Irish sounding midifiles

  • Thread starter Thread starter peter miller
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peter miller

peter miller

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bohdran, uilean pipes and that kind of stuff...
Possible? where would i find them??
:D
 
Are you looking for MIDI song files, or actual Celtic instrument sounds? I know of a lot of sites that have Irish MIDI song files. As far as the instruments go, some sound modules out there have some traditional Irish instruments either included or as add-on expansion boards. The Roland JV series has a lot of add-on cards, which I think, may contain some of the sounds you're looking for. The JV-1010 goes for around $450, and does have a slot for an expansion board (which will run you an additional $230). I've messed around with Irish MIDI tunes, and have tried to incorporate instruments which at least sounded close to the intended traditional instruments, with the end result always sounding REALLY CHEESY. I do a giutar/vocal single act, which I incorporated MIDI as my backup. The rock stuff I do sounds OK. I used to play Irish music in Boston and the rest of New England, and tried to incorporate MIDI as backing music for the act, and just couldn't get it to a point where I would incorporate it into my gig. For the Irish gigs, it's just me, my guitar, and a boat load of blarney. Good Luck. Tom.
 
cheers Tom.
Could you clarify something for me.
My S/card has onboard midi.It has every instrument under the sun plus bird ,people walking,gunshots,cars etc etc. everything except a bohdran etc.
Do I call these midi files or soundfonts or what?
I'm new to midi. On my card it is reffered to as sound banks which I guess is the midi instruments as a whole.
Cheers again-- Pete M
 
OK here goes nothing. First off, what kind of soundcard are you using? Now to confuse you completely... ...The "sound" or "instrument" is called a "Patch" in midi terms. in General MIDI, the patches numbered 1-127 (or 128) have been "generalized" thus the term Patch 1 is Piano, 126 is a helecopter. Sound fonts are something diferent (I have them on my Sound Blaser card, but never really tried to do anything with them. External sound modules like the Roland I mentioned previously, or the Korg NS5R (another 1/2 rack unit which I use), have thier 127 Patches arrainged into numerous Banks, thus these modules can have thousands of patches or "sounds" Something that helped me out a great deal when I was first getting int the whole MIDI thing was a book titled "MIDI for Idiots" (That's the name, I'm not kidding). All this probably just confused you even more, but one thing to remember, MIDI/Sequencing is based on numerics and math, you just have to learn the math. Books help, but the school of hard knocks, gets the job done too (that's the school I currently attend). Tom
 
Peter: You call them "sounds". Usually the only way to get realistic sounds is by smapling them. Many soundcard can play samples.

This do, however, have absolutely nothing to with MIDI whatsoever. :)
 
Huh? How can playing Irish MIDI instrument patches have "absolutely nothing to do with MIDI whatsoever?"
 
Irish instrument sounds is what I'm chasing.So I guess I call them patches???? Midi for idiots sounds good what's the ISBN? Sampling is another thing I know nothing about. On another subject(or is it)what is a sequencer?
 
My mistake Peter. The name of the book is "MIDI for Musicians" by Brad Hill - ISBN# 1-55652-221-5. I inadvertently called it MIDI for Idiots, due to the nature of my own personal experience of getting into the whole MIDI thing. Now, I know just enough about MIDI to get me into real trouble. As far as Soundfonts go, I have them on my computer (I think they came with Soundblaster or Cakewalk) but I haven't messed with them all that much. There may be something to them as far as "stand alone" sounds go (maybe a type of wave file, but I really don't know).... ...Possibly try a search for soundfonts on a search engine to see if any of the sounds you are looking for come up. Another problem you may run into with soundfonts (again, I'm just guessing here) is that if you want to use the sounds as backing for a live application, they may be rather large files to store and lug around in a laptop. To answer your question about a sequence; If you're using a machine or program like Cakewalk or something that lets you compose/edit/etc., music via MIDI, you're sequencing! Hope this helps a little. Tom. BTW, if you haven't picked up on this yet, sometimes I really suck at explaining things, but I'll keep trying!
 
Fmmahoganyrush,

Re some of the stuff you said about soundfonts...

