Post by mbunkerusa on Sept 10, 2015 14:01:07 GMT
Hello friends of MIDI!
I am a retired programmer, spent most of my years with IBM (30.5 ears), but also worked in Point-of-Sale (POS) and credit cards, and for the state of Florida programming on their Computer Aided Dispatch system.
I got interested in MIDI in 1981 when I bought an early IBM PC. I wrote some of the first Basic programs for the Roland MPU-401, wrote three synthesizer editor programs (two for Proteus synths), wrote a graphical scoring program (CMus, but you won't find it) and have been actively interested in MIDI as a songfile storage mechanism for like, almost forever.
I currently use Overture as my primary scoring software (sonicscores.com) but I have tried Cantabile, Plogue, and some of the other tools briefly. I have Sonar Platinum as my DAW, which I use infrequently. Nevertheless I keep it up-to-date.
I can't tell you how many hardware synths I ditched after I bought the Roland Integra-7, literally throwing them in the trash. The sounds are generally fabulous, but the GM and upgraded GM sounds are so good, I use them almost exclusively. This synth is top-of-the-line and still fairly new. It is Roland's latest version of the Sound Canvas and the sound quality is (as I said) fabulous.
Overture does everything I need score-wise to do with a song file. It is a graphical score editor, way ahead of Finale, Notion, Steinberg, and similar. It can use VSTi synths, but I prefer my external Roland Integra-7 hardware synth.
I often use LoopBE30 MIDI pipes to connect Overture as a front-end to Sonar, giving me access to a powerful DAW with all of its resources, driven by a powerful graphical score view. But generally, I only use Overture because my music is mostly score-based and it has all of the I/O that I need except Rewire. But LoopBE30 makes up for that nicely.
I am into classical music and have a collection from many composers, Bach being the favorite. I also have a huge number of English Madrigals, and numerous church anthems that I have painstakingly entered by hand. But basically, I take any MIDI songfiles that I can get my hands on and make Overture scores out of them. That is why I joined the Classical MIDI Archives. I can download 5 MIDI files a day for free, so I am happy as I can be.
I recently got a new HP desktop, 4-cores, fastest CPU I could get (36 GHz), 27 inch display, and 12 Gb of memory, a music machine made in Heaven. All of my gear is USB-based, so I finally got rid of that wonderful MIDIman patchbay. I use Windows 10 (my is it fast). The only other hardware synth that I kept is my Yamaha Motif XS Other software synths that I have kept (after finally dumping at least 8 more):
Garritan Personal Orchestra
Garritan Instant Orchestra
Garritan Classic Pipe Organs
Miroslav Orchestra
I guess that's enough about me. I'm happy to be here and I hope I can be a resource, but there is also so much more for me to learn, so I humble myself in your presence, good MIDIers. -Mike
