MIDI MAGIX (Alex`s Computing A-level project) (very flashy but quite useless.) (The project isn`t bad though.) User Instructions. Hardware requirements, You will need: Commodore Amiga with at least 1MB of ram (Probably more! I don`t know!) Midi interface Midi Instrument Connect this equipment as shown in the diagram: ___________________ MIDI INSTRUMENT ____________________ midi out \_____________ | midi in ---------- INTERFACE ----------- | __________________ A M I G A ------------------- LOADING. Insert the disk in the disk drive. The disk will load automatically. Or select the MIDI MAGIX icon from Workbench. You will be presented with an animated introduction screen. Press joystick or left mouse button to pass this. Selecting different graphical routines. Midi Magix has 8 graphical routines to use to display your music. The graphical routines are selected remotely from the MIDI instrument, giving the musical instrument full control over the graphical output. To select a graphics routine simply change the voice on your instrument. This will send a message to the Amiga which will be interpreted by MIDI Magix as "change the graphical routine to routine number..." The voices on your MIDI instrument tend to be grouped according to their type of instrument eg. BRASS instruments together numbered as voices 10 to 20, STRINGS together numbered as voiced 21 to 30 etc. The number of the voice you select is often completely different to the number that is transmitted by your instrument as a MIDI message. sent out by your keyboard is the "real, official" midi number of that instrument and is usually completely different. Basicly the number you type in on your instrument is probably different to the number detected by MIDI Magix. The Preferences screen. For the above reason you will need to configure MIDI Magix to work with your instrument before you can use it. This process has been made as very simple with the easy to use preferences screen. The 8 graphics routines each have a MIDI voice number assigned to them. To change this number to suit your instrument use the horisontal slider bar next to the picture of the routine and the number. If you don`t know the MIDI number that corresponds to the voice number on your instrument then: -Click on the slider bar to highlight it. -Click on the listen box in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. -Select the voice on your instrument, you will see the slider bar automaticaly move to the correct position. -Click on the listen box again to leave the "listening" mode and repeat with the other slider bars. Once you are satisfied with your preferences setting press the right mouse button to start MIDI Magix. Your preferences settings will be saved and will be there the next time you use MIDI Magix. The defalt settings are for a YAMAHA PSS780 keyboard, they correspond to changing the voice to voices 98 to 104. Once MIDI Magix is running select the voice numbers on your instrument to call up the different graphical rounties. As you play music you will see the results appear on the screen. Data on different channels. MIDI Magix will recognises MIDI data sent on all 16 channels. 3 routines cater for this: The pitch vs time graph will use different lines in different colours for each channel. The Playing Piano routine will use different coloured balls to represent the different channels. The Horisontal Bars routine will also use different coloured bars for each channel. The 8 different routines. 1) Pitch vs Time Graph. The music played will be displayed as a line graph of pitch against time. ** DIAG ** ! / Pitch ^ !/\ / ! ! \/ !__________ time-> Data on different channels will be displayed as seperate lines and in different colours. 2) Furistic Piano This is a flashy way of showing which keys are being pressed. When the keys are pressed they will appear as red on the screen. The keyboard on the screen only covers just over one octave and any notes played outside this range will be transposed up or down to fit inside this range. 3) Playing Piano As notes are played a coloured ball will appear over the key on the keyboard on the screen. Notes on different channels will be displayed as a different colour. 4) Velocity vs pitch graph As music is played points are plotted on the graph and a single rainbow coloured line joins these points. This graph is updated everytime a note is played at regular intervals inbetween. This routine is most effective with touch sensitive instruments, the louder the note the higher the peak. 5) Techno Slides Every note on your instrument is assigned 1 of 12 images. As the note is played the image appears on the screen in random colours. Your music is thus converted from a series of sounds into a series of images that appear in time to the music. These are two colour, low-res 320x256 images and can be found in the "pics" directory of your disk. Please feel free to place your own pictures in this directory. 6) Ravey Circles This is a flashy demo routine where two pictures of concentric circles are mixed together on screen to make a pattern. These circles move smoothly over each other making a constantly changing pattern. Finally a message is scrolled over the top of all this. This routine is by Syntax. 7) Sheet music This routine displays the notes played as musical notation in real time. The music appears on the page as it is played! All notes are displayed as crotchet beats on the stave. Chords are also supported. 8) Horisontal Bars As notes are played they appear as horisontal bars across the screen. The higher the pitch of the note played the higher the bar across the screen. Notes played on different channels appear in different colours. If anyone finds a use for this program then please send any constructive comments to: Alex Magnay 63 Tyrone Road Thorpe Bay Essex SS1 3HD ENGLAND I`d like to know what happends to this prog after it gets into PD, I wonder how far it will spread? (Probably not very far!) Any rich people out there can send me a fiver too (for my Uni fund) and I`ll send you the latest version. (I can really see that happening!!) Any AMOS Pro programmers that might like to add more GFX routines to this program, its easy. Look at the code and you should be able to figure it out. Theres just two variables to use: Pitch (thats the pitch of the note) vel (thats the velocity/volume of note.) If you make any good alterations to my prog then send me a copy. This prog was created using AMOS PRO Amiga 500+ 1.5Mb chip 2.0Mb fast A590 20Mb Hard disk 1 external drive Datel Micro Midi interface Yamaha PSS-780 (the preferences are set up for this.) Dpaint III used for graphics Is it me or is EliteII not all its hyped up to be? Well this should get me an A for my A-level Computing course....