Atari-Midi Archives

FIRST A QUESTION TO ALL:
Does anybody have a Korg DW8000/EX8000 default SysEx dump (or any 
other working memory dump) to e-mail this as *.syx file to Lawrence 
to help him getting his machine up ?

Hi Lawrence,

The battery
> replacement mod does say that (weirdly enough) it does
> not have a default configeration but loses its memory.
> One can reconfigure it either by feeding it the
> original sound banks by audio tape or midi.

Yep, memory was expensive those days, so it's possible no default 
banks were kept in ROM. 

> ...I went into  the
> multimedia folder and changed the Crystal(sound card)
> out to external device. 

That's all you have to do there. 

> Perhaps I also have to
> configure Crystal in to external device. 

That's done with the above. The PC as such is ready to receive MIDI 
data.

> I had expected that Midi Ox would do that for me. 

No, Midi Ox you have to configure yourself under OPTIONS/MIDI 
DEVICES. There you can connect MidiOx input to receive from your 
soundcard's Midi In port, and MidiOx output to send to your 
soundcard's Midi Out port. 

If you further set the checkmark to "Pass SysEx" in MidiOx OPTIONS 
everything received by MidiOx will be passed to the Midi Output as 
well (=Midi Through)

>  ... hooking up the PC to the
> Atari. What however is the passive or controlled media
> machine. Would a sent message(a .mid tune) be received
> by any midi player, or would the player machine be the
> sender. I know that doesn't make sense but that is the
> depth of my confusion on this. If I "play" a midi tune
> on one computer does a second computer receive that
> message and have enough smarts to play it ? 

Can work either direction, and either way is good enough to check if 
data flow is happening. (That's what it is about at the moment, just 
to verify if any stupid little midi byte goes from here to there.)

So if you use MidiOx (which has a Midi player built in, accessible 
via ACTIONS/Play MIDI...) to play a MIDI file, you need some software 
on the ATARI to receive it. This can be a sequencer, which you then 
put in Record mode. There you can see if it receives something. 

Or, the other direction, you use a Midi player/sequencer to play a 
Midi file from the ATARI and you can observe the Midi data arriving 
in MidiOx's "Monitor" window. For now there's no need to HEAR 
anything, it's just to see if ANY data are being received either way. 
Then you'll know the Midi connection as such is established and 
working. 

Once you have the connections/data flow together you can replace the 
ATARI by the EX8000 and try to send something there and see if it 
responds in SOME way. 

>  Or more importantly make any sense to these
> unassigned note off/on msgs. and in what tinber,
> frequency , frequency changes , wave table.etc. It
> appears beyond me. And then there are the packages,
> release, decay, sustain and all the rest.

This will remain abstract until you'll get the connections up & 
running and thereafter begin to hear something. Then only can you 
begin to explore these aspects and begin to understand what's what. 
I hope you've got the manual for the EX8000 to have some guidance to 
get into the workings of that machine. Otherwise where could you 
start getting your grips on it??? Besides, since I assume you are 
entirely new to MIDI, do some search on the www for MIDI tutorials. I 
believe to have seen some pretty good explanations once in a while. 
Or get a book about the MIDI basics, that's what I did in the 80's 
when I started. 

>  Of course as you suggest there could be internal
> electronic faults. Perhaps it awaits the M1 I've
> thirsted after for 25 years. But then again maybe only
> one of  these new machines can possibly answer the 
> needs I expect and would challenge. 

This you can only find out once you've got the basic connections 
together and your understanding of what MIDI can do and what not 
develops. 

>  My dream machine would take the notes and
> instrumentation I've assigned those notes to and play
> them back to me so that I could adjust my arrangements
> accordingly. The solos and lead instruments I should
> be able to add arpeggios, bends, phrasing, and
> sampling to achieve my final product. From what I've
> heard the Fairlight at $60k was able to do that 40
> years ago but claims are that many much cheaper
> machines can do that now. For example to do some of
> the Gil Evans charts with different voicings. Maybe
> with a Coleman Hawkins or Dizzy lead instead of Miles.

Same thing - your dream machine, any machine, will need YOU and your 
capability to handle it as its central part. The better your 
understanding, the better the machine will serve you. 

Also, by the way, there are software synthesizers for the PC 
nowadays, with which you can do many things. It doesn't necessarily 
have to be another hardware machine. But a keyboard as such you'll 
need sooner or later! 

Patience, persistence, digging, digging... after all it can be a lot 
of fun to explore, to get frustrated inbetween, and to eventually 
succeed, step by step... 

:^) Greg