Info Overload - Please Help Clarify

[justsoulin]

Hi All,

I don't play an instrument. I have no musical writing theory experience.

I've been downloading various appz that give me sheet music to begin writing (eg NoteWorthy, Musescore). Also things like Virtual bassist, virtual piano, drumsite etc. Then SF2's and seeing things such as VST's, loops, midi's.

I write lyrics, more often with a melody which I would like to put down in a note fashion and to build on this to produce a basic song (with the idea that someone much more professional can take the idea and polish it up into a more worthy demo).

I know I've a lot to do, not as much time as I would like to spend on it with little financial resources as well as the space for suddenly having keyboards etc. PC has a Realtek soundcard that seems to deal with playing various soundfonts ok.

I'm not looking to create soundfonts (that's the term I've read) - there's obviously a lot already out there. But how do I listen/play to/with them?

So in terms of SF2's, midi's, loops and VST's etc:

Can someone please help clarify in simple terms a) what they are, what they do, c) do I need them, & maybe very importantly d) how do I use them etc etc

I think it would be of immense help to me to be able to load "something" into say "Finale" or "Musescore" to see it in note form. I just don't (yet) understand if I need a soundfont or a vst or a midi file etc that will load and transpose itself into the sheet music.

Is there an app that "can" take a file and convert it into musical notation? If so, what format of initial file should I have? I know with say Musescore, I can export the sheet music into an MP3 and listen to it but it doesn't seem I can import the MP3 to get the sheet music from it.

I read the "help" files in these appz and to be honest, they seem to think I know what they're talking about as in I have previous experience.

So I've gotten a little overloaded with all this stuff and I'm a little lost now to be honest.

I was looking forward to reading 333Maxwells posts but he never got around to doing them (on soundfonts, vst's etc).

Appreciate any help. advice, useful links etc.

Thanks, J

ps - when looking and downloading a soundfont player, all I get is a dll file ?? I see a visual image on the website but the dload is something else. Do I need something else, are they a plug in?

pps - What does a DAW do? How does it fit in with all the above? Same question for a sampler like Kontakt.

Edited April 3, 2010 by justsoulin

[john]

Hey

Ooo.. lots of questions!

ok let me see if i can help you make sense of this as simply as I can...

SF2 - Sound Font Banks - Organized banks of samples so that when you play a note a particular sound is triggered

Midi - Note information, NOT sound. Midi is basically what note, when, how loud, how long does it last etc.

loops - can be a loop of audio, or midi

VST - Virtual Studio Technology - divided roughly into two types: effects and processors; synths and samplers

So to view a music score open a midi file within a DAW or midi sequencer. A DAW (Desktop Audio Workstation) is basically the heart of the computer studio. I'd look at Reaper. Not free, but cheap and with lots of functions. With it you can create and edit multi-track songs, and use VST instruments and effects, and playback loops.

Looking from a midi perspective for a moment, midi is only the note or "control" information. It requires another piece of software or hardware to actually create sounds. This means that a midi file on your systsm can sound very different from a midi file on someone else's computer. Still it contains a lot of useful information...

The idea is you record the notes (midi) and then you can change what sounds that actually triggers to hone your track, making it remarkably easy to change a piano part into a french horn part.

The second half of the equation is the sound generation. This can be accomplished by a variety of means:

Sound Font Banks - standard for organizing samples into "fonts" that can then be moved from computer to computer. The original and probably best sound font editor/player is "vienna".

VST Instruments - synthesizers and samplers. These literally are virtual versions of the hardware (that you can also use for the same purpose via a midi cable).

In essence a synth constructs a sound from base waveforms or oscillators going through a number os processes to control volume and shape the sound. A sampler more or less plays back samples (much like vienna which is in essence a software sampler that conforms to the sfb standard).

So you open your DAW, plug in your VST instruments (like your sfb player... which is probably why it is just a dll, which should be located in your windows vst directory, created when you install a DAW or other software), you record your midi which effectively tells all your instruments "play this note, this loud for this long.

You can also record audio (via microphone or instrument -line input) along side your midi.

An example being I record a piano part using midi and a piano vst instrument. I then record a vocal on another track within the same DAW project. i hit playback and hey presto i hear both piano and vocal together!

ok last piece in the puzzle is vst effects. Much like VST instruments they plug into your DAW. These are virtual effects that mimic real world effects such as reverb, delay, EQ... basically anything that conditions an audio signal.

That's it. Feel free to ask questions on anything I haven't made clear. There is a lot more info and it's the best i can do at short notice lol

Cheers

John

[justsoulin]

Hi John

Thanks.

Urm, ok. Let me see if I have this right or not.

A soundfont gives you the "sound" of an "instrument" or "special effect"?

A midi file just tells a sampler, sequencer or DAW software package, the note data, which instrument, bpm etc (because it is the music score)?

A sampler, sequencer or DAW software package will open up a score (sheet music) saved as a midi file and use the soundfonts saved anywhere on your hard drive/s)?

A VST is some sort of addon to a sampler, sequencer or DAW software package that allows you to add effects to any sound within the score (soundfont/instruments etc) but also allows you to, with a sampler, sequencer or DAW software package, actually make and record the music?

No, I'm not quite there yet LOL am I?

Do I need these? All of them? What's the easiest, simplest to use and learn based on lack of skills/experience to get something of a backing track for vocals? I've read quite a few of the posts in the software section and Reaper looks complicated for a noob (lots of buttons to play around with but stumped for getting anything half decent out haha)

If the tune/music is saved as a midi file (if I can create that of course) and record the vocals as an MP3 file, can the different file types be added together to get a decent output?

