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Handhelds Hardware

Pilot Synthesis 93

Posted by Hemos from the pretty-cool-toy dept.
augurist writes: "Own a Pilot? Think there's nothing worth listening to on the radio these days, and you could do better? Or maybe you're a frustrated composer, or (like me) have to sit through hours of mind numbing meetings. Swivel Systems has produced a General MIDI synth and associated music software for the Pilot. Their SG20 looks pretty cool, but I just wonder how fast it gobbles batteries. 'No, no, really, I'm taking notes. What? These? Earbud headphones? Oh no, they're noise cancellation units that my doctor prescribed.'"
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Pilot Synthesis More

Pilot Synthesis

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  • First off, you can build your own midi interface for the palm for less than $10. Do a search on the web and you should be able to find it.

    Secondly, I'd like to hear this next to the Roland PMA-5, a hand-held device that provides a 18 note polyphony and effects, which now goes for $300 dollars new. It isn't much bigger, but provides more features. (and also guzzles your battery pretty quickly)
    PMA-5 review [harmony-central.com]

    Ok, those issues aside, I'm glad to see people making music on their palm. I'm hoping somebody comes out with some handspring modules that do similar things too, and I've also seen some cool synth programs written for gameboy.
  • Actually, she is quite ugly...

    I AM SATAN! (okay, maybe i'm not)
  • Well now... there's someone who speaks the truth. I've always marveled at how we survived withouth these neat little devices. How did we know when our appointments were, or how did we know susie's phone number. Hmmmmm, my daytimer never ran low on battery power.

    So yeah.. it's an uber-geek toy that is also very usefull. But puleeeeze... these things are just friggin klunky, even the smallest ones look like a chore to haul around. I really can't see actually trying to read something on one of these for an extended period of time... hell I can barely stand to read crap on my nifty monitor.

    So yeah... you'll look cool with your palm.. you can impress all the losers on the bus...you can feel superior while sipping java at the coffee shop with one, and yeah..if I had a spare $400 clambakes I'd buy one of these puppies too.
  • Posted by 11223:

    Last Post given how much discussion there%is...
  • Just to elaborate on the other responses (Just Some Guy summed it up nicely), what you're thinking of is the General MIDI standard.
    MIDI is just a protocol. It's a serial protocol that runs at 38.4kbps.
    General MIDI standardized 128 instrument sounds (so that patch 0 is a piano, patch 50 is "synthstrings," etc), that way .MID files that conform to the general MIDI standard sound roughtly the same on any GM-compliant synthesizer. To me, that just means all General MIDI files sound equally cheesy on everything.
    MIDI itself doesn't specify any instruments. It just specifies (among other things) that you can have 16 channels on a port, 128 instruments in a bank, and 128 real-time controllers (pitch wheel, pressure, et al), and it's up to the MIDI module/synth/sampler to interpret all that data in new and exciting ways.

    You see, the MIDI protocol is ubiquitous in the music industry. Kind of like TCP/IP. Danny Elfman and James Horner use MIDI in their film scoring, combined with live recording. Nine Inch Nails-- MIDI out the arse. Moby... MIDI!
    Anything techno, trance, industrial, all 100% MIDI. In fact just about any popular studio recording, even some "acoustic" uses MIDI somewhere, if just for synching.
    Hell, Gary Rydstrom uses MIDI for his sound design work, such as Titanic, Jurassic Park, Phantom Menace, Saving Private Ryan, & other movies he's worked on.
    Why does it all sound so good? Because the sounds are coming various mucho-$$$ samplers and synthesizers. But you have to have a way of controlling the samplers via input devices. And you do that with a highly versatile protocol known as, you guessed it, MIDI!
    MIDI ain't going away. But I wish General MIDI would die, along with the "extensions" such as GS and XG.
    So you see Timmy, you wouldn't want to live in a world... a world without MIDI!
  • doh, you're correct, i mislabeled it. i should have provided the link [berkeley.edu] when i filled it out.

