Playing music via PC

yeah i am talking about music, again..

I never thought a pc/laptop have the potential of creating nice sound for my guitar & keyboard. since i just bought the usb midi interface for the laptop, recently I tried a few software which I think is very good for home musicians, ie musicians who play their music at home :). i also bought an audio-technica headphone to go with the interface so i got all the sound to myself without disturbing the family :)

Amplitube

It is basically a software based guitar multi-effect & amp modeller. It has all the effects a guitarist would want, like distortion, overdrive, chorus, flanger, wah-wah.. you name it. On top of that it also simulates the sound coming from guitar amps. so u don't have to buy expensive tube amp for your guitar. i don't know how good it is compared to the real ones coz i never had real ones anyway. but i can tell that it sounds good to my ear, at least. i do have an old multi-effect, the zoom GFX707 but this software certainly sounds better & with a lot more effects, more flexible settings & fine-tunings. i can tune it to try to match the guitar sound of certain songs, & then i just save the file name for easy recall. hey, now i have settings to sound like the police, carlos santana & sweet charity!. I learn that i can get preset guitar sound of famous guitarists as well by downloading from somewhere. but for now i'll be busy exploring the sound it already has on board. actually it is kind of learning experience for me as well to know what effect does what sound. for example, i'm quite sure that rosli muhalim used some kind of FLO filter for his sound, which i'm trying to copy. I am not sure whether this software is suitable for live playing or not. i might want to use it on my next jamming session. the only issue would be that i need to use the mouse to select the effect that i want instead of a foot switch. the company does sell a foot controller to go with this software but that would be beyond my budget.

Luxonix Purity

This software is what people call a soft-synth, which i think stands for software synthesizer. It has all the sound you can think of like your normal piano, organ, strings, brass & electronic synthesizer sound. it sounds much better than my yamaha keyboard. what i like most is it's user-friendly menu & UI. i can easily set things straight away without having to read the manual. in other words it has very short learning curve. the only thing i needed to refer to the manual was when i need to set different sound for my left & right hand. i like the "glide" setting very much. it sort of lets the sound change gradually & smoothly from one key to the next, & not discreetly like say a normal piano sounds. it's kinda like you press a key & play with pitch wheel. this is how synthesizer normally sound, like you hear in some sweet charity songs. talking about sweet charity (again!), i always want to find the synthesizer sound as in their sejuta wajah & now i think i almost got it! again, i donno how good it would be in a live environment but i certainly would love to try it out.

i look forward to explore more of this during the long break end of the year..

midi

midi has many meanings to me. it can mean the middle, as in size. my x-schoolmate also named midi. but what i meant here is of the musical variety. if not mistaken, it stands for musical instrument digital interface. it allows musical instruments to talk to each other digitally. i read about it back in '86, i think, & got fascinated by it. now with computers so advanced, it is used even more prominently. why is it important to me? well it's because i love music, & i love gadgets. i bought my yamaha keyboards back in '95 & i made sure it's midi-capable, eventhough i didn't even know how to use it. then, when i bought my first PC in '96, one of the first things i did was to find a way to connect the yamaha to the pc. then i learned more about midi & how it works. i also learned about soundcard & how it functions. then i explored more oabout wavetables & softsynth. how great it is to record music from your keyboard & showed it on the pc screen. nowadays, most people make music using their PCs. in the 90's MP3s were not that popular, yet. so people shared their music through midi files. these files contain music information which can be played back on any pc. i got hooked & got my hands on hundreds of midi files of my favorite songs. the beauty of midi files is that you can edit, change the notes, the tempo & even change the instruments. you can even change from a slow song to a rock song if you want. you can also mute any instuments you like. in most case, i turn off the guitar parts & play my guitar along with it. midi files don't sound that great actually. it's because the pc tries to emulate the instrument sound as best as it could. it depends mostly on the quality of the soundcard. the most difficult instrument to emulate is the guitar. piano, strings & drums sounds are quite OK, to my ear.

i wish i can compose my own music but i guess i don't have the talent. so the next best thing is to re-create other peoples songs on the pc. normally what i do is just do the drums, piano & strings part on the pc while the guitar part is from, well, my guitar. this has become sort of a hobby for me so that i can play alone in the house haha. thankfully now i got friends to jam with!

i just got hold a USB midi interface for a few hundred bucks. what does it do? well, it will enable my keyboard to connect to my notebook. you see, notebooks don't have many connection like their desktop counterparts with their PCI thing. so the only connection the notebook has to the outside world is via USB. the thing is, my kids have taken over my PC for their games & internet activities. So i'm left with my notebook (which actually belongs to the office shhhhh). in order to continue my craze for music, i bought this interface & manage to link my yamaha keyboard to the notebook. now my keyboard is alive again & i can have new sounds with it via the notebook. who knows i might bring the notebook for the next jamming session & see if it fits in. my next agenda is to buy a nice & small midi controller to replace the keyboard. then i'd be so easy to carry around.