Can all this be done without the need of "external" hardware such as a keyboard? ie - all software?

I've just got Band in a box that I'm playing with today/night. Got to get a handle on this somehow.

Thanks again. J

[Retrosaurus Rex]

How are you getting along with this?

[justsoulin]

Thanks for asking.

Band in .... well it looks good but i can't find the way to actually try and write the music. It just seems to run away on it's own LOL

I've just got Mixcraft 5 - WOW. I've just found the whole orchestra. Now I think this is a DAW? And I got Beatcraft too which from the different drum appz I've installed seems to be the best.

Besides that, I guess I'm just lost still. What tips can U give me m8?

I think one of the biggest problems I can't yet get my head around is that they all use different file extensions so they don't recognise each other. If I find I can use one app for one thing, then want to import what I do with it into another app - boom. I can't (yet).

[Retrosaurus Rex]

Band in .... well it looks good but i can't find the way to actually try and write the music. It just seems to run away on it's own LOL

No experience with Band-in-a-Box, but I use a somewhat similar program that displays the MIDI data that it generates in a piano roll view. It's pretty to edit from there, or export to a DAW.

I think one of the biggest problems I can't yet get my head around is that they all use different file extensions so they don't recognise each other. If I find I can use one app for one thing, then want to import what I do with it into another app - boom. I can't (yet).

You need to simplify your thinking. The file extension jungle can get confusing if your using a lot of different apps, but there are a couple of paths that are always clear...

.mid - this is a MIDI file. Generally, any type of sequencer can open, record and edit a .mid file. Also, software instruments and hardware synths will receive and play a .mid file with no problem. All the major DAW programs include a sequencer function.

.wav - this is an audio file. Also, .mp3 & .aiff (Mac).

BiaB probably saves projects in some proprietary format, but it is unlikely that your DAW will open this file type. However, it should be possible to export a project in .mid format, which you can then open in a DAW.

Once you have imported your BiaB project into your DAW (in .mid format) you can create an audio track (or tracks) from it, which can be mixed with vocals or any other audio you choose to record, and save the whole thing in one of the audio formats mentioned before...

I hope this helps...

[Nick]

I scanned through the thread and feel your pain.

Technology doesn't help until you know what you want to do.

Sing in your head.

Record onto a cassette player or anything.

There are no technological solutions. Tomorrow may invent something that makes everything you/we are looking at irrelevant.

BUT

People will still write fantastic tunes in whatever genre they choose and still astound people with the beauty of what they write. And people will go "but how come noone wrote that before it's so obvious...."

Probably why people haven't stopped creating music and why it's always worth trying.

Nothin to do with technology - that's just a way of getting your ideas somewhere

[justsoulin]

Thanks Rex, yep it does help. Ref the export/import. Someone sent me a score for drums but the app they use, on my pc (fairly new) didn't show the varied drum set they used. So exporting it, didn't do anything except the same sound as the score itself did on my pc (single beat sound). Maybe, at that time I didn't have the soundbank as they have.

There really is a lot to get your head round when you're basically starting from zero point but I'm not going to give up. I'm still writing down lyrics etc as they come up, basic recording the melody and then getting my head back into these appz.

Nick, I want to give my efforts the best chance possible by giving someone else the best chance to "get" my ideas. Not everyone has the time, patience or inclination to spend on something they don't get straight off (that's not to say the idea is not good in the 1st place). Also, this exercise of mine is basically two-fold. A - teach myself about things I don't yet know or fully understand but should. B - get to a point where my ideas are "more" complete to be able to take them to a higher level.

Thanks Guys

[MikeRobinson]

A soundfont gives you the "sound" of an "instrument" or "special effect"?

A midi file just tells a sampler, sequencer or DAW software package, the note data, which instrument, bpm etc (because it is the music score)?

A sampler, sequencer or DAW software package will open up a score (sheet music) saved as a midi file and use the soundfonts saved anywhere on your hard drive/s)?

A VST is some sort of addon to a sampler, sequencer or DAW software package that allows you to add effects to any sound within the score (soundfont/instruments etc) but also allows you to, with a sampler, sequencer or DAW software package, actually make and record the music?

No, I'm not quite there yet LOL am I?

Do I need these? All of them? What's the easiest, simplest to use and learn based on lack of skills/experience to get something of a backing track for vocals? I've read quite a few of the posts in the software section and Reaper looks complicated for a noob (lots of buttons to play around with but stumped for getting anything half decent out haha)

If the tune/music is saved as a midi file (if I can create that of course) and record the vocals as an MP3 file, can the different file types be added together to get a decent output?

Let me see if I can tackle a few of these questions:

A soundfont is a standard file format for containing "software instruments." For instance, a Grand Piano soundfont would contain a whole bunch of piano sounds, at least one per key on the keyboard and probably several.

A MIDI file is kind of like a player-piano roll. It gives a great big list of "what note to play and when to play it." To actually hear sound, the MIDI player will need some source of "software instruments," such as that Grand Piano file I just spoke of.

DAW is "Digital Audio Workstation" and that basically means a program or tool for creating music. It sort-of "mashes up" all these other functions into a tool that you can actually use to make something. VSTs are "plug-ins" for the software synthesizers that a typical DAW package includes.

Whereas a "soundfont" is a file that contains pre-recorded instrument sounds, a "software synthesizer" is a software tool that creates sound from scratch.

File formats such as MP3 are used to store musical recordings.

Yes, a DAW system would be able to do things like "render a song that's recorded in a MIDI-file, with a selected soundfont (or software synth) providing the music, and to combine it with a vocal.

[justsoulin]

Thanks Mike - much clearer