SCPOP CONSOLE 1/5 by Jose Luis Pelaez
18/04/2003
I am a pipe organ enthusiast since a long time.i'm an 47 years old engineer employed in the electronic industry and living in Spain. I built an organ console with three manuals and pedal based on my Kurzweil electronic piano; it had a midi keyboard, two amplis, a good speakears system and a console frame. I spent a lot of time with Sound-Forge to get the correct loops for all ranges of notes. I include some instructions to build a MIDI pedal on document 5. But, as you know, a sampler does not have rom sounds. I have to select all the banks of looped sounds from the SCSI HD. It takes almost 15 minutes (!!). Three years ago it could be a just time to play so exciting sounds, but know my free time is scarce. Moreover, playing a sampler in live has limitations; the sound breaks if you select a new register. To select a new set-up you have to turn on or off the sounds banks using menus directly in the sampler control pannel and, the mixtures doesnt't sound well.I solved the remote selection problem sending Sysex messages to the Sampler from a microcontrolled PCboard . The code is just to turn on a ram sound for a MIDI channel, when you push the related switch in an external control pannel.
Two months ago I got into your SCPOP page!. I listent your MP3 files and decided to buy my Canvas. I got a second hand ST-88vl unit and the next day I was playing Bach with SCPOP in my PC. My W98SE PC takes "only" two minutes to start . I noticed note hanging, as you comment, and tried connecting MIDI directly to the SC-88. As result, no more note hunging. As you can see in the atached documents, I'm using a MOTU MIDI external patch-bay.
Now, I'm developing a new version of my microcontroled remote panel, using a Compact-flash card to store the longer Sysex messages generated in SCPOP to the Canvas module. All you ll need to store new sounds is an USB card read/writer in your PC. See the document 3.
Jose Luis Pelaez