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau
  • BASIC is the best programming language out there! I don't know where i'd be without it.
  • The MIDI class I took in college was one of the most engaging classes I took! Of course it depends on the professor. It was a combination MIDI/recording/sound engineering/composition class.
    For the first 2 weeks, we didn't even touch MIDI, we explored the good 'ol reel-reel tape decks. Lots of cutting, inverting, splicing, speed adjusting. It gained me plenty of new respect for reel tape decks.
    The final exam consisted of everybody doing a final project using a mixture of techniques, and then PERFORMING them in front of about 300 people at a spring concert. "Performing" involved your piece playing over the speaker system while you have some sort of performance art thing to go along with it. Some were hilarious, and mine was real abstract--- called "Paranoia." I can't really explain it, but it involved me running around with a black scarf over my face and a mannequin torso attached to my side. Um, you had to be there. I'm not a performance artist which is what made it so much fun.
    But anyway... um, what were we talking about again?
  • Think about it. You are a musician. Your hear a little ditty in your head. Forget the little riff/song/series of nots in your head? No chance, rip out the palm pilot and record it.

  • What would really make this into a killer product would be if they would allow you to do true wavetable synthesis (not that dsp intesive, bargain SB clones do it) ... ie let you load your own samples into the unit. that would make this a remarcable buy. I would pay $500+ for something like that. General Midi would be passable so i could jot down sketches quickly, but i would LOVE to be able to go and play a show at a club bringing only my palm V :)

    Anyone know of anything like this?
    - Josh "Yoshi" Steiner

    ---
    Xiphoid Process Records - http://xiphoidprocess.com
    San Francisco based electronic music.
  • This is certainly a great little product and should give other small MIDI sequencers such as the Yamaha QY series or the Boss Dr. Rythm series a run for their money.

    However, the SG20 can only play 24 voices simultaneously. That is seriously lacking and well behind the competition. Think about it: Drum track, bass, snare, high hat; bass track, 2 notes; synth track, 5 notes, strings, 5 notes; guitar, 6 notes; lead voice, 3 notes. Not an extreme situation in any given MIDI file, but it will exhaust this unit already.

    I have seen plenty of MIDI files (and have myself created some) that severely tax my software synth due to the large quantity of simultaneous notes (32-48). The SG20 could never handle those and would sound awful, because any new note immediately silences an old one that should still be playing. That sounds worse than a bad mp3.
  • Just curious, would any of the midi-based solutions be capable of playing back using the speaker on a TRGPro [trgpro.com]? It's a clone that licenses the PalmOS (Kind of like the Handspring Visor), but it claims to have some nifty extras, including "enhanced audio".

    It also comes with a slot for compact flash cards. Hmmm... TRGPro + 340MB IBM Microdrive + Dragonball processor + "Enhanced Audio"... mp3s?
  • Cut the sexism and bias out right now before it cuts you out. Give her a break. I didn't read the article myself, in fact I didn't until I read her post (out of curiosity just to make sure I wouldn't read through the comments uninformed like many others have).
  • It's a serial protocol that runs at 38.4kbps.

    Actually, it runs as 31.2Kbps. How's that for a nice, round number?

  • It's called Techno. Advantage of that type of music is that you only need to play two keys on the cell phone - and if you mess up and skip a few times, call it a break beat.

    Actually, you could have fun with this - program something like the Tocata and Fugue in D minor into it and have it play at random points in time, and pretend you have one of those Hong Kong bleach blonde boy phones.

    Nope, can't have a simple ring, some people have to have "Flight of a Bumble Bee" playing everytime someone wants to call them. So...

    for some real fun program something topical or just plain weird. "Ave Maria" and then hand it to the priest beside you on the subway ("it's for you.") Or "(I'm a) Loser" everytime you see one of these GAP types. ("paging you, sir.")

    At a Microsoft meeting, Bill's whining about being set back five years in his plan to become Bill Vader... and suddenly "You can't always get what you want" comes blasting... ("Message for you, Bill.")

    Or, when Microsoft gets its way, program it to play "U Can't Touch This" around the Judge overseeing the proceedings...
  • I think you are confusing what MIDI can do the MIDI encoded crap you hear on websites.

    Find any keyboardist with even a modest rig and ask how he or she connects all their equipment. MIDI is the industry standard that lets me control a rack of keyboards with my guitar synth(or this Palm device, assuming its really MIDI.)

    Classical music done with a wicked (MIDI-fied) rig: Dig up Emerson, Lake and Powell and listen to Mars, the God of War. Even better, compare that with Holtz' original version. I kid you not, Emerson actually improved on the original score.

