[linux-audio-user] More MIDI/sysex dump/sequencers...

Rob lau at kudla.org
Fri Oct 10 01:56:01 EDT 2003


On Thursday 09 October 2003 21:56, Tim Orford wrote:
> > "So, are you all telling me that there are no sequencers for
> > linux that support a simple sysex dump and sysex receive,
> > you know, by taking a .syx file and throwing it out to the
> > machine?"
> i'm not saying the situation is good, but i cant see a good
> argument for integrating this functionality into a
> 'sequencer'. I think many people would say that creating
> bloated monolithic apps was the wrong direction to go in.

I don't remember which windows app it was, but back in my dark 
days of doing everything with MIDI synths, I used to be able to 
have the sequencer send a sysex file containing the appropriate 
patches for the song to each synth (I had/have a Korg M1 and 
Yamaha DX7.)  It seems to me that an even older piece of 
software let me do that as well, maybe an Amiga or DOS based 
sequencer.  

Of course those boards both predate General MIDI, so you had no 
way to expect patch 0 to be a grand piano, etc.  I'd expect the 
need for something like that to be rather less nowadays 
(certainly I do nearly everything with software synths and I 
can't conceive of a way to set them all up automatically at the 
beginning of a song without using a fairly rigid framework like 
Buzz on the PC where you do all your sound generation internally 
or using plugins, nothing like ALSA or Jack), but there was a 
time when it was very necessary.  Necessary as in "Oh my god, I 
have 700 banks on this floppy, which one was I using when I 
wrote this song?!"

Rob




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