Hi!

Does anyone know of a mod 2 mid-converter (that works)?

Tried mod2midi10.lha on aminet but it's pretty buggy and doesn't really work on OS4. I managed to produce one midi file, but others I've tested just crashes the program and then the computer...

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> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

@Deniil715

I thought OmSS might do it. It does save but all I got was a 48 byte file. So doesn't look like it can export it as MIDI or SMF as I tried.

@Deniil715

It can be done with Timidity (at least on Linux) with a command in a terminal....
If your MOD is in a directory /home/user/Music and named Crazy.mod then do

timidity -OM ./Music/Crazy.mod -o ./Music/crazy.mid

However the instruments will be wrong and need to be reassigned in MIDI software.

I'm not sure if the Amiga version can do this.

If you do;
man timidity
In a terminal you will see all the options for this wonderful software.

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Tinkering with computers.

@Hypex

Quote:

I thought OmSS might do it. It does save but all I got was a 48 byte file. So doesn't look like it can export it as MIDI or SMF as I tried.

It's been long since I used OctaMED SS with MIDI, but I remember you being able to assign specific instruments as MIDI instruments. Perhaps you will need to make those assignments before exporting as MIDI, or it will just remove all sample instruments, so that you're left with nothing?

@Jupp3

Well I just tried. I find geting around OmSS a bit hard. But I managed to a assign my instruments a MIDI channel. It increased the file size. And looks like it saved the notation data. But it still has no samples embedded. If MIDI can do that.

I also found out that I replaced my orginal module with a useless MIDI file! LOL. If I didn't have it backed up somewhere else I wouldn't be laughing.

@Hypex

Quote:

But I managed to a assign my instruments a MIDI channel. It increased the file size. And looks like it saved the notation data. But it still has no samples embedded. If MIDI can do that.

Of course not. In general, MIDI has no concept of "what any instrument might sound like, and by which technologies (if any) it might be played back with."

Sure, General Midi added some general "guides", like which instrument Id's should sound like piano, guitar etc. but nothing even close to what's generally thought as a "sample".

@Signal

"Playmode `M' is not compiled in."

man timidity is not an AmigaOS 4.1 command

Actually, it would be : timidity -h

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@K-L

Quote:

K-L wrote: @Signal "Playmode `M' is not compiled in." man timidity is not an AmigaOS 4.1 command Actually, it would be : timidity -h

Yeah, thats why I mentioned Linux. Actually I do all my MIDI on RPi3 these days.
Rosegarden for making/modifying, Timidity for softsynth and a Roland PMA-5 for external.

Probably best to talk to Lyle Hazelwood for Amiga MIDI stuff.

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Tinkering with computers.

@Jupp3

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In general, MIDI

Haha.

Quote:

Sure, General Midi added some general "guides", like which instrument Id's should sound like piano, guitar etc. but nothing even close to what's generally thought as a "sample".l

Given keyboards would have been assigned samples in the wild I thought it may support uploading sample data.

But yes when playing back MIDI songs on a Mac, of a real song, the instruments are way off and don't even sound close. In a lot there is an annoying piano. All out of place.

@Hypex

But many newer keyboards, less than 15-20 years old, use soundfonts in ROM. To store all the voices in wave samples would take gobs of memory.

Mac, enough said.

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@Deniil715

Mod and MIDIs are totally different formats. There are many Mods that can't be converted into Midis.

Maybe you should tell the forum why you want to convert them, there are Mod players for nearly every platform and Mods can be converted (recorded) into mp3.

@Hypex

Quote:

Given keyboards would have been assigned samples in the wild I thought it may support uploading sample data.

Yes, MIDI devices can transfer binary data (f.ex. samples) via SysEx MIDI commands.

But as the command name (System Exclusive) suggests, there's no standard beyond SysEx start & end MIDI commands, each manufacturer does whatever they like.

