Computer music activities: you don't have to be a musician to have fun with music

Arranging MIDI songs using Sweet MIDI Player.

1. Put the Digital Sound and Music CD into the computer's CD drive.  Open (right-click and select Open) My Computer --> CD Drive -->Windows Software --> Sweet MIDI Player folder. Double-click on "Swmipl32". 

2. Select Options --> MIDI Setup.  Click in the "Output to:" menu and select "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW..." from the menu.  Click OK.

3. Select Load MIDI file... from the File menu, select the CD-Drive (D:), double-click on "Other MIDI Examples", select one of the songs there and click Open. 

4. Click on the right arrow to start the song. Click on the blue square to stop. 

5. If you want to change the volume (loudness) of an instrument, use the volume slider for that channel.

6. If you want to change the instrument assigned to a channel, click on the instrument name in the box below the volume slider and select another instrument.

7. If you want to change the tempo (speed), right- or left-click on the Tempo Change box.

8. If you want to change the key (i.e. make the pitch higher or lower), right- or left-click on the Transpose box.

9. If you want to set the left-right stereo position of an instrument, use the "Pan" knobs above its volume slider.

10. If you want to save the resulting file, select Save MIDI file... from the File menu. 

11. Try some of the other MIDI files and experiment will different instruments. 

Note: There are lots of other MIDI files that you can download from the Internet.  On the Digital Sound and Music CD, open "Sound and Music Web sites" -->  "Downloadable sound and music files" --> "MIDI files to download".  Right-click and select Open to try some of these sites. Or you can use a search engine such as Google to search for MIDI and whatever type of music you want, e.g. MIDI jazz. Once you have located a link to a MIDI file (in .mid format), just right-click on the link and select "Save Target As..." from the pop-up menu. Navigate to a location that you will remember and click Save.  (You can record your MIDI creation as a WAV file by running Cool Edit at the same time as the MIDI player, and setting the recording properties to accept input from the "mixer". Set the recording parameters to "stereo, 16 bits, 44 KHz" and save the file in "Windows PCM (.wav)" format if you want to make an audio CD, e.g. with MusicMatch or Windows Media Player 8).

To explore the MIDI instrument sounds your computer has, go to http://www.buzzwood.com/ and click on "MIDI Voice Tester".  Click on the instrument names to hear that instrument sound.

Computer Karaoke

 The "Karaoke examples" folder on the Digital Sound and Music CD-ROM contains over 85 examples of MIDI-Karaoke KAR files, which contain the lyrics and the music accompaniment to a song. When played by a Karaoke program, the music will be played by your MIDI sound card and the lyrics will be displayed on the screen, synchronized to the music, for you  to sing along with. 

A simple Karaoke program called WinKaraoke Player is contained in the Windows software folder. Here's what to do:

1. Installing WINkaraoke (computer karaoke player)

1. Put the Digital Sound and Music CD-ROM into the computer's CD-ROM drive.  Open (double-click or right-click and select Open) My Computer --> CD Drive -->Windows Software --> WINkaraoke program --> setup.  

2. On the next screen, click OK.

3. Click the big square button with the picture of a computer on it.

4. Click Continue

5. Click Yes.

6. Click OK.

2. Running WINkaraoke (computer karaoke player)

1. Once the program is installed, run it: select Start --> Programs --> WinKaraoke Player 1.5 --> WinKaraoke Player 1.5.

2. In the WinKaraoke Player window, click where it says "C:", select "D:", and click on "Karoke examples".

3. Choose one of these files and click the PLAY button to display the lyrics window.

4. Click the right arrow to start playing.  Click the square to stop. 

5. Close WinKaraoke Player's lyrics window to select another song. 

Note 1: To change the size of the displayed lyrics, click Options in the main WinKaraoke window and then click on the Font button. Select a font and size and click OK to return to the WinKaraoke window . Then click the PLAY button to display the lyrics.

Note 2: To print out the lyrics, click the Export button, navigate to a folder where you want to save the lyrics, type in a file name, and click Save. Then double-click on the resulting text file and Print it as usual.

3. Changing the musical arrangements. 

If you don't like the tempo, key, instrumentation, or instrument balance of the song, you can change these things using the Sweet MIDI Player. Here's how:

1. Open (right-click and select Open) My Computer --> CD Drive -->Windows Software --> Sweet MIDI Player folder. Double-click on "Swmipl32". 

2. Select Options --> MIDI Setup.  Click in the "Output to:" menu and select "Microsoft GS Wavetable SW..." from the menu.  Click OK.

3. Select Load MIDI file... from the File menu, select "All Files" from the "Files of type" menu, navigate to the desired Karaoke (.kar) file, and click Open.

4. Click on the right arrow to start the song. 

5. If you want to change the volume (loudness) of an instrument, use the volume slider for that channel.

6. If you want to change the instrument assigned to a channel, click on the instrument name in the box below the volume slider and select another instrument.

7. If you want to change the tempo, right- or left-click on the Tempo Change box.

8. If you want to change the key, right- or left-click on the Transpose box.

9. If you want to set the left-right stereo position of an instrument, use the "Pan" knobs above its volume slider.

10. If you want to save the resulting file, select Save MIDI file... from the File menu, then erase the ".mid" extension ion the file name and replace it with ".kar" before clicking Save.  (The saved files must have a .kar extension to be opened by WinKaraoke Player).

Note: To find other Karaoke files to download, try searching on Goole for MIDI karaoke.  To download a file, right-click on the link, select "Save target as...", change the file extension from "mid" to ".kar" extension so that they can be opened by WinKaraoke Player, then click Save.              
(c) Tom O'Haver (to2@umail.umd.edu), March 2004