"THE PERFECT MARRIAGE" KHP and EDIROL SOUND CANVAS

[kjzone]

The Perfect Marriage.....KHP and Edirol Sound Canvas

For those who want to make their own CDG's you must have a good instrumental. A good source on the Internet is MIDI files.

MIDI files have NO SOUND as they are "Zero's and One's".

Your Windows computer comes with a Midi Player, but you only have about 6 midi Instrumental Sounds available...When you play them they sound really bad.

When a musician creates a song and saves it as a MIDI file, certain Instrument sounds are attached to this file. You must have some way to play the MIDI file that will attached the correct Instrument the musician used to HEAR WHAT THE ARRANGEMENT REALLY SOUNDS LIKE.

In the past, the only way to hear the Instrumental, as the musician created it was to RUN THE MIDI THROUGH A "SOUND MODULE" bringing it back to your hard drive as a wave file and then play it. A GOOD SOUND MODULE IS ABOUT $ 800.00.

HERE IS WHERE "ROLAND-EDIROL SOUND CANVAS" SOLVES THE PROBLEM AND FOR ABOUT
$ 49.95.

Sound Canvas converts your MIDI file, instantly assigning some 990 INSTRUMENTS TO THE MIDI FILE.

You can playback the MIDI with the full fidelity as the musician originally created and with one click convert it to a WAVE FILE, with the same fidelity as going through an $ 800 Sound Module.

You can also, change the KEY, TEMPO, VOLUME, RE-VERB, CHORUS, and EVEN THE INSTRUMENTS THE MUSICIAN USED TO SUIT YOUR EAR creating an INSTRUMENTAL ARRANGEMENT TO FIT YOUR SINGING STYLE.

HERE'S ANOTHER NEAT TRICK:
Musician's create MIDI files in either GS or GM2 profiles, most use GS. When you hear the arrangement with all the instruments in GS profile, if you CLICK ON GM2, ALL Instruments are changed to PIANO (except for the Drums) which is always Channel or Track 10. I use this trick often, as I like to sing songs to a good PIANO Instrumental.


HERE IS THE LINK TO EDIROL ABOUT THE PRODUCT:

http://www.edirol.com/products/info/vscmp1.html

HERE IS THE LINK TO PURCHASE THE PRODUCT:

http://www.edirol.com/corporate/dealer_locator_fr.html

NOTE: EDIROL NO LONGER SELLS DIRECT, YOU MUST PURCHASE FROM A DEALER OR INTERNET SELLER.

HERE ARE SOME LINKS I HAVE FOUND EXTREMELY VALUABLE:

BEST MIDI FILE SEARCH ENGINE:

http://www.manythings.org/midi/search.html

BEST SITE FOR BROADWAY SHOW MIDI'S"

http://www.broadwaymidi.com/shows.html

BEST SITE FOR MIDI FILES THAT ALSO HAVE THE LYRICS:

http://www.smickandsmodoo.com/

GREAT SITE FOR CHRISTMAS MIDI'S:

http://www.heavenlywebs.net/midis/christmas/index.htm

BEST SITES FOR LYRICS:

http://www.thepeaches.com/

http://www.romantic-lyrics.com/

http://www.ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/summer.html

GREAT SITE FOR HELP ON LOCATING "RARE and HARD TO FIND SONGS AND LYRICS:

http://voy.com/16746/

MIDI FILES ARE VERY SMALL, ABOUT 20-30KB. VERY FAST DOWNLOAD, BY RIGHT MOUSE CLICKING ON.

PLEASE NOTE YOU MAY HAVE TO LISTEN TO SEVERAL FILES FOR THE SAME SONG TO GET AN ARRANGMENT YOU LIKE.

THE QUALITY OF THE MIDI FILE DEPENDS ON THE MUSICIAN WHO ORIGINALLY CREATED IT AND THEIR ABILITY AS A MUSICIAN.

FOR MTU:

I BELIEVE THIS IS AN EXCELLENT PRODUCT YOU MIGHT WANT TO OFFER MTU CUSTOMERS WITH THEIR KARAOKE HOME PRODUCER PRODUCT, AS AN AUTHORIZED RE-SELLER OF THE EDIROL SOUND CANVAS PRODUCT.