  • I've always like this sort of hypothetical what-if, like what if Bach had a Kurzweil K2500 (top-of-the-line sampling keyboard). If you think about it, a lot of the sounds used in modern music are completely unimaginable to someone whose only exposure is to acoustic instruments, so that ability to imagine a sound and then create it is really interesting.
  • Considering the mp4 project is intially based on midi support, this might make mp4 support on the palms REALLY simple! 1000x compression, here we come!

    isn't it mpeg 4 and not mp4? mp4 would be mpeg1 layer 4 wouldn't it? just curious


    My Home: Apartment6 [apartment6.org]
  • I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of this device. It's not for playing back MIDI (although it could be used for that), it's for *composing* music, based on the MIDI protocol. This is not for turning your Pilot into a walkman, it's for turning it into a musical sketchpad.
  • > As far as noise/music/muzak goes, MIDI isn't the
    > greatest thing in the world.

    Dude, probably 95% of the popular music recorded in the world makes use of MIDI. You're confusing crappy web-site software-based proggies with a world-standard Musical Instrument Digital Interface. AKA what you use to get your synths to talk with eachother, and sync to the recording console.

    Please know what you're talking about before you post.

  • No offense, but I think you're misdirected on this one. MIDI doesn't sound like anything. It's a protocol.

    Specifically, it's the Musical Instrument Digital Interface standard that was developed in the mid-80's by a music industry consortium. It was the first popular protocol for letting company A's keyboard send note-on/off events to company B's synthesizer (plus about 15 other types of events, if memory serves).

    MIDI is used for large-scale studio automation, too. It's an easy and cheap way to, say, ramp up your mixer's treble response during the crescendo of that blazing guitar solo. Want to synchronize your light show to the drum track? Get a MIDI-aware controller. It's ubiquitous, really.

    So, you see, those cheesy .mid files on the net aren't what professionals think of when they hear the word "MIDI". They think of a popular, well-defined and powerful method of getting musical or time-related events from one device to another. This little box is just a synthesizer that is designed to receive MIDI note-on events and play a sound. The box itself may have incredible sound, or it may suck. MIDI itself just sounds like any other layer-3 protocol you've listened to recently.

  • I think you are confusing what MIDI can do with a general MIDI synth. Almost every set of plain vanilla general MIDI patches I've ever heard sounds awful. Now if it had an XG or GS sample set, I'd be impressed.
    --
  • Everyone thinks of MIDI as a music protocol, but it's not - it's just a protocol for controlling hardware that's usually used for instruments or internal music synth. However, you could just as easily define the note "middle C" as "the red light above the stage." I've been to concerts where everything from the lights to the smoke machine was MIDI.

    True, but MIDI does stand for Music Instrument Digital Interface ;p

  • augurist writes: "Own a Pilot? [...]

    I hope this doesn't come off sounding pedantic, but no, I don't own a Pilot. I own a Palm. And before that I owned a PalmPilot Professional [cnet.com]. In fact, Pilots haven't been produced for about two years now, not since Palm lost their lawsuit [google.com] to Pilot Pen Company. For anyone interested, here's a little Palm History [geocities.com].
    --

  • Drum notation is a royal pain, and this is coming from a percussion major. Especially when you have to invent your own notation for instruments that historically have never had written notation to begin with.

    I don't see this being much use for me. If I'm at home, anything I'm thinking up just goes right into my computer. If I'm anywhere else, I prefer just to jot down my ideas on paper. It's always right there and there's no interface to get in the way. It remains to be seen if the interface will be a limiting factor for real work.
    Besides... I hate general midi!

  • Review of the sequencer software: (Score:3)

    by algae ( 2196 ) on Friday June 16, 2000 @11:36AM (#997480)

    I've downloaded and tried out the drum machine software that comes with it, so here are some pros and cons This is for the program BeatPad, there are a couple others, including a musical notation program, that I haven't tried yet.

    Pros:

    • Excellent Interface: Both the melody and drum sequencers are intuitive to use, and well scaled to the pilot screen.
    • Lots of patterns: you can have thirty-two each of melody and drum in four banks of eight. This will also send out a program change MIDI signal
    • Flexable MIDI interface: You can set the MIDI channel for both the melody and drum instruments, as well as sending out program changes and a standard MIDI clock (good for controlling an external sequencer).

