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VirtualMIDISynth

coolsoft.altervista.org

45 pointsrocky113810 comments

A really good version of this for Mac is: http://notahat.com/simplesynth/

And if anyone's interested in diving into MIDI, I took this class at CMU and it was incredible, all the slides and material are available online here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/cmsip/resources.html

That course is exactly what I have been looking for. It's too bad they don't have video lectures available.

They definitely filmed at least some of the lectures, and they’re worth watching since the prof is fantastic (he made Audacity). Unfortunately I don’t have my CMU email anymore so I don’t think I can access them.

On a Mac it’s probably easier to just use GarageBand. Same for iPhones.

Isn't GarageBand a sort of DAW for creating music? That would be way overkill to just be able to play a .midi file, no? Also, I'm sure if you just want to remap some midi devices, you would prefer a 1.2 MB tool that does that, rather than an entire creation suite of tools... Unless you have a need for the rest of it!

It is, but it’s very easy to use and comes preinstalled.

Besides, a softsynth won’t sound good without a bit of reverb, and if you want to play, at some point you’ll want to record it.

Yes, but GarageBand actually has a host of synth sounds that don’t sound like hot garbage - (in fact, they’re bloody impressive) - I think this was a bit of the author’s point.

Another point, however, is the software synth’s filesize - and indeed, GarageBand or Logic’s full instrument library can range from 5-90GB.

(Yes, you read that range right - depending on your choice of installation optionals, including loops and the recently-included ‘Alchemy’ library, you could be looking at 80GB).

Garageband benefitted from many features of Apple's professional 'Logic' DAW. In/around 2005-6 they released a series of sample disks called 'Garageband Jam Paks'. Each included GBs of samples, 'Apple loops' and dozens of software instruments (several excellent). There are 2 disks for Symphonic inst's alone. Few if any soundfonts could compete. And that was 15 years ago (!)

On the negative side, GB didn't support MIDI-out. It was hobbled, like the budget version of Logic. But, then, there's always Logic (now at 1/5 of the price).

The backing track to one of Lady Gaga's hits was a sample track from Garageband.

There's a video of her sitting on the floor in a million-dollar studio - using just Garageband on her Mac.

I did the same thing on my upcoming mixtape, except I'm using Logic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

They're royalty-free for a reason.

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