Another question - trying to write practice routines using MIDI

• May 26, 2012 - 03:08

So, I got My Roland Drum Tutor reading my practice drum routines I have generated with Musescore thanks to some fine people on this forum.
I still have one obstacle. Sticking, or as most of you know it "fingering".
On my drum routines I want to be able to indicate which hand I should be using indicated by "L" or "R" above the coresponding notes. I have tried using all of the different text inputs on Musescore and in my trial version of Sibelius. none of these show up on the Drum Tutor software.
So I have done some searching and found on the Roland website a FAQ about writting your own midi file for the Drum Tudor. Unfortunately in my Newbie status with regard to MIDI (damn it Jim, i'm a drummer, not a code cutter :) ) I don't know what it's talking about.
Can someone point me in a direction of how to do this. An intro to Midi programing book,site or tutorial, Software required, etc?

From Roland FAQ:

Q.Can I put L/R (left hand/right hand) indicators on the data I make myself?

A.
Yes, you can.
Please insert the following System Exclusive Message in the same tick as the note that you want to put the indicator.

F0H 41H 10H 00H 45H 12H 19H kkH 00H ddH sum F7H

F0H : Exclusive status
41H : ID number (Roland)
10H : Device ID
00H : Model ID #1 (DT-HD1)
45H : Model ID #2 (DT-HD1)
12H : Command ID (DT1)
19H : Address upper byte (9 = MIDI channel)
kkH : Address middle byte (kk = note number) (00-7FH)
00H : Address lower byte
ddH : Data (Right = 00H, Left = 40H)
sum : Checksum
F7H : EOX (End Of Exclusive)

* Examples of System Exclusive Messages and their corresponding instruments.

Snare Right(#38)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 26 00 00 41 F7
Snare Left (#38)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 26 00 40 01 F7
Tom 1 Right(#48)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 30 00 00 37 F7
Tom 1 Left (#48)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 30 00 40 77 F7
Tom 2 Right(#45)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2D 00 00 3A F7
Tom 2 Left (#45)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2D 00 40 7A F7
Tom 3 Right(#43)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2B 00 00 3C F7
Tom 3 Left (#43)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2B 00 40 7C F7

Closed hi-hat Right(#42)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2A 00 00 3D F7
Closed hi-hat Left (#42)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2A 00 40 7D F7
Open hi-hat Right(#46)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2E 00 00 39 F7
Open hi-hat Left (#46)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 2E 00 40 79 F7
Crash cymbal Right(#49)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 31 00 00 36 F7
Crash cymbal Left (#49)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 31 00 40 76 F7
Ride cymbal Right(#51)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 33 00 00 34 F7
Ride cymbal Left (#51)：　F0 41 10 00 45 12 19 33 00 40 74 F7

Comments

• May 26, 2012 - 06:24

You have to realize, MuseScore is a notation program first and foremost. It happens to be able to generate MIDI because sometimes that can be a convenient way to listen to your notated compositions, but it is not a full featured MIDI editor. So there are aspects of midi - like creating custom system exclusive messages - that MuseScore just isn't designed to support. MIDI is not normally a format that would be used for transmitting text information, so there is no standard way to do it, and thus no standard plae for MuseScore to store this info. If your drum program doesn't include the ability to add this info, then perhaps a general purpose midi editor might. But creating custom MIDI message is just way beyond what MuseScore was intended for.

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• May 26, 2012 - 11:54

You can only do this from a MIDI sequencer.

Notation software just isn't designed to interact with the more arcane aspects of the MIDI protocol like System Exclusive messages.

Bear in mind that MIDI is a protocol designed to transmit performance information to a digital musical instrument, and as such it's pretty bad at interfacing with notation systems which are designed to transmit data to a human performer.

You will find some basic information here: http://www.indiana.edu/~emusic/etext/MIDI/chapter3_MIDI.shtml

Some freeware sequencers are Muse (from which the MuseScore project split away) and Rosegarden. These are both Linux applications however. There is a list of MIDI editors here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MIDI_editors_and_sequencers - which might help you.

In order to generate the SysEx information for your own projects you will need to learn how to do arithmetic in Hexadecimal which is how it is usually entered in the sequencer. You will also need to know how to calculate the checksum - Roland and Yamaha do it in different ways.

This is really beyond the scope of MuseScore support, but if you need further help pm me through my user account here.

HTH
Michael

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