[jaddams]

I have the Edirol Sound Canvass version 3.2 and I am amazed at the things it does.

The very first song I processed was “Bamboleo” by the Gypsy Kings just to hear the rhythm section. The midi was really crappy but when I processed it I almost fell back. No kidding! It was that good.

Since then, I have spent a great deal of time looking for midis on the Internet, it’s a long and arduous process, but the end result it’s excellent.

I bought the MTU suite because I got tired of going to karaoke places and NOT finding songs I wanted to sing or finding songs I wanted to sing that had horrendous instrumentals.

So I started buying commercial CD+G’s at anywhere from $19.95 to $39.95 a pop . A very expensive proposition when I could find only one or two songs per record.

Then I got tired of carrying a bunch of disks around, especially when I traveled, so my purpose of buying the MTU suite was to make compilations of all the songs I liked into three or four disks, everything on those CD+G’s would have songs with the arrangements I liked and within my range, and I could modify some songs by just copying the importing the music and adding lyrics in another language such as Spanish, French and Italian.

(You would be surprised in how many language one can sing by learning phonetic pronuntiation. Julio Iglesias sings seven languages and only speaks Spanish)

But that's another story......

Anyway, I practice my songs at home ( using phonetics for French ) and bingo! When I go to a karaoke place I sing my songs as good as I can perform them. No hassles, no asking the Host to change keys, no going through a book with several version of the same song, etc… I am sure you get the picture.

The MTU Karaoke Suite AND the Edirol Sound Canvas has opened a whole new world of background music for me. I have found music that will never be available in commercial CD+G’s at any price!

KJZone, in my opinion, your suggestion to MTU is excellent!

Jon

[George]

Amen,
the days of "crappy" sounding Midi's are over.

I'll echo both the above posts 100%, and to really fill out the package, get the Goldwave Digital Audio Editor program. They're a Canadian company. I don't know if they've changed any, but as I recall, it was around $35.00 U.S.
After you've converted the midi's to .WAV, you can add silence to the beginning or end of a track if needed, fade in or out, add echo, level the volume of several tracks, remove scratches from archived LP's, and many, many other neat editing tricks.

I usually wind up using all three programs on a project, and thanks again to KJZONE for finding Edirol VSC..

George

http://www.goldwave.com

[kjzone]

Yes I applaud.........George's POST regarding the Post-Processing of your WAVE files.

I use Cool Edit Pro2, but the GoldWave program is excellent too.

Last night, Jan 9, 2003 my wife was watching a movie on TV, I think it was "Snow Plow" as I walked in the room a song was playing that caught my attention, but didn't get enough of the song to figure out the title.

I like all the Great Songs from 1910 to 1940, especially the Big Band Era, which of course are not available on CDG.

I quickly got on the Internet, Google Search Engine and used the trick of putting in a couple of the phrases of the lyrics I remembered in quotes, in this case I put in "To each his own" and
"If a flame is to grow" and "Lyrics" and up popped the Lyrics to a song that contained the phrases, in this case the song was "TO EACH HIS OWN".

Peak Billboard position:
In 1946 there were five Top 10 versions-
Eddy Howard (#1)
The Ink Spots (#1)
Freddy Martin (#1)
The Modernaires with Paula Kelly (#3)
Tony Martin (#4)
The Platters (#21) 1960
The Tymes at # 78 in 1964
Frankie Laine at # 82 in 1968

I next checked to see if the song was available on Karaoke CDG, IT WAS NOT.

Next I searched with my Best Midi File Search Engine in the above post and found several arrangements, which I downloaded.

One of the arrangements used mostly Piano, one Guitar, of the five I download, everyone was different.

I next went to WINMX, and downloaded most of the Original Versions as mentioned above under BillBoard. Of course none were in Stereo Center Panned. Most of the arrangements used a Strong STRING INSTRUMENTAL BACKGROUND, so I chose the MIDI originally downloaded with GUITAR, changed the GUITAR to STRINGS, the Key was OK, but changed the TEMPO. My MIDI now sounds very much like the Original Instrument Arrangment in 1946.

Converted the MIDI to a WAVE, Didn't have to do any processing in Cool Edit Pro2, Typed the Lyrics in Notepad, Imported Lyrics and Wave in KHP, in 5 Minutes.....Had my own CDG of the Song "To Each His Own", which I will be performiing tonight.

