Hello everybody,

Wow, we're finally getting some dialog going in the GEM forum....I'm excited!

Okay, let's talk midi editing (or at least what I like to do). For you WK8 owners out there (and WK4, SK880, etc) where are the best sounding instruments, what banks?

Depends...Right? Depends what we are talking about. Piano...probably Piano1 which is in midi bank0 or Generalmusic GMX Bank1 (I'll start calling it bank1 from here on out). Piano2 is a little brighter, that works sometimes, and I also like PianoMk1 found on bank2. Okay, how about bass? For me, FingerdBs2 and 3 found on banks 6 and 7 respectively sound the best. I also use AcoustcBs4 found in bank4 a lot too. Slap and Synth are fine up on bank1. Okay, guitars...The overdrive guitar found in bank1 is okay but doesn't work that well in newer songs (my opinion of course). Yet the LeadDist3 found in bank6 is awesome. I get a midi file with overdrive guitars selected, 8 times out of 10 I will change up to LeadDist3 and get some great results. How about drum kits? DK_Std_1 is okay but DK_Std_1WX and DK_Std_10 sound crisper, snappier, whatever you want to call it yet still gives the same timbre as DK_Std_1. I've been substituting DK_Rock lately with some real interesting results, a different sounding kit but can be a lot of fun with certain songs.

So I think you get my point here. Take a midi file but jazz it up a bit by using the better sounding instruments your keyboard has to offer. I've never really changed the songs that came with the keyboard, the GEM folks definitely did there homework there. But I've got 500+ good midi files from Tune1000 that just use the standard general midi banks. I gotta tell ya, some of these songs are a night and day difference between just leaving them alone and swapping out the general midi registers for different ones that I think sound better.

So when I heard that the latest keyboards play midi files right off the disk, you don't have to load them into RAM, I was excited. What I was hoping for was to select the file, scan down the instruments chosen, change what I want, hit the "Store Procedure" button and off I go. That IS what I do if I load it into RAM. But that doesn't happen if I play it right off the disk. Sure I could change the instruments after the song starts but that can get a bit cumbersome especially if I'm changing a lot of stuff.

Oh well, no biggy, I can live with it, I have so far. For the stuff I use a lot, I use Calkwalk to change the settings then save it to disk...That's probably the better way to go anyway. It would be nice if GEM would release a Genesys instrument definition file for Calkwalk soon (hint). All of this would be a moot point.

mike