Current list of commercial midi file producers (02/06/02)

[Ernie Garner]

http://www.baktrax.com/
Haven't ordered from them yet. The ordering system sucks. You
can't just click but rather have to write down the order numbers of
the songs you want and then manually enter them into a form. No
search engine. Their loss - it all discourages browsing.

http://www.comtracks.com/catalogue.html
Sell several different brands - from what I can tell they are the
TranTraks of England. Extensive catalog. TranTrak comments apply.

http://www.geerdes.de/eng/index.htm
Lots of European files. Samples are below average quality. Very
"usenet" sound.

http://www.hands-on-midi.com/
Good midi's but world's WORST browsing. Too many pages before you
get to the song itself - absolutely sucks. The USA site is supposed
to coming up and they say it will be better.

http://www.hitbit.com/
Samples sound great, mainly European songs. I expect to be
ordering from them for my German gigs.

http://www.midimaven.com/hittrax.html
HitTrax is in Australia and my current fav. They have several
local hosts, Midimaven being one of them. Online ordering,
consistantly decent quality, good service, midi samples of EVERY song.
I like. Oh yeah, only quality exception is LB music sequences. I
avoid them. Fortunately they are easily identified from the product
code.

http://www.midi-hits.com/
They are my second fav and great people but they need to clean up
their catalog. Songs range from brilliant ("Freebird" includes entire
guitar solo) to suck (Beatles tunes). Pretty hip selection - lots of
songs you wouldn't expect. Watch out for low numbered sequences, i.e.
x25. Don't buy them unless you absolutely have to have the song
because they are going to be bad. Service is consistantly great and
response to emails fast.

http://www.monster-tracks.com/index.html
Never bought anything from them.

http://www.petersolleyproductions.com/
Absolutely the GREATEST midi files! Very very hip! Problem is,
his price ($10) and discount structure forces me to buy them from
HitTrax. Sorry Pete!

http://www.songgalaxy.com/index.php
Just came across this one. Haven't ordered anything from them.

http://www.trantracks.com/
The Sears of midi sequence houses. Offers several different
brands including Heavenly Music. Variable quality, generally good to
great, and each company has a "style". Take time and listen to
several songs from each company so you know what you'll be getting.
The companies tend to have consistant quality levels. Great service.

http://www.tune1000.com/
The grandaddy of midi file companies. They raised their prices a
few months ago but at $5 they are still the cheapest around. Large
mainstream selection. They are heavily into Karaoke and their
selection shows it. T1000 is my baseline for commercial midi
sequences. Generally good with no musical errors but may not have a
lot of "punch". They also sell a midi player as well as a specialized
copy locked player. There is another catalog of songs that are
cheaper because they can't be generally distributed (not playable on
standard players). They also have a Karaoke branch of the company at
www.eatsleepmusic.com .

(OT - if you order from them you'll notice their download file names
are random. That's because of yours truly. They had a contest where
they were giving away a free midi every hour for a week I figured out
the naming sequence and the host URL. All the files were available
all they time, they were just hidden behind a translation mechanism.
I posted the links to all 168 files here figuring that anyone who
wanted the files should do the work of downloading them. Someone else
downloaded them all via my posted links, zipped them up, made them
available on a free server and was voted "man of the year". Life's
funny sometimes. Now all the file names are random so you can't
reverse engineer the file names any more >:-)

http://www.trycho.com/
I haven't ordered from them in years so they may have gotten
better. Prices are low but the files are minimal. Basically in line
with what was acceptable 10 years ago. The catalog is large and if
you are looking for a tune like "White Rabbit" this may be the only
place you'll find it. Expect to do some extensive editing.

----

For those of you who need a song and can slide by with K-files, you
can order individual MP3's of karaoke files at:

http://www.cavs-usa.com/index.html#Welcome

They also sell a software disk / mp3 karaoke player. I know it's
heresy to mention it here, but money is money and options is options.

Almost everyone offers instant delivery via email or download. All
you need is a valid credit card. Immediate download is recommended
over email delivery if the option is available.

Additions and comments are welcome.

Anyone know what happened to Midi HQ/Trackbusters?

(With their killfilters in place it's a good thing CG and CaptH. don't
need this info, eh?)

<g>

Enjoy

Ernie

[Shane Paul]

--
Shane Paul sez:
Thanks for this post, Ern. I've been to a few of the sites, like Hands-On,
and noticed the same things you did, very user unfriendly, poor quality
files, etc. Will be great to check out some of the others. You'd think the
sites offering this stuff up would get hip to the fact that if it's a big
hassle to audition/order/download their product, that most of us will
continue to try to get it for free elsewhere. Also, I realize a lot of work
goes into creating a file, but anything over $5 a song is more than I'm
generally gonna spend, unless I start making a whole lot more off these
gigs! Conversely, if the files are great, and I just gotta have it, maybe
I'll pay more.

Scene at the Chinese take-out joint from "Dude, Where's My Car?": "And
theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen?"

**************************
Shane Paul
Dirty Hippie Productions
My CD ~Detours~ is now available!
Check out the website to order!
www.shanepaul.com
sh...@shanepaul.com
*******************************
"Ernie Garner" <a...@ohernie.com> wrote in message
news:A879056AF9EC9B65.A30BD3C3...@lp.airnews.net...

[pome]

Do these companies create ALL their files ?

I wonder if some companies just grab their product from the usenet for
free and tweek it a bit. Probably a lot cheaper than hiring transcribers
to accurately do a song. I imagine it might be more of a combination of
the two depending on the company.