All I can only say I LOVE, Karaoke Home Producer, Sound Canvas, Cool Edit Pro2, the MIDI & LYRICS Search Engines, in MAKING ALL THOSE GREAT SONGS from the past and singing them for the current younger generation, who have never heard them.

[George]

Might as well round out the package with a method of converting lyrics from lower case to caps and not do any typing. This is a copy of a post by SCOOB7809 last year. I use the method somewhat the same, using Word Perfect and copying and pasting to notepad.What a time saver, and thanks again to SCOOB for this one.


Scoob7809
Member

Registered: Jan 2001
Location:
Posts: 74
Tip: Capitalizing all lyrics with MS WORD
You can import lyrics from the internet, but a lot of times they are
in Proper case (first letter of sentence capital, rest lowercase).

Here's how to change them all in Word to uppercase:

Copy lyrics from web (highlight lyrics and right-click copy or CTL+C)
Open Word, paste lyrics (CTL+V)
Select all text (CTL+A)

Goto Format - Change Case - Upper Case

With the text still highlighted, go into KHP(OR WHEREVER YOU WANT TO SAVE THE LYRICS)

Right click-paste or CTL+V them into the lyric edit window.

Viola! Instant caps!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, yes..."a rose must remain with the sun and the rain or it's lovely promise won't come true..."

An all time favorite of mine that I'd forgotten . Gotta do it. Thanks.

George

[George]

And this one by JAHERN is not to be overlooked also. Thanks to JAHERN also. Might as well have these all together.Hope no one takes offense at me copying to here. It's all in one spot now.George

A Tip On Getting Lyrics From Internet
I don't know if anybody has heard this tip on getting song lyrics from the internet.

Don't look for the title!! You will be presented with ten thousand record stores that sell Beatles albums! You may find the lyrics eventually, but you will have to swim through all the others before you do.

Instead, exactly quote an obscure line from the song, as shown below.

For Instance, if I wanted the lyrics to the Beatles I Saw Her Standing There, I would go to my favorite Search Engine and type:

"boom when I crossed that" - YOU MUST ADD THE QUOTATION MARKS!!!

If the words are all spelled right and are exactly as in the song (try to avoid puncuations), you will be presented only with web site page links that contain the lyrics for this song!

Admin here: This is an incredibly simple, yet powerful suggestion. I have edited this for a bit more clarity, but extend all or our thanks to Jahern for this post!

[BANDL]

kjzone
I am not sure that I follow your statemnet about "Your Windows computer comes with a Midi Player, but you only have about 6 midi Instrumental Sounds available" any adequate MIDI software that has General Midi (GM) will have 128 instruments plus a few dozen percussion instruments usually in channel 10.

For several years I did my CDG with MIDI using Digital Orchestrator Pro. It works great, unfortunately Voyetra (the makers of DOP) have not upgraded DOP to work well with XP. So I went and invested in Cakewalk Home Studio. Since I also have a MIDI keyboard in my sound card, I can play around with some of my own stuff (minor). Cakewalk does come with a Roland Sound cavas, as did DOP. It does make the sounds much richer, no doubt!

A lot of the "crappy" MIDIs that one gets is also due to the person that made them. In making MIDIs it alwas helps to "enrich" the notes that you are playing with some of the enhancements in the softwares (echo, arperggiator, reverb, distortion, humanization, and many others) If one uses straight MIDI notes without the pluses, they sound stiff. The sound canvases repair many of these conditions. They work great and Roland makes some good ones. A word of caution, in some older computers the timing of the sound is affected when the canvases are used.

In another subject www.musicrobot.com is another MIDI search engine.

Thanks for the links in your e-mail.

BANDL

[bshup]

[b][u]You Guys Are Great!!!!!

Man have I found a gem of Product plus all this great advice!

I had read the 1st SOUND CANVAS earlier. I order it yesterday. And I will sure check out the other editting software.

I burned my first disk last night with 5 songs that I produce with KPRO plus the one from a purchased cdg.

My next question: I was trying to write to disk cdg plus the original wav song, but it would let me switch back and forth (cdg/cd). Is this not an option? If it can't I can just make anothe cd and swap back and forth.
I drive 100 miles one wasy to work daily and practice singing so I can 1. completely no the song by heart and 2. help pass the time.

