Importing Soundfonts into Notation Midi Files

[dj]

Hi,

From your post, I see that you do understand that Notation Composer/Musican don't actually make any sound of their own. A lot of people tend to confuse that issue.

I think what you're hearing when you play a file in Notation Composer may be simply Microsoft's built-in soft synth, which is marginal at a charitable best.

Sonic quality is largely a product of what sound-source you have. Musical quality is largely a product of skull sweat. Step-time entry of notes is almost always going to be flat and lifeless when played back. If you can perform your tracks live, then you can capture whatever emotional content you put into them. Even with step-time recording, you can re-work velocity, duration and attack times to give it a more "human" feel.

As far as sound-sources, I have a battery of external hardware synthesizers hooked up to my system -- my wife once counted 23, but that was some time back. Admittedly, I'm an unusual case, as I am a composer/arranger of music as part of my profession. I use Notation Composer as my scoring software to create the arrangements and my synthesizer collection for their sounds, as well as some soft synths.

A number of people here use Synthfont, which you mention, as a sound-source, using Composer or Musician to drive soundfonts they load into it. The sounds are limited only by what soundfonts can be found/purchased/created.

As an alternative, Independence Free, available at KVR Audio, is somewhat similar to Synthfont but perhaps a little less cryptic. There are hundreds of other VST or stand-alone choices out there, some free, some paid.

A little simpler, but with unlimited sonic potential, is Herman Seib's VSTHost (http://www.hermannseib.com/english/vsthost.htm). It is capable of loading multiple VST/VSTi at once, including soundfont players. Coupled with a virtual midi device like MidiYoke (http://www.midiox.com/), output from Composer can be re-directed to any of tens of thousands of soft synths that are available, many for free. I have over a thousand files in my VST folder. Some creative multi-tracking in a freeware program like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) and you can create some very emotional and (if you wish to) complex music. Or simple music, too.

I've put up a page on my website with some files from various projects I've done. Your taste in music will likely vary, but they show what can be done with Notation Software products as a base. Here's the page:

http://www.barndoorproductions.ca/mu...id-jacklin.php

Hope some of that helps.

David