    Cons:

    • Only one measure: You get four beats to play with per program. If you want a longer sequence, you have to spread it over multiple patterns.
    • No song mode: you can't have it play pattern A1 four times, then automatically switch to pattern B3 for two repeats, etc.
    • Only one melody voice: This is a monophonic (no chords) single voiced melody sequencer. I'd like the ability at least to play a few notes simultaneously (which the drum sequencer can do), and preferably have more than one voice at once as well.
  • It's not so much the MIDI synth, but more the combination of MIDI synth and sequencer software. That essentially lets you compose and arrange songs wherever you may be.

    Myself, I am much more creative when not in front of my computer or even hunched over the piano. Hence, my Yamaha QY-10 (2x the size of the SG20 being discussed here) has been invaluable. Think composing while in the hammock in the garden, or in bed, or out in natute somewhere. Or playing with musical ideas on an airplane. The possibilities are really endless. The smaller, the better. Longer battery life helps, too.
  • All you need to do this sort of thing is a Gameboy cartridge [nanoloop.de]

    - Andy R.

  • I KNOW that the US national anthem was first a poem and only later put to the music of a drinking song

    And a crappy drinking song, at that. Most of us can't hit the note that occurs at the word "free" when we're sober. I can't think of anything more frightening than a bunch of drunken Irishmen singing about their sexual prowess to the tune of "The Star Spangled Banner".
  • I'm getting a hand-me down palm III in a couple weeks, and its main usage will be MIDI. I planned on wiring up an interface and using one of the many sequencers available.

    But what intrigued me more was midi processing of live streams. For instance, an arpeggiator. Or a MIDI delay unit. Or using the tablet to draw and send CC's in real time (fC on the X axis, Q on the Y, for example). Basic MIDI processing is pretty easy to do with an ancient uP, so I'd think the palm would have more than enough power to parse the data and spit it back out unless there was something weird in regards to the serial port's functionality. But I didn't see anything like that when rifling through Palm proggies. Anyone have applicable resources or code snippets?

    On the OT side, does the ora Palm programming book cover the serial port?

    Thus I'm burning Karma in hope of a response.

  • LOL! That would would be an accomplishment, alright. Nah, my parents bought me a Yamaha TX-81z tone generator when I asked for a synthesizer for Christmas when I was a little kid. Talk about a harsh introduction to inter-device communication (not to mention modal user interfaces, FM synthesis, and other heady stuff for an 8th grader).

  • ...who thought "Pilot Synthesis" was about Neon Gensis Evangelion?
    ^_^
  • Perhaps the Air Force should sue the Pilot Pen Company. Alternatively, the MPAA could file the lawsuit, since they own a few movies with characters who are pilots. Also, changing the name from PalmPilot to Palm will really get on McDonald's nerves, since they use (have used?) palm oil on their fries

    Your post came out sounding pedantic, by the way, because it was. But it's all right, we love you anyway.
  • Yes, and the emulation client named EWAN stands for "Emulation Without a Name", and MS-Works stands for "Microsoft Works". Both of these are clear misnomers.

    (by the way, I didn't miss your sarcasm, or the representation of the one-eyed man who can't retract his tongue)

  • I sent an email asking them if they were planning to make a springboard module version... no response yet. Anyone have any info on this?

  • Alot of techno stuff doesn't use MIDI at all. Especially the older stuff. Alot of your older records were little more than some Roland x0x boxes synced up with some FX. MIDI became common on music equipment in the early-to-mid 80's while alot of the more desirable and sought after synths (especially in the techno/electronica world) were made before MIDI was around.
  • Yeah, i've always wondered what 'classical' music would have been like had the composers of the time had access to things like synthesizers and electric guitars.
    Dreamweaver
  • There was a time when the system of choice for music artists was the Atari ST.
    It's easy to pack and it survives the trip.
    The alternitive was the Mac. Easy to pack dosn't allways survive the trip and MIDI is an addon.

    Atari STs continued to be in use in the music industry as late as a few years ago. Music artists can not afford to upgrade computers when they become obsolete or are dicontinued.

    The Palm has the geek toy and manager toy market. This makes it pritty much immune to market realitys technical realitys and "innovation". It survives... even if it becomes junk.. it survives...

    This would be ideal for musicians starting off. Your instrements.. etc... digital syth. and a palm.
    If you ever get a recording contract you can switch to something better.

