changing. Specifically, MIDI support (being new)
isn't yet as advanced as we want it.
SevenHills You can suggest features for SoundSmith; v1.0 is NOT done (it only
recently entered beta testing). I obviously can't make any
guarantees about _when_ a particular suggestion would be
implemented, but if you've got any, please send them via email to
"SevenHills" (if we get your suggestions there's a chance for
inclusion; if we don't get them then there's no way
we can include them).
Dr Teeth Is there any plans for Global Track volume (where, if wanted you
could automatically assign track volumes that would let you
change volume during a song without having to do each note by
hand?
DanW190 Great, thanks! Do you mean via track or via selection box?
Dr Teeth It's mostly so you can follow accidentals in music that goes from
all soft to all loud. Which is almost impossible with SS .95
Dr Teeth How about Fade (From volume) (To volume) Instead of Fade
completely in or Fade comepletly out?
Dr Teeth I've got millions of em, having to punch in all those 'cells' by
hand and then doing the post producion on it
Dr Teeth How about a 'Cut instrument from track' option. For use with Ian
Schmidts Modifier (converts Amegia Mod files), so you could
expand from the MOD's four tracks to the full 15
DanW190 How about a checkbox in the "Fade" dialog that would only place
the "3xx" volume change command in note boxes that have an
instrument defined (to eliminate the funny "choppy" sound you get
when sometimes fading large selections of unsustaining
instruments?) (or maybe I should just e-mail this stuff?) :)
Dr Teeth (I didn't know that was what was causing the funny choppy sound,
hmmmm)
SevenHills Dan, that might be possible, but don't know how it would sound
(since fading is normally a consistent drop/increase in volume
over a set amount of time).
DanW190 All I can say is that some selections sound better when you remove
the 3xx commands from sections that don't have notes playing..
This happened when fading an entire block, or other size ranges.
I'll e-mail you the full info.
Dr Teeth I think that the 'choppy sound is caused by fading a too small
area.
SevenHills Email would be best because it'll _definitely_ get saved in our
SoundSmith folder so our SS project manager can deal with it.
I can imagine a choppy sound could occur fading over too small an
area, or fading a large area where you've got a few notes here
and there (because there would be a steady fade during silence,
then a sudden drop/increase when the next batch of notes was hit.
Dr Teeth BTW, I'm curious. How much of the program is still Huibert's
programming?
SevenHills Huibert is still doing 100% of the coding. He's mainly interested
in getting MIDI done and releasing version 1.0 ASAP. We'd like
to incorporate more feature changes.
DanW190 How about adding resource support for the menus and windows? :)
AFC Eddie Dave, I'll send you a copy of the transcript of this chat in its
entirety so you can see all the suggestions.
AFL JoyceM I know it is getting late back east...do we have any more
questions for Seven Hills?
Dr Teeth Hmm. Well I know that I could make myself a real nuisance for
making suggestions. But I'll do them in E mail...
SevenHills Sure
Dr Teeth Huibert sent me a copy of SS1.0 Alpha, and all it does is bomb
out. Am i mistaken that he changed the format of
SoundSmith.Config file and that he neglected to send me one?
(I reason this because I erased my config file from .95 and it
bombed out at the same place and time) And the config file from
.95 wont work.
SevenHills I don't think so...I don't believe there is a "config" file with
SoundSmith 1.0b1.
Dr Teeth Well all he sent was the "Main" along with the fill .95, so maybe
therein lies the rub....
SevenHills Remember, it _was_ alpha. "Main" is where all the changes are
taking place.
AFL JoyceM Dave (SevenHills), I really appreciate you coming by this evening.
I have to leave early, but both AFA Gene and AFC Eddie will be
able to help you and the rest of our guests. Again, thanks.
Dr Teeth Any proposed release date, or are you also playing Apple Computer
on us :)
SevenHills I'd like to go, too...unless there are any other questions?
Release date: "When it's done!" ;)