Thanks again,
You guys are great.
Bshup

[George]

BSHUP,

I don't believe switching between formats is an option. You might try playing the CDG in your cdplayer before you go making separate discs. Most cd players will play the audio portion of a cdg with no problems.

Take care,

George

[George]

Here's an easy way to make true Karaoke tracks using the Edirol Sound Canvas.

As you change the midi instrumentation take notes on the changes you make. Leave a lead instrument carrying the tune in. Save it to .wav as you normally do.

Now repeat the process, only this time take out the lead instrument. Save it to .wav with a slight change in name.

If you find it necessary to make any changes to the .wav files, with an audio editor(add 10 second silence countdown, for example) make certain to to it exactly the same to both tracks. They need to remain the same length.

Now get everything set up on Kpro as you normally would and import the track with the lead instrument carrying the tune. Get the sweeping and nudging done following the lead instrument, and when the track is as you want it, save as you normally would.

Now import the music again, this time importing the track without the lead instrument. Save it, overwriting the previous version.
You now have it in perfect Karoke with background music only.

Been having a blast with it..

You can also cut a full cd using both sets of tracks, background only for singing, and use the instrumental lead tracks as demo tracks instead of vocal demos. Not really that much difference for someone who needs to learn the tune. Working on one like that now for the other members of my Karaoke club, and it's saving me having to really learn all the arrangements well enough to sweep with only background music.

Only downside is in some cases not having background music interesting enough to carry instrumental breaks. Most of the time, if they repeat the song three times they will use a different instrument for the center one, which you can leave in for your instrumental break.

George

[mlepine]

I will agree that the Edirol Sound Canvas is excellent.

But I would just like to clarify something if I may, a midi file will play as good as the quality of the sound card or the synthesizer that comes with the sound card.

In the case of Edirol... it's the quality of the driver in the software that makes such a good sound, any Midi Karaoke player available on the internet will need to use the synthesizer in the sound card. If you own a Sound Blaster Card ideally the Audigy series, you will be able to find as many instrument as you can imagine.

I think that many people make a bad judgement about a midi file, A midi player is just a player. The sound comes from a synthesizer card or software in the case of Sound Canvas.

It's very possible that the sound coming from Sound Canvas is better than the synthesizer from a SB audigy card.

Regards

[Benjamin Kuo]

I have been reading all the posts on the Edirol Sound Canvas with great interest. I have purchased the product recently. However, I am not sure I have made full use of it, since the User's Manual doesn't seem to help much.

I have the following questions:

1. The midi files may come from one track to up to 16 tracks, and I presume that one can change only the instruments of the tracks that are present. Is this true?

2. On some midis the lead instrument track is rather dominant. It sounded like piano when played with Edirol but when it is converted to WAV. it became sounding like harmonica; real rough sounding. If I mute all the tracks then nothing remains. But as long as I keep one track, this music came out, and I don't seem to be able change the volume either. Any cure to this? I use GS all the time too.

[kjzone]

SOUND CANVAS..........

1. First Thing to do is go to Control Panel, MultiMedia, and Select the AUDIO TAB and Playback and select Roland VSC as your playback device.

2. Next select the MIDI TAB and select for Midi Output, Roland VSC.

3. Next Import your song into Sound Canvas and Play....
the Original Musician either used GS or GM2 (which will light up on the panel). If musician used GS and you click on GM2 all instruments change to Piano. If musican used GM2 and you click on GS all instruments change to Piano. You must keep the original GS or GM2 to see and hear the original instruments the musician chose.

4. You can't add an instrument that is not there, you can, but with a Keyboard with a Midi Output and a program like Sonar XL.

5. You can change the Volume of the overall song as well as each instrument.
Volume
PanPot
Expression
Reverb
Chorus
Delray

FUNCTION BUTTONS

Volume Button....click on to see the volume each instrument as been assigned, if the instrument playing the Melody is too loud simply decrease the volume.

Reverb Button....click on to see the amount of reverb each instrument as been assigned, experiment with the settings.

Chorus Button...MY FAVORITE...click on to see how the instruments sounds are enhanced. Love this button, especially on a Virbraphone

Here is what I do, kinda quick and dirty....