    A portable sytn and a palm would also be ideal for tweeking out new tunes.
    I'm picturing myself with a palm. My Linux box my sytn and a MIDI keyboard I've been eyeing (no syth all keyboard... an input only device) and some other devices.
    Ug... and me being tone deff... Ohhh I could SOO pissoff the nabors...
  • While I am continually amazed at what the Palm seems capable of, I must ask why you would want a midi synthesizer for Palm. If it were free, I would probably play with it. However, does this have a real market?
  • Considering the mp4 project is intially based on midi support, this might make mp4 support on the palms REALLY simple! 1000x compression, here we come!

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau
  • With the tilt sensors [slashdot.org] that were mentioned around here [slashdot.org] earlier, we can now run pac man, not to mention all kinds of game boy emulations

    I can see the sales geeks in the office now...

  • How much ?
    anyone knows ?

    OverLord
  • Slashdot has had product announcements since it was chip and dips. Granted then it was linking to them on other sites, but just because the submissions are coming straight to slashdot instead of to ZDNet doesn't mean that announcements of tech the editors find interesting is shilling or off topic.

    What's more, unless the company was disparaging their own batter life it sounds like this was an acutal reader submission instead of a press release.

    In summary: shut up.

    -1 off-topic
    --

  • Now I can listen to that MIDI of Gloria Gaynor's "I will Survive" anytime I want to!

    Or, marvel in the glorious majesty that is Beethoven's 5th in MIDI format! There's nothing like a MIDI file to get me to appreciate music.

    Its time to boogie, everyone.

  • Simply put, the palm, although it has a lot of useful features, is often a toy for people with money to burn. I mean, honestly, if I had the money, I'd get a Palm device just to screw with. In addition to being useful, they're fun little buggers.
  • And how do you propose to store the mp3's ?

    Surely most if not all palms have no portable, pocket, means to store mp3's

    Unless some Microdrive, or Sandisk flashcard adapters exist..

    Then you need a means of soudn output.. would the aforementioned device (article this thread is based on) function as such?

    Basically, could you take a palm, and use BOTH this midi thing, some external storage (sandisk, or IBM microdrive, etc)..

    Interesting questions, eh?

    If current models don't do it, do future models have capabilities (more than one expansion port, for example would be required(

  • I'm getting one (Score:3)

    by algae ( 2196 ) on Friday June 16, 2000 @09:55AM (#997501)
    As a semi-pro composer, I'm definitely getting one of these. Hopefully battery life won't be too much of an issue, but even if it is, it's worth it. I can't think of the number of times I've had a really nice melody or beat and lost it because I didn't have some sort of a musical sketch pad to jot it down on.

    Sadly, it's not out yet. Should be released this summer. I think that Casio and maybe Yamaha also have some PDA-style musical sketchpads, but since I already have a pilot, this is more appealing. Plus, the software looks really excellent.
  • for people who didn't read the whole article [swivelsystems.com]... They claim "weeks of regular use on one pair of AAA batteries " and as for price: Swivel Systems will release the SG20 in summer of 2000. Final pricing has yet to be determined, but is expected to be around US$200 for a bundle that will include the SG20 itself, the MIDI/Audio expander cable, batteries, and software including all miniMusic titles."
  • MIDI on pilot is very cool, but I'd buy it instentainoulsy (sp?) if there was a way to hook a general midi device up to it - use the palm as complete platform for Midi music. Maybe the pilot will be what the BeOS never quite was...

    I wonder if ObjektSynth [objektsynth.com] will port to the pilot (tounge-in-cheek).

    Speaking of this, wasn't there supposed to be a similar device for the pilot that would play MP3's?

  • I know someone there and I've demoed the output of this and it's very impressive. I want to get one for my Palm, but until I can actually AFFORD it it stays on my "small objects of desire" list. The list is getting to be quite long these days:)

    On a side note, I was at a site a while back that had music files and had MIDI files and referred to it as an "all but dead format". Needless to say I wrote and corrected the idiots mistake. MIDI is FAR from dead. Anyway, I'm preaching to the choir, so I'll shut up.

    Slashdot is populated by quite a few jackasses.

  • Why do that when you can press the keys on your cell phone in rhythm?
  • "and lost it because I didn't have some sort of a musical sketch pad to jot it down on."

    Notation has been around for a long time. All you need is pen and paper.

