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Logic Pro 7 & earlier 4.5 Gold MIDI Difficulties

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Tim Coulson

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Hi Guys

I'm totally new to using midi. I'm reaching out to you guys because I hope you can tell me what I'm doing wrong. I can't get audio sounds from the midi notes / events - I'll try to explain.

I have old Logic Gold 4.5. I have always used it only with a desktop device called Omni I/O Delta 44 - something like that. Anyway I have always used it for straight audio recording, direct guitar inputs and mics, that's it. It still works fine for that.

So after having it for 10 years now I'm interested in midi. I have a feeling my problem has to do with drivers or maybe even windows settings. Which I know very little about.

I selected the grand piano track, then used the pencil tool to create bars, then opened the score sheet and created a series of notes. When I play it, the little level meter shows it doing something in the Arrange window. But no sound. I can also export as midi file, then it plays just fine with Windows Media Player. But I need to be able to hear it in Logic.

Also similarly, the demo songs load up and the same thing happens.

If anyone can help clue me in it would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Hi tim,

What you have done is made or created midi data inly. In order for that data to "make sound" you require a tone generator or virtual instrument to do this.

I can't remember if and what VI's came with Logic Gold for the PC. unfortunately, back then most if not all the now included plug-ins were added at an extra cost and required CD's for authorization.

That said, I'm sure if you go to a place like KVR, a web site that deals with VI plugins (Virtual Instruments). You can find many free plug-ins there, and for the PC there is actually a very large number of these.

Once you have them (VST format I believe) and install them, you should be able to take your midi data and run it to a VI in order to make sound.

To do a quick summery: you require a tone generator in order to make sounds with your midi data.
Simply playing midi data (which is not audio data, rather data that tells a device what notes to ply, how long they are held, how hard they were played, among other things) would out this will not make any kind of sound.
The reason windows media plays something is because it has an internal sound source that it uses when playing midi data, I'm not sure if you can access this, you will have to ask someone who is a Windows XP person.

Hope that makes some kind of sense to you, but then again, the manual is always a good place to start as well ;-)
 
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Tim what you wanna to do is:
- go into The Evironment (Ctrl 8)
- go to where it saids audio on the left side, click & hold on that, & choose from the menu MIDI Instr.
- go to the New Tab on the Top Left, click on it, a menu appears, go down the list until you see Internal, from there is a list of tone generating sounds that would be or should be build into your computer (I have a mac, so mines would be Apple Quicktime. You sound like you have windows so you might have Microsoft SW Synthesizer or something related to your internal soundcard built into your computer)
- after you have chosen one, a icon will appear with the tone generating sound you have chosen, you take a arrow point out of the GM Devices (the icons with the 16 squares that are numbered), connect it to the icon that has the tone generating sound. A message will pop up saying "Cable and Channel Port is Set! Do you want to remove the channels port setting?" You click the remove tab and your finish
- Now everytime you click on a key on your keyboard, you should at least hear a piano sound
- Now save this as a project, give it a name such as "GM Generated Sounds" so can go back to this without doing the whole process again and your on your way.

I hope this helps
 
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Either of the above will help (though I'm not sure if 4.5 did have virtual instruments, check the manual that came with it).

If it did, one important thing to note is the difference between the two types of "instrument", ie Logic's built in virtual instrument which generate sound from within Logic and MIDI instruments, which rely on sound from either the computer's inbuilt soundcard, a third party soundcard fitted into one of the PCI slots, or an external sound module or keyboard with onboard sounds.
 
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Hi Thanks for the response. Here is some updated info. I hope you can keep helping me with this.

I don't know how to tell if it has any virtual instruments with it. When I open a new file it has different instruments listed on "tracks" grand piano, fingered bass, trumpet etc. Also in the Environment window it has icons for all of the same. Is there a folder where it will look for virtual instrument files? There is a folder with VST in the name under Logic directory, but it is empty.