As for "how different instruments sound", many MIDI devices can't do ANY kind of sample playback (analog synthesizers), and of course, might not do any sound playback at all.

As for "getting correct instrument mapping", there are 2 problems. First one is, different MIDI devices might sound completely different with same instrumend Id. Secondly, how would the conversion software know, what instruments different samples are supposed to sound like?

Also, a sample might contain sound, that simply isn't reproduceable with a single MIDI note (f.ex. a drum loop or a chord)

Last edited by Jupp3 on 16-Dec-2017 at 10:17 PM.

@Signal

Quote:

Actually I do all my MIDI on RPi3 these days.

Well, I do most of my MIDI coding for a C64

@Signal

Quote:

But many newer keyboards, less than 15-20 years old, use soundfonts in ROM. To store all the voices in wave samples would take gobs of memory.

Sound fonts. Classic. One example I can think of is when that Deep Forest out fit was popular. They recorded some pygmies and then sampled that into some sample player. Probably a sampler.

They showed this video of a guy pressing keys and the different samples coming out. So it looked like the keyboard was playing the samples. But obviously was only a keyboard that triggered the samples somewhere else. Like a sampler.

It always seemed strange to me to play samples using a keyboard since I could see no correlation between a particular note and a sample. A bit like using notation to describe drums. Just looked like like an archaic way of trying to map it out that simply wasn't designed for it since drums don't exactly have notes on a scale but rather different instrumental parts that come together as a whole.

Last edited by Hypex on 19-Dec-2017 at 01:11 PM.

@Jupp3

Quote:

As for "how different instruments sound", many MIDI devices can't do ANY kind of sample playback (analog synthesizers), and of course, might not do any sound playback at all.

In the latter case, where would the "sound" go?

Quote:

As for "getting correct instrument mapping", there are 2 problems. First one is, different MIDI devices might sound completely different with same instrumend Id.

I would have thought there would be a generic type assigned for drums, piano, strings and bass. I would also include guitar but I suppose that's hard to pigeon hole. I've listened to a lot of MIDI tracks, some rock, some techno, and they sound completely different. Mostly because a piano was used where the original has no piano at all. It sounds so wrong to the point it not only sounds out of key but way out of tune!

Quote:

Secondly, how would the conversion software know, what instruments different samples are supposed to sound like?

Well in this case I wouldn't expect it to interpret it at all. I'd expect it to treat it as a digital sample data. Yes there is more overhead than a simple MIDI note and we would get into sound "textures" being uploaded to some device for efficient usage. I can see here that a sampler would be used that is simply controlled by a "dumb" keyboard.

Last edited by Hypex on 19-Dec-2017 at 01:22 PM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Quote: As for "how different instruments sound", many MIDI devices can't do ANY kind of sample playback (analog synthesizers), and of course, might not do any sound playback at all. In the latter case, where would the "sound" go?

What sound? There was absolutely no sound to begin with?

Well, there might have been some rather generic "hints", like which instrument id to use, which note, which velocity etc. - BUT nothing categorizable as "sound"

Could be even less "sound-related" info, such as start & stop signals, tempo etc. (which device may choose to follow, and play whatever it likes)

Quote:

Quote: Secondly, how would the conversion software know, what instruments different samples are supposed to sound like? Well in this case I wouldn't expect it to interpret it at all. I'd expect it to treat it as a digital sample data. Yes there is more overhead than a simple MIDI note and we would get into sound "textures" being uploaded to some device for efficient usage. I can see here that a sampler would be used that is simply controlled by a "dumb" keyboard.

That's exactly what many converters do. "Oh, this is a sample? MIDI doesn't support it, so let's just get rid of it."

Of course in many cases, users WILL want to map specific samples to different MIDI instruments (or even totally different MIDI devices), so to make this easier, conversion program might f.ex. map different instruments (samples) to different MIDI channels - they better be differentiated in some way, so that user can easily f.ex. "swap MIDI channels X and Y"

And sure, what you describe might be doable on some MIDI devices, but since MIDI is supposed to be cross-device standard...