1. Load your midi song and play in Sound Canvas
2. Make the changes you want
3. While the music is playing click on the SETUP BUTTON
4. Click on the "ALL OFF" Button
5. Un-check the "RECEIVE ALL" Button
6. Click on APPLY and then OK.
5. Click on your AUDIO CONV Button
6. The "Convert with the same settings as those used for the song" should have a "Dot" in the Circle.
7. Then simply Click Save.......
8. That should do it.

ALSO.....

1. Go Control Panel / Multimedia
2. Click on the MIDI Tab
3. Make sure that "Roland VSC" is highlighted.
4. Click on Apply and OK.

5. You should Mute the Melody Track if you are going to make a Wave File to sing to, as you will be singing the Melody Track.......George has explain this in detail in the forums.

6. If you have Roland set up correctly you should not be getting a Harmonica Sound when Piano is selected.

There are millions of MIDI Files available for download on the internet. The BEST MIDI FILE SEARCH ENGINE IS:

http://www.manythings.org/midi/search.html

[Benjamin Kuo]

Thanks kjzone. Your reply post is simply excellent. You solved my problem. My trouble was that I did select the button on "Convert with the same settings as those used for the song".

I have been making Karaoke songs with the original sound track in. You see, most people need the guide voice to learn how to sing the song. This way, the singer can simply follow the original sound track and sing. It's not perfect, but the easy way out. Also, I can make the songs much faster. Thanks again. Very much appreciated.

Ben

[kjzone]

"I have been making Karaoke songs with the original sound track in. You see, most people need the guide voice to learn how to sing the song. This way, the singer can simply follow the original sound track and sing. It's not perfect, but the easy way out. Also, I can make the songs much faster. Thanks again. Very much appreciated."

ANOTHER THING YOU CAN DO IS REDUCE THE VOLUME ON THE MELODY.......TO JUST ENOUGH FOR THE SINGER TO HEAR....CAN
MAKE IT EASIER TO FOLLOW BY THE SINGER.....BUT NOT COMPETE WITH THE SINGER, WHEN SINGING THE SONG.

[Benjamin Kuo]

That's a great idea too. It will all sink in sooner or later. Now after I can get what instruments I have selected, not being a music buff, I have to learn what all these 128 instruments sound like. I know how piano, guitar and violin or even cello sound like, but beyond that, . . . .

[Benjamin Kuo]

I have been using Sound Canvas on two computers, one with Windows ME and one with Windows XP. However, recently, the computer with the XP has run into problems. My AOL wouldn't start, the microphone would not work, and the sound recording is not working with both the recorder on the computer as well as Sound Forge (would not record incoming sound). Of course, Sound Forge would not work either. When I tried to reinstall Sound Canvas, it gave me an error message saying that it could not copy VSC32.dat. Could this be because of Sound Canvas? I see that the manual did not list XP as a supporting operating system. However, the program was working for a while. Now when I tried to install the software on my laptop with Windows XP, I received a warning about installing the program. I don't remembering seeing that when I installed it on the desktop. The computer with Windows ME is working fine. Anyone can shed some light on this?

Ben

[kjzone]

1. Don't think Sound Canvas is the problem, looks like you have major problems with your computer with XP OP System you need to address First.
2. Did you try using a restore point?
3. Sound Canvas Box does not list XP. only Win98/ME/2000
4. Sound Canvas needs to be installed from the Original CD.
5. Contact Edirol
http://www.edirol.com/corporate/contact.html

[Benjamin Kuo]

Dear kjzone:

Thanks for your reply. You're always willing to help. I have called a computer guru who got my sound recording to work. AOL still does not work, but that's a different problem.

I can't blame on Sound Canvas, but that was only my suspicion, since when I tried to install on my laptop Microsoft gave me a warning.

I did try restoring point, but no dates and time worked.
I did use only the original Sound Canvas CD.
I have contacted EDIROL via e-mail, but it has been over one week, and no answer. I guess I have to call them.

Thanks again. At least I have it on one of my computers.

[mlepine]

I just installed this software and you are ALL correct, it's an excellent product!

I want to thank George especially for "selling" me this software in another thread...

I've decided that I will be doing my own CDG so guess what's on my list to buy??

Regards