There may be something to them as far as "stand alone" sounds go (maybe a type of wave file, but I really don't know).
Click to expand...
They are samples just like any other sampler format like Akai... basically WAV files, but with performance data stuffed in with them too (attack-sustain-release envelopes, loop points, what to do when there's an aftertouch message sent, etc., just like the parameters of any synth sound, pretty much).

Another problem you may run into with soundfonts (again, I'm just guessing here) is that if you want to use the sounds as backing for a live application, they may be rather large files to store and lug around in a laptop.
Click to expand...
Naaah, they're usually fairly small. Biggest I've seen was less than 100 MB, nothing on any decent hard drive these days. Of course if you had every soundfont in existence you might need an extra 60 GB drive or something... but by and large the size of the soundfonts should be irrelevant.
 
AlChuck, Thanx for the clairification of soundfonts... ...I always wondered what exactly they were. The thing about the file size was only a warning if Peter wanted to actually use them in a live application, considering only what I use for my MIDI gig gear as a single act, which is simply an old 486 laptop (with just enough hard drive & ram to handle my MIDI files & Cakewalk 4.5 / Virtual Jukebox), and a Korg NS5R halfrack. I don't dare bring any of my better laptops to gigs because they're too easy and attractive for somebody to steal. So for me, at the risk of sounding cliche'... ...Size Does Matter. Thanx, Tom.
 
I think I'm gonna have to check into them there soundfont things myself to see what they're all about. I could always use additional options for sounds with my studio work as well. Definitely try to find that book though. I had to read some parts quite a few times and try to apply what they were saying (with a lot of failed attemps and frustration along the way), but it did in fact help with my general understanding of the MIDI Monster. Tom.
 
AlChuck said:
Huh? How can playing Irish MIDI instrument patches have "absolutely nothing to do with MIDI whatsoever?"
Click to expand...

I was going to answer it, but I think you answered it excellently later yourself! Thanks!
 
Regarding obtaining the instrument themselves.... as stated there are a few in orch II soundard for Roland. Also there is a Bohran soundfont for $3.95 at http://www.fmjsoft.com/ (If this link doesn't take you right there to the fonts, click on samples on the right side of the home page). I havn't heard them, but their software is top flight. Also, there are some Celtic disks out there somewhere.... I think 2 double disk sets.... maybe audio or wav files.... a search on the net should find them... if not, let me know and I'll hunt around, check bigfish audio and some of the other sample sites. There is a knock on the disks... that they contain a lot of snippets of music and may lack individual samples... but it seems like I read that months ago. You should also be able to find some dulcimer and or harp sound fonts or wavs that work for Irish music. I think that with some playing around you might get a pennywhistle out of a piccolo (or not). There are bagpipe sounds available and fiddles. Ulliean (spelling?) pipes will probably be hard to find. Good luck!!
 
OK, AlChuck, once more:

Midi is information on what notes are playing. It's like a score. A sixteenth A, then an eighth of B#, and so on.

What has been discussed here is samples of Irish folk instruments.

These two things are totally separate and have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
 
The name of the post is Irish sounding MIDI files

Let's see, Irish sounding MIDI files.... McPatch, O'Soundfont, MacModule... If a soundfont or MIDI patch is played in a forest without utilizing MIDI to give the soundfont or patch any parameters, does it make a sound... ...(extrapolated from the tree in the forest thing) We just needed some clarification on the subject matter to get rolling here. BTW, I'm glad we did because, as I said before, I (really) always wanted to know more about soundfonts. Peace, Tom.
 
But my dear regebro, it is decidely not so that they are "totally separate and have absolutely nothing to do with each other." Particularly here in the context of Sound Fonts and any other sample format that's used to supply sounds for a sampler.

Because how do you play a sampler? You send it MIDI messages.

Just like you would play any other MIDI sound source (most of which, these days, are all sample-based anyway, excepting those that are products of the recent fad for true analog synths).

A Sound Font or an Akai sample format sound or anything else like this is a sound source for a MIDI instrument.

(I like how you couched it there, Fmmahoganyrush...)
 
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