Thanks for the links Ernie,

In article <LPw88.17087$Hb6.1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,

[Ernie Garner]

They create them themselves. I have every file that has come across
my usenet server for the past five years in my archives so I am pretty
acquainted with what is out there. Most of them suck. I know from
experience that culling out tweakable ones would be a bitch.
Furthermore, usenet has a limited selection. The commercial file
producer's catalogs are far more extensive than usenet.

I subscribe to Airnews which has about a 20 day retention time of ABSM
and the associated binary groups. I turn on NewsRover about once
every other week and automatically download all the binaries from all
the midi groups. When I get a chance scan them and drop them into
dated directories on a drive dedicated to midi's. Occassionally I
bring up Dupeless, a free utility from PC mag and delete the
same-name, same content files. Other than that I don't bother sorting
them. When I need a file I just do a wildcard search on the drive.
So far I've got 8.3 gigs of midi's, most of them admittedly bad. The
few that have saved my butt and my pocketbook have made the effort and
storage space worthwhile.

I'm looking for a "sticky" file search program. One that catalogs the
contents of a drive on it's first search and then goes to the catalog
instead of actually searching the drive for subsequent searches.

Any suggestions?

Ernie

[Leo Dean]

Here's another commercial midi site. I bought two last night and I'm much pleased. 18 bucks for the pair.  the leo

 

                           Ron Fry

[Ernie Garner]

Thanks, but please post URL's in text and not HTML format. Here is
the link he posted.

http://www.ronfry.com/main_eng.asp

Ernie

[Ernie Garner]

Thanks again.

I've added him to my list.

Ernie

[Leo Dean]

Thanks for the tip Ern. but I did post as a link and it worked with my
Outlook Express but I see now it may not work for everyone. (Duh, me) leo

"Ernie Garner" <a...@ohernie.com> wrote in message

news:8478F8E5D91A281B.5A0A3367...@lp.airnews.net...

[Ernie Garner]

I do have a hard time with the prices, BUT ...

When I get a request from regulars I know that I will get tipped the
price of the midifile anyway and the goodwill is going to keep me
working.

I probably have 95% or more of all the free midi files on the net. I
check my free stock before I buy but I still wind up buying a lot of
files. It's not unusual for me to find a better version of an already
purchased midi file and buy it too. Or an alternate version so that I
don't get bored. Especially true of big band sequences.

Tune 1000's arrangements tend to sound the same so you have to buy
HandsOn and HitTrax arrangements for variety. Gary Wachtel's files
are free but most of them are "concert" arrangements and don't work
well in live settings. They are especially not suited for seniors.

I buy consistantly but generally not too many at once so I can afford
the typical $8 price. I found that it just didn't make any sense to
consistantly buy enough to get the quantity discounts. I just didn't
need that many songs at once. Searching and deciding on songs I
*might* need just to fill out the order was a big waste of time. Now
I typically buy one or two at a time.

Ernie

[Charlie]

Hey Ernie,
I was going to comment on what a killer letter you've written with great
information for all the group. I do all my own work and run mini disk, but I
think the Captain should add this info or links onto the website. Of course I
didn't kill filter you, I just chose to ignore the comments. Easier that way!
(G)

cg

Sheep Man hates spam! When responding, please remove NOJUNK and I will get your
mail!

[Ernie Garner]

>Hey Ernie,
> I was going to comment on what a killer letter you've written with great
>information for all the group.

$.96

Ernie

[Alex McKenzie]

I've noticed there are thousands of free midi files
sites around. How do the sites that charge for midi
files make any money - is it because the free midi files
that are available are crap??

Just wondering (I'm thinking of producing midi files myself
and selling them on my web site)

Alex
Shane Paul <sh...@shanepaulNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:LPw88.17087$Hb6.1...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...

[Bowser]

You got it...While you may find a jewel or two out there, 90 + percent of
the free stuff is crap...and what IS good, has a very strong likely hood of
being a bootlegged commercial sequence. Having said that, I must admit
that I DO use some "freebies" in my act...but the vast majority are
purchased from Midi Hits. I used to do my own, but when one figures the
time involved, especially for me, as I'm crappy on the keys, it's much
easier to let someone else do the work...I'd rather spend my time tweaking
and rehearsing than trying to get a particular keyboard rif or horn stab
right...

I'm on a couple of midi/karaoke newsgroups, and it seems that I find better
sequences on the karaoke group...I would guess that the people whe generate
the .kar files try to find a decent .mid to begin with before investing the
time and effort of turning it into a karaoke file...but that's just a
guess... The MIDI groups often seem to be satisfied with producing
something that is merely recognizable...not necessarily an accurate
rendition of the original. (But I shan't get into a critique of
Band-In-A-Box...shudder) The Karaoke guys, however, often are not be
musicians...just singers...and I suspect they're a little more critical
about what they sing over...

...Bowser...

--
Note: Please rest assured, no animals were harmed with the generation of
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"Alex McKenzie" <amck...@c3.telstra-mm.net.au> wrote in message
news:2y6a8.20556$Zu6....@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

[Bowser]

Lest anyone misunderstand, the "critical" comment was a comparison of the
average "musician" in the MIDI newsgroups with the karaoke guys....NOT the
average working grunt like most of us...

...bowser...

--
Note: Please rest assured, no animals were harmed with the generation of
this e-mail.

"Bowser" <snarf...@snarfblatt.org> wrote in message
news:rF8a8.258528$kf1.74...@news1.rdc1.ne.home.com

> Band-In-A-Box...shudder) The Karaoke guys, however, often are not