    This will be yet another technological crutch for those of us (myself included) that have problems adopting or internalizing modern notation into our writing.

    There are people who would never need these things...?

    -Sleen
  • Fair enough; I'm busted. I do know how to read and write musical notation, but since what I'm doing these days is mostly rhythm-based, it's not always a good option. Drum notation is a royal pain.

    Also, instant feedback is still a good thing.

  • The same company is also making a standard MIDI I/O cable for the pilot, and it looks like the software should be at least mostly GM compliant.

    One major limitation of the software that comes with both the cable and the synth is that it only supports a single monophonic instrument-- that is, one note at a time, no chords, no multiple instruments simultaneously. I hope that this is a software limitation, and not a limitation of the synth. For $200 I better get polyphony!
  • Is there a market? Well yamaha has a QY-70 handheld midi composer ( http://www.yamaha.com/cgi-win/webcgi.exe/DsplyMode l/?gSEQ00005QY70 ) and roland has its own palm-pilot(esq) midi sequencer as well (url please). I am not aware of a dance/electronica muscian that doesn't drool at a portable device with a 16 step drum programmer,personally, i think this product is amazing.

    bortbox
  • Is it Palm IIIc compatible? ... It says that it won't work with the Palm V but doesn't mention the Palm Vx.

    It should be compatible with the IIIc. I've not heard of much that isn't that works with a regular III. Things that aren't coded for color just run in black and white.

    Also, it says that it'll work with the V and Vx, but it needs the Palmdock V from Solvepoint. It's just a problem with the design of the V's case that causes it not to fit.
  • All III-series devices can use these add-ons that snap onto the bottom of the unit. Using the PalmDock as described on the web site, apparently Palm V and Vx (same form factor) users can use these III-series add-ons. I haven't tested it myself, so YMMV. The bottom line: The shape of the bottom of the device is what matters.

  • Other palm midi software (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out Handheld-music [crudites.org]

    Especially Hedgehog [crudites.org]

    and

    Tractor Pull [crudites.org]

  • Moderate this to a 5, this guy is amazing :)
  • Yup, MIDI is far from dead, but it desparately needs an overhaul. 38.4kbps doesn't cut it-- it takes over a minute just to dump new user banks to my wavestation via SYSEX, and it's not even PCM data. That's not an issue with PC-based synthesis, but it'll still be awhile before everybody is using their computers alone for synthesis.

    Seems to me that I read about a new MIDI standard using UTP, but I could be hallucinating. Actually I think that was digital audio hookups from guitars to amps.
  • I know a lot of people who use a Roland MC505 or similar Korg and Yamaha boxes for musical scratchpads when travelling. But this is a lot smaller. A tiny two-octave keyboard would be cool to go with it, though.
  • According to rumor, when Billy Joel would come up with a ditty in his head (say while in a restaurant), he'd call up his answering machine (from a payphone) and sing it "after the beep." Long-live lo-tech!

  • George, oh, George, Why did you leave nwc?

    Was it better pay, or is it spring fever all over again? We'll always have Paris...

    -=(\/) | (\| | - (\/) 3 (\/) 3
  • The PMA-5 actually has 28 voices, and has MIDI ports of its own as well as a serial port that connects it and allows it to serve as a MIDI interface for a Mac or a PC with no additional hardware.

    It has a phrase-based sequencer, which is useful for songwriting and getting a groove recorded on the go. The bass, drum, and guitar sounds are awesome as you would expect from Roland equipment designed as a backing unit (literally a band in a box) and songwriting tool. The other sounds are good, but if you want a great sounding sax, you're supposed to learn how to play a real one and have the PMA-5 'comp. It has a blinking LED to help you keep the beat and a start/stop switch input so you can get it going with a foot pedal. It has a touch screen that's well done.

    It also works fine as a GM/GS sound module.

    It does suck up the batteries. It can go through 6 AAs in 12 hours. It's not backlit like the newer Palms. Also, airline employees have no idea what it is, but it's fun to demo to them (but not during takeoff and landing, where it must be shut off!).