Also, if you want 1:1 version of your mod - why not just use the original mod instead?

But generally speaking, this kind of conversion will always need some manual post processing work, if you want at least "somewhat ok" results.

Last edited by Jupp3 on 19-Dec-2017 at 05:54 PM.

@Hypex

ER? A Sound Font is a description of a sound realized by a digital signal processor. Sound Fonts are designable, modifiable, and usable over a wide range of equipment, including computers.

The reason for using notation to describe drums is so all the various percussion type instruments can be on one MIDI channel, usually channel 10, with one note, F#,being one drum and G another etc.

Probably the best way to convert MOD sounds to MIDI instruments is to play the MOD tracks one by one and listen to which MIDI instrument it most sounds like and assign that instrument to the relative MIDI track/channel, and if need be modify a Sound Font for more accurate reproduction.

Read the MIDI standard, it is well thought out and designed.

P.S. Some MIDI keyboards, called Controllers, send their MIDI information to other MIDI modules that produce the sounds or computers that can record the information into MIDI songs or directly produce the sound either using a software synth or directly to a hardware synth like the SBLive! sound card.

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@Signal

Quote:

play the MOD tracks one by one and listen to which MIDI instrument it most sounds like

It doesn't work quite like that.

Each MOD channel can play any note on any single instrument at each step. So a single channel can use all defined instruments (and several channels can use the same instrument simultaneously)

Simply listening to all instruments one by one, and assigning them to MIDI instruments is a good start.

That leaves you with:
1)Drums. Usually they go to same MIDI channel, to different notes, that define the drum. Relatively easy.

2)Chords (many different notes playing simultaneously in a sample). Usually the note matches the base note, but you need to add the other ones manually. Perhaps you can duplicate the channel with correct base notes for the specific instrument, and manually transpose to the other notes of the chord? And repeat for all chord samples.

3)Problematic samples. At easiest, this could be drum loops (which you need to "manually" assign to different drums used over time), but this could also contain things not really doable with MIDI equipment, like vocal samples. Of course you CAN use MIDI compatible sampler to trigger playback at correct offsets, but if you do that... Why not just stay with the MOD format to begin with?

And of course, there's effects, that cannot be reproduced 100% with many MIDI devices, backwards sample playing etc.

@Jupp3

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What sound? There was absolutely no sound to begin with?

In the context of discussion, with a MIDI device that doesn't output any sound at all, what does it do? Sure, it processes MIDI events, but all MIDI events relate to something musical so I wonder where it would fit in. The sound in this case being some sound event.

Quote:

"Oh, this is a sample? MIDI doesn't support it, so let's just get rid of it."

Which is funny since samples and MIDI would have gone hand in hand in the 80's.

And that is another subject. In the commercial realm they certanly customised the syths and instruments like drums. For normal pop/rock song it's likely all the output was recorded to multitrack tapes. But for house it just seems too silly to record on analogue tape, depending on when digital tape was available. Given it was largely computerised. That and doing remixes of computer music using tapes just doesn't seem right and would look lame.


Quote:

Also, if you want 1:1 version of your mod - why not just use the original mod instead?

For myself I was just interested in if it could be done. But it would be something I'd consider if I wanted to remaster a modules with a "real" music program.

Last edited by Hypex on 27-Dec-2017 at 02:47 PM.

@Hypex

Quote:

Quote: Also, if you want 1:1 version of your mod - why not just use the original mod instead? For myself I was just interested in if it could be done. But it would be something I'd consider if I wanted to remaster a modules with a "real" music program.

For me it would be "because i have MIDI hardware but too few MIDI songs to play on it

I know that there are dozens of freely available MIDI songs out in the World Wide Wilderness, but it would still be nice to have such a progam just "for the technical kind of fun of it"