(no subject)
May. 19th, 2003 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiriasBreaking my wall of silence to make a pair of negative advertisements.
My first-year project requires me to reverse the order of chords in samples from Bach chorales. MIDI seemed like the natural choice for creating these samples, as it allows for manipulation of the notes rather than the audio samples. To that end, I sought out a cheap (~$50) program that would allow me to do this.
The first program I came upon, made by Evolution Software, was Sound Studio II, a MIDI editing program whose purported functions include one called "reverse notes." I purchased this software without more than a cursory exploration before the trial period expired - a mistake on my part. I later discovered that while it does indeed have a function by that name, it's buggy as hell - the temporal sequence of the notes is not reversed faithfully. I managed to track down the source of the problem and wrote tech support about it, even suggesting a replacement algorithm to fix it, but all they could tell me was, "It's not a bug, it's a feature." As far as I could tell, the function as currently written does nothing one could be expected to want, so, irritated by this false advertising, I tried badgering them into a refund. No dice. They did eventually agree to put a second function which behaves normally into the next version, which comes out in June or July - but I can't wait that long.
So I looked around. I poked at a trial version of a Cakewalk product, Sonar, which seemed to do what I wanted it to do (and had a much cleaner interface, to boot). Unfortunately, the price of that very nice program exceeds my budget. So I called up their sales department, explained what I needed (taking care to be explicit due to my earlier problems), and asked the sales rep what the cheapest piece of software that would meet my requirements would be. He said that the name of the function was "retrograde," and he recommended Home Studio 2003. Suspicious because of the lack of a trial version, I emailed a few distributors and asked *them* about the functionality of this software. One replied: Home Studio 2003 does not have this function. Hmm. I called again; got a different rep. "For real this time, guys, what is the cheapest software that will allow me to do this?" This sales rep recommended Music Creator 2003. I went to Best Buy, asked if I could play with the software. No dice. Asked to speak to a manager; after I explained my situation, she agreed to let me return it within 30 days if it doesn't do what I need. (Score one for Best Buy.) Got the software into lab; tried it out. No retrograde function anywhere. Called again, explained the problem to the sales rep. He said, Sure, Music Studio 2003 does it! I asked how. He said, Uhh, let me talk to tech support. Elevator music. More elevator music. He came back - I could hear the egg on his face as he talked to me. "Uhh, see, the thing is, there's no easy way to do this in Music Studio. But we do have another product... " Yes, I know about Sonar, I can't afford it. Back to the subject. "Well, uh, let me see if there's a workaround." More elevator music... very lengthy elevator music. In the end the only suggestion he has for me is to MANUALLY EDIT THE MIDIS to switch the chords around. If I wanted to do it the hard way, I told him, I could've stuck to freeware. "But we do have another product..." I told him I thought sales reps should be a little more conversant with their products, thanked him for his time and hung up. Assuming I can find the receipt, I at least won't be out $40 this time, but I'm 0 for 2 in finding a program that works for me, and I'm annoyed with the incompetence of that sales department.
Moral of the story is, avoid doing business with Cakewalk and Evolution Software if you can. The former company makes a good piece of software but has a truly awful human interface; the latter is just plain shoddy and incompetent all around.
My first-year project requires me to reverse the order of chords in samples from Bach chorales. MIDI seemed like the natural choice for creating these samples, as it allows for manipulation of the notes rather than the audio samples. To that end, I sought out a cheap (~$50) program that would allow me to do this.
The first program I came upon, made by Evolution Software, was Sound Studio II, a MIDI editing program whose purported functions include one called "reverse notes." I purchased this software without more than a cursory exploration before the trial period expired - a mistake on my part. I later discovered that while it does indeed have a function by that name, it's buggy as hell - the temporal sequence of the notes is not reversed faithfully. I managed to track down the source of the problem and wrote tech support about it, even suggesting a replacement algorithm to fix it, but all they could tell me was, "It's not a bug, it's a feature." As far as I could tell, the function as currently written does nothing one could be expected to want, so, irritated by this false advertising, I tried badgering them into a refund. No dice. They did eventually agree to put a second function which behaves normally into the next version, which comes out in June or July - but I can't wait that long.
So I looked around. I poked at a trial version of a Cakewalk product, Sonar, which seemed to do what I wanted it to do (and had a much cleaner interface, to boot). Unfortunately, the price of that very nice program exceeds my budget. So I called up their sales department, explained what I needed (taking care to be explicit due to my earlier problems), and asked the sales rep what the cheapest piece of software that would meet my requirements would be. He said that the name of the function was "retrograde," and he recommended Home Studio 2003. Suspicious because of the lack of a trial version, I emailed a few distributors and asked *them* about the functionality of this software. One replied: Home Studio 2003 does not have this function. Hmm. I called again; got a different rep. "For real this time, guys, what is the cheapest software that will allow me to do this?" This sales rep recommended Music Creator 2003. I went to Best Buy, asked if I could play with the software. No dice. Asked to speak to a manager; after I explained my situation, she agreed to let me return it within 30 days if it doesn't do what I need. (Score one for Best Buy.) Got the software into lab; tried it out. No retrograde function anywhere. Called again, explained the problem to the sales rep. He said, Sure, Music Studio 2003 does it! I asked how. He said, Uhh, let me talk to tech support. Elevator music. More elevator music. He came back - I could hear the egg on his face as he talked to me. "Uhh, see, the thing is, there's no easy way to do this in Music Studio. But we do have another product... " Yes, I know about Sonar, I can't afford it. Back to the subject. "Well, uh, let me see if there's a workaround." More elevator music... very lengthy elevator music. In the end the only suggestion he has for me is to MANUALLY EDIT THE MIDIS to switch the chords around. If I wanted to do it the hard way, I told him, I could've stuck to freeware. "But we do have another product..." I told him I thought sales reps should be a little more conversant with their products, thanked him for his time and hung up. Assuming I can find the receipt, I at least won't be out $40 this time, but I'm 0 for 2 in finding a program that works for me, and I'm annoyed with the incompetence of that sales department.
Moral of the story is, avoid doing business with Cakewalk and Evolution Software if you can. The former company makes a good piece of software but has a truly awful human interface; the latter is just plain shoddy and incompetent all around.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Ahhh... MIDI, how I love thee!
Date: 2003-05-19 11:10 am (UTC)For what you seem to be wanting to do, there might just be a Linuxy solution.
I believe that there are many programmatical interfaces to MIDI data under Linux (or other OpenSource) Perl, C/C++, Python, etc etc etc.
It should be relative easy to feed in the forward MIDI and have a simple program spit it back out in reverse.
MIDI, if I remember correctly, consists of start & stop events. So one only needs to read the file in from the end, turning stop to start events and vice versa. Or, if you are lucky enough to have a programmatic interface that deals with MIDI data in terms of "notes" (bundled stop/start events), then you just write the whole thing out backward.
Re: Ahhh... MIDI, how I love thee!
Date: 2003-05-19 11:23 am (UTC)There are Atari ST emulators available for a variety of platforms. Might be worth a shot at trying it...
Re: Ahhh... MIDI, how I love thee!
Date: 2003-05-19 12:16 pm (UTC)Re: Ahhh... MIDI, how I love thee!
Date: 2003-05-19 12:44 pm (UTC)And it *is* a really, really easy function to implement! That's what amazes me - that the Evolution people are such poor coders that they mucked it up, and that the Cakewalk people didn't bother to include it. I don't get it at all.
Re: Ahhh... MIDI, how I love thee!
Date: 2003-05-19 12:58 pm (UTC)