    Yamaha has a competitive product. The only advantage I see to the Palm solution is that you could program it to do manipulation of MIDI events, but I think Roland has thoughtfully designed the PMA-5 to meet the needs of mobile musicians, most of whom are not going to write programs, but catch little bits of grooves, melodies, and chord progressions on the road.
  • Now I can play my Party All The Time by Eddie Murphy MIDI when I have a reminder!
  • Have you ever heard MIDI using actually instrument samples?
    Try installing the 10MB Gus patch for timidity.
    I fell back in love with it ever since.
  • This is what sheet music can solve. get a pen and a piece of paper and write it down. if you're a musician, you know how to write sheet music.
  • Just realized I had phrased that a little strangely.
    There are several free players out there that use those samples. The sound is just so incredibly improved.
  • If you're a musician/composer and are on a train, at your day job, or in some other place inconveniently far from your studio, and you suddenly get an idea for a melody/beat/riff, having something like that to write it down on is a godsend. That's why devices like the Yamaha QY70 and the Roland PMA-5 exist.
  • Traditionally, musicians have had to know sheet music, though in the age of computer sequencing, there are many composers who don't know it, and who don't have perfect pitch.
  • Yamaha have the QY-70, with MIDI interface, dedicated LCD screen and rubber chiclet keys. Roland have the PMA-5, a boxy looking device like an oversized Pilot/Newton, only it just does music. Given that entering music is limited to using a stylus on the screen, and that it probably wouldn't fit in most pockets, it seems a bit gimmicky. Not sure about Casio; a friend of mine has a pocket Casiotone synth, but it has no memory/sequencing functions.
  • True, though you probably wouldn't use it for heavy-duty sequencing... For jotting down a harmony, a riff, or a rhythm, that may be enough.
    If you're serious about music, you'll have something better at home to transfer it to.
  • Granted... even today there are people who will still only use true x0x boxes (and not emulators or x0x samples) then MIDI wouldn't be used. That's actually a pretty small segment as far as popular music goes, I was speaking in more general terms.
    Hopefully it doesn't dilute my point of "MIDI is everywhere, and it's not General MIDI" though.
  • Is it the slight blurring effect on the Pilot or have my eyes just gone bad?


  • It would probably sound like Steve Reich, Phillip Glass, Milton Babbit, Ann Sheilds, Keith Emerson, and Rick Wakeman (among others).
  • As far as noise/music/muzak goes, MIDI isn't the greatest thing in the world. I've got the Nokia 9000il Communicator telephone, and it has a cute little nifty composer proggie built in (feels like MIDI but not sure). It's not too difficult if you know how to write sheet music, but otherwise it's a worthless effort. I never have really enjoyed the MIDI standard, or for that matter the old *.mod (whatever standard they were) files right around the Adlib/SB DOS 5.0 days. Granted music without the words and other bull is worth it on stuff like the the Mission Impossible Soundtrack, but I really don't beleive that it has too much of a place in today's music industry. Count me out. My skewed $.01 + $.01
  • I'm eagerly looking forward to the PocketPyro [pocketpyro.com], which is similar to this device but is an MP3 player instead (plus generic storage).
  • It's not for you-- it's for people who write music. I can't think of how many times I've wanted to be able to jot down a nice melody or a good beat for future reference and then be able to transfer it later to my main synths.

  • There he is sitting at his table scratching away at parchment when you step out of the time portal and hand him a tiny box and headphones...

    --
    Eric is chisled like a Greek Godess

  • So now along with the "business exec" types out in the forest conducting business meetings, the strange type of guppies that think being connected at the mall or wherever they go is the end-all be-all of life, now we're going to have composers looking over a majestic American scene writing down the next great symphony...At least in the commercials.

    This is actually pretty cool, it's more usefull than a scratchpad of notation paper since you can hear the results instantly. I just dread the marketing campaing on this one...

    ==Begin TV Ad==
    Scene of ocean w/ small boat just before dawn. Sun comes up. Man steps out and looks around. The US national anthem starts playing....Man takes out PALM PILOT AND STARTS COMPOSING!!!
    ==End TV Ad==

    ...As someone who really does appreciate music, I really, REALLY, don't want to see the advertisements for this one...

    BTW, before pointing it out, I KNOW that the US national anthem was first a poem and only later put to the music of a drinking song ;) But hell...if they're gonna give a guy from a pre-electrical era a palm pilot why not change history just a little more ;)

    DranoK



    That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
  • 200 bucks.
  • Internet midi muzak stream, very low bandwidth, perfect quality (except for the muzakness). Piped to a mall near you.

