Dream Theater Midi

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Gaylene Merganthaler

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Aug 5, 2024, 1:33:03 AM8/5/24

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Hasanyone tried using a MIDI pedal controller with a KPA as an alternative to the full Kemper floor controller? Since I do a lot of theater pit gigs, I'm thinking of how to use the least floor space possible. I already must have a rack for power, tuner and mixer (acoustic instruments), so I'm thinking either rackmount KPA and a MIDI board or the Stage. The Stage looks nice, but it's a LOT bigger than a minimal MIDI controller, and space is always at a premium in pit gigs.

I did this for some time with the Boss FC50. A quite compact MIDI controller and one of the few I could think of which are even smaller than the Remote from Kemper. Basically I was able to do what I wanted, switch slots on my performances. Additional foot switches (meaning additonal space...) helped me to switch certain things in the Kemper and Bank up / Bank down on the Midi controller.

To be honest: With the Remote being only 5cm deeper, same width, I was very happy when I swtichted to the Remote and had so much more options available. I use it a lot to switch the stomps, morphing etc. - I understand what you're after and if you can limit yourself to a handful of options than it will work fine.

I use MIDI to fully control Kemper from Logic Pro X, so my patches changes are synchronized with backing tracks, This way I don't have to carry remote at all. Similar thing can be achieved with any MIDI controller as long as you can program it to send particular CC messages. Your strategy will depend on how many buttons you have at your disposal. In theory you could get away with just a single button (relative method from manual) as long as you set "Performance Load" option to "Slot 1" or "Keep Slot". In such case you'd have to organize your performances in order of their appearance and over time you'd just advance to next performance. If you have more buttons you can take advantage of more lots within a single performance, and you could even be able to move in both directions (one performance "up" and "down"). Wah / volume will work too, as long as they send CC#1 and CC#7 respectively.

That really a cool concept. Very interesting. If it fits the music you play and the kind of performance you make. But I've seen MIDI based switching of several units / instruments etc. in performances of Tangerine Dream. All fully programmed upfront and still very lively. Like that. Nevertheless not applicable for my kind of rock music

We don't have a drummer or bass player, so most of the time we play to a backing track (we have 2 guitars playing live - I have Kemper, my friend has Helix which is fully MIDI-automated as well from Logic). We play various music: rock, a bit of punk and metal. I find automation very handy for metal and all situations where I have to also adjust guitar settings at the same time. For example in one song we start with hard riffs but at some point I switch abruptly to acoustic guitar profile which I play with piezo pickups. So there is a lot of things going on and everything need to happen in a split of a second: playing guitar + changing patch + changing pickups on a guitar. This proved to be too much for my brain: so I automated patch changing and now I need to only remember about changing pickup (and I wish I had midi controllable guitar :-).

In one song (also metal) we have a ramp setup via MIDI to gradually distort guitar signal to switch from nice melodic intro into metal verse. The beauty of this setup is that in Logic we can "paint" the ramp curve as we want it to be and it is consistent every single time.

Of course this setup only makes sense when we play to a click track (which we typically do in case of metal), so there is no room for improvisation of any kind - but for us it useful and fun - we focus only on playing - the rest is automated.

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Or the MeloAudio ?

Hi! The band I work for uses PC and CC commads sent from the Cymatic player to Kemper. Tour we did this spring went perfectly and OS we used back then was 5 something. Now Kempers have been updated to 7.3 and somehow most of the CCs doesnt work. We have tried different Kempers, Cymatics, USB sticks, midi cables, old/new files. I also tried OS 6 when all the performances except 1 was deleted(I had a backup). Has anyone experienced similar issues after updating to 7.3? Thanks.

What were/are some of the best wavetable / general midi ISA sound cards that work in pure DOS? Ideally it will also include an actual Yamaha YM262-M OPL3 chip as well for those games that don't support GM.

Yeah my SB16 SCSI-2 [CT1770] has an NEC XR385 connected to it, and I also have an MT-32... i'm looking to get away from Creative based cards though since they are in reality so lack luster and noisy. I don't use my AWE64 though that damn TSR it needs is horrible.

Dream SAM9407 based cards are quite interesting. Guillemot Maxi Sound 64 Home Studio series or Terratec EWS64L series work in DOS. They allow using loadable sound banks, while top cards of the series also allow installation of daughterboard, that would reside at another MIDI port.

But there're no YMF262 chip on them. OPL3 music is emulated. Another drawback is that they only support SB Pro standard, not SB16. So, if you want 16-bit sound, you are limited to WSS standard (which is supported by less games than SB16).

Another decent option is AWE64 Gold. Good output quality and lack of bugs that earlier Sound Blaster series had suffered from (save for muted OPL3 bug that is inherent for all EMU8000-based cards). But then you get no genuine OPL3 and no daughterboard.

Theoretically, you can keep both Dream-based card and AWE64 Gold in one system. They are both PnP, but I managed to get them working by initialising Dream card first and AWE64 second. But then I got no mouse, since PS/2 mouse fought with Dream card for IRQ12.

If you have a non-PS/2 mouse, or solved that conflict anyhow, you would get SB16 digital part, and many options for music: OPL3 (emulated), EMU8000 synthesizer, Dream internal synthesizer, Dream daughterboard (if applicable to the very card you get), Dream external MIDI output and AWE64 Gold external MIDI output.

The setup you have sounds perfect to me. Compatible with everything, easy to use mixer, excellent MIDI via the bug free interface, OPL3, can drive the MT-32... I guess it comes down to a choice b/w a setup that can play anything, and a setup that is less noisy but is not compatible with X, or doesn't have OPL3, etc. Someone' going to mention those damn OPLSAx cards any moment now I can feel it - but they're awful.

Of what I have, I like Ensoniq Soundscape (original), Ensoniq Soundscape Elite, Roland SCB-55 (SCD-15), and Yamaha DB50XG. They all sound unique and wonderful, and as such are equally enjoyable. Ensoniq cards also have signal quality that embarrasses Creative ISA cards. Otherwise I go for OPL3 or ESS FM. I don't really like AWE cards because of their troublesome AWEUTIL, and difficulty using soundfonts with DOS games.

The Ensoniq cards really need an accompanying SB16 or SBPro though, for compatibility with games that don't have native Soundscape support for digital audio. The Sound Blaster emulation is only mono and it's flaky, and the OPL2 emu is horrific (if unique ?).

For gaming Roland is the way to go (in my opinion). The 2 eras are very different. External is cheaper (Roland cards are rare / expensive) but external takes up a lot of room and has lots of cables. I play around with both.

I take no interest in wavetables other than gaming so that is why I do not consider anything than SB and Roland myself. OK: the FB-01/IMFC is the exception for Sierra gaming. And the DB50XG for kicks.

OPL3 is muted on some EMU8000 cards until you execute 'aweutil /s' or otherwise flush the card. On some exemplars (including my AWE64 Gold CT4540) it is not muted, but accompanied by quiet clicks which disappear after 'aweutil /s'. Some cards are suffering from this bug right after boot, some just after listening to some EMU8000-synthesized music.

This is no bug at all. Some AWE cards are designed the way that the OPL output is routed through the Emu8K. So if some application mutes this 2 channels, FM output will be silent. It's just Creatives way to save a few bucks on two additional DACs.

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It's not so much a "muting of channels," but rather, the SDK blurb relates to the fact that some developers may provide their own initialization routines for the EMU8000 (Tyrian does this), which may not take the FM synth into account, and might therefore leave all 32 oscillators initialized for use by the "sound memory" upon exiting, unless the arrays