Midi Manager Software

[Senor Cactus]

I'm trying to set up a working studio on my PC. I have a Hewlett Packard pavillion with a Pentium 3 and 128mb of Ram. I am running Windows ME for my operating system and Pro Tools Free for my Sequencer. I have a Yamaha PSR-530 keyboard plugged into the standard soundcard that came with the computer.

What I am looking for is a software program that will enable me to access all of my keyboard's instruments from Pro Tools. Right now I can only access the 128 General Midi instruments. I know Opcode OMS and MOTU FreeMidi are good ones for the Mac but I can't seem to find a line on one for PC.

Any suggestions?

[tdukex]

I don't know this for an absolute fact, but I'm pretty sure that any PC MIDI sequencer (Cakewalk, Cubase, Logic, etc.) will allow you to access all the sounds on your keyboard or any other combination of sound modules. MIDI sequencing, along with recording digital audio, is one of the primary functions of this type of software.

Will these run within Protools? I don't know.

[Senor Cactus]

Well, Pro Tools is a PC midi sequencer. My problem is when I click the button to choose instruments I get a pop up list of numbers from 1 to 128. These are the general midi instruments. I have about 600 other sounds I would like to be able to access.

I think what I need is a midi driver. Right now I am using the stock sound card and whatever driver that came with the machine ("Creative External Instrument..." or something like that).

Am I right in thinking that I need a midi driver? If I am, does anyone know the name of a good one and where to find it?

[AlChuck]

What you are looking for is something like an instrument definition file, or some sort of mapping of MIDI patch changes to the patches that are actually available on your external hardware.

I'm only closely familiar with Cakewalk/SONAR, and they have such a file. It's a fairly simple ASCII format so when new gear comes out somebody usually writes one for it, and they are usually shared freely over the web, so you can usually find one for almost any kind of gear.

I would think that ProTools has some sort of similar scheme.

[Hano]

Hi,
Apple uses a Midi Manager, that takes care of the routing to the right ports. It's actually a Midi driver. (in the latest versions it's a part of Quicktime) It routes the signals. OpenMusicSystems does the same think. In a PC you'll have to set it up under Windows. I think it's called the Media manager. These 800 sounds that you want to acces, are they "Aiff files", or "Sound fonts"? For those you 'll need a dedicated sampling programme. Sound fonts can be generated from other programs. Take care,
Hano