  • Other Options (Score:4)

    by gardenhose ( 85937 ) on Friday June 16, 2000 @11:09AM (#997537)
    If you don't want to pay $200, and you want to use your Pilot as a MIDI control / processing device, check out the Handheld music homepage at crudites... http://www.crudites.org/soundv entures/handheld-music [crudites.org].


    You can build your own MIDI interface for $10, or get cheaper ones, they're out there. What's cool about this SwivelSystems box though is that it makes the sounds for you, instead of having an external synth. But if you want to make "real" sounds, and not $5 general midi chip sounds, build your own midi interface and hook it up to your synth or sampler or softsynth.

  • the perfect gift for the geek/musician extraordinaire.
  • Isn't it cool that something not even vaguely related to the topic can be moderated "Interesting"?

    Perhaps if I wrote something about MP3s, the War on Drugs, or Ayn Rand, I'd receive karma.
  • See my page at http://www.execpc.com/~tz - For about $10 you can play any midi file from your Palm (V or III or even VII, or old Pilots) to any MIDI synth with a standard MIDI port. I wrote this two years ago. The file is: playmidi45.zip

    The README inside gives instuctions on building the interface and there are three jpegs showing images of the basic interface.

    FYI - Swivel systems expects the interface to cost around $200, but it isn't determined and they aren't shipping.

    The program plays anything, but has very limited record capability (I haven't had time to work on it nor has there been interest expressed). And the seek-to SMPTE time or beat needs work.
  • The only question is: Does the Palm have a joystick port? Or just really, really crappy internal speakers?

    Everyone thinks of MIDI as a music protocol, but it's not - it's just a protocol for controlling hardware that's usually used for instruments or internal music synth. However, you could just as easily define the note "middle C" as "the red light above the stage." I've been to concerts where everything from the lights to the smoke machine was MIDI.

    Even fact, this application is useful even to the purists who have nothing to say about MIDI except that it sucks, well, because it does. You could give a drummer a click track synthed with the MIDI, and you'd be guaranteed that the whole visual experience of the concert was synched with the live music.

    Of course, there's no reason you couldn't do this with a laptop rather than a palm, but for a lot of us starving artists, cost is a factor.
  • I'm the music director for Technophobia, an a cappella group on campus at Virginia Tech. I arrange songs you might hear on your friendly local radio station (for example, one of our biggest crowd-pleasers right now is Why Don't You Get A Job), and then I and six other guys sing them without instruments.

    Currently, my process when creating music for us to work on is:

    1. Arrange music -- listen to it, write down melody, bass line and vocal harmony, convert guitar and keyboard parts into something singable, and figure out a vocal percussion line that works.

    2. Save this file and send it out to all the guys (we use a software package called NoteWorthy Composer). Guys listen to it/sing it through with their home computers if they have time. All guys print out the music.

    3. I throw my 20-lb., 4-foot-long electronic keyboard in my truck to drive to campus for practice twice a week, cart that thing through the student center to our practice room, and then play through the guys' parts. Badly.

    With this, I could simply save the song files as MIDI files, copy them over to my IIIx, and leave the damn keyboard at home! We'd have a better way to listen to the songs (minus my screwups when I try to play through the arrangements on the keyboard), and no pain-in-the-ass keyboard hauling for me.

    This thing'll be VERY useful. If it really does wind up as only ~$200, I'll be first in line for it.

  • (had mary 'little-lamb) (Score:4)

    by MenTaLguY ( 5483 ) on Friday June 16, 2000 @10:09AM (#997543) Homepage
    3212333
    222
    399
    3212333
    322321

    ... damn lameness filter. No caps. Anywhere... did you see caps?
  • What would Mozart think? I wonder if this guy has paid for my music or not?.

    Oh MOZART you say! I thought you meant Lars!

  • umm...the article states that this is a MIDI device.

    Therefore, it can interface with any other MIDI device.

  • PDAs and MIDI just go together -- anyone ever play with a Yamaha QY10/20? These things rock -- nice and small sequencer. Though my Newtons (130 and 2100) don't sound as well, they sequence and playback MIDI just as well. I've used my MP2100 several times in a live setting, having it play ambient stuff in the background on my JV90 / SY77 / JV880 that other people and I improvise on top of. They rock for this ...

    For a taste, try this [mp3.com]

    Regards, John

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