I did find an old CD that looks like it has piano and synth sounds. I think it came with it. Too bad it wants serial numbers and passwords, so that won't work.

The windows version is ME. Under the control panel / sounds multimedia, there is a pull-down for MIDI Music Playback. The choices are Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, and MPU-401, that's it. These choices are also available in Logic along the left side, and No Device is an option here as well. I've played around with the options, but no luck.

The original soundcard is possibly disabled. I seem to remember something about that, from when I installed the Omni I/O which came with it's own card. But I still don't get why media player plays a piano sound, when Logic is not open. It is behaving like it's not recognizing any tone generator.

Willnubu, I followed your directions. Everything worked pretty much like you said. When I go to New menu and Internal, the only choice there is AutoLink. (Which I found something about under MIDI Settings - a check box for "Use AUTOLINK with SoundDiver or SoundSurfer if available". No idea what that means. ) But it did create an icon for Autolink, I connected it with a cable like you said. No dice.

Any ideas? I will look for some VST files online, and try putting some in the empty folder.
 
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Hi Tim,

The "tracks" such as grand piano, fingered bass, trumpet, etc, those are the ones that would play the tone generating sounds from GS Wavetable Synth & MPU-401. How to get these to work in Windows, that's why I left Windows alone, sorry.

A possible reason why media player plays piano sounds only is because you have not program that midi file to play anything but that. You have go back into Logic with that midi file, put it on those "tracks" such as grand piano, fingered bass, trumpet, etc, select the track that has the midi file on it, go to Open Event List (Ctrl 2), and right click on the symbol that looks like the number 88. It will create tone generating program information so that midi file will tell the program what sound to play. Look at the headings, on top, in the Event List where it says POSITION, STATUS, CHA, etc, look under VAL, you will see a number 0 (to the right is Grand Piano), click & hold & you'll see different options for sounds. Pick which one you want the midi file to sound like, export the the midi file, and listen to it in media player. It should playback the sound you selected.

The "Use AUTOLINK with SoundDiver or SoundSurfer if available" I think only works if you have the SoundDiver and SoundSurfer programs. If you have them, your on your own with that because I know nothing about that.

As far as virtual instruments, those would be used in the tracks called "AudioInst" or "AudioInstrument" that uses Logic instruments or 3rd Party VST instruments. You take 3rd party VST instruments and put them in that same VST folder you found in that same Logic directory (make sure you quick Logic when you do this so when you launch Logic, they will appear in that "AudioInst" track under the "VST" section.

As far as where to find 3rd party VST instruments, go to http://mda.smartelectronix.com/
and you'll find VSTs that still might work with Windows ME. You can also go to http://www.kvraudio.com/ and do a "Plug In Database" search

I hope this helps.
 
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1) Does your Omni I/O Delta 44 have physical MIDI in and out ports?

2) Have you looked in the environment do see if you have a "physical input" and "sequencer" in the "clicks & ports" layer?

3) Do you have an adapter cable for your built-in sound card so you can connect a full size MIDI cable?

4) Have you loaded the drivers for your sound card that support its MIDI functionality?
 
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It works! Awesomeness . . .

Many Thanks Willnubu. I loaded a couple vst's I found like you said. And thanks to your suggestion I used one of the Audio Instrument tracks, did some notes on the score, then opened the Environment window which now looks more like a mixing board. I remembered there is a lot of stuff on there you have to click and hold . . . so near the top of the mixing board channel there appeared a menu with the vst sounds I loaded. And that was it.

Before that, I tried your suggestion about the event list, and it also worked like you said, with the different sounds in windows media player.

Anyway I'm up and running. I'm excited to get into this.

Juan to answer your question, there are no physical midi connections. But I do have a new Yamaha keyboard with a USB / MIDI port, with driver CD of course. I guess my next project will be get this to work with Logic as a midi controller. I can't believe I never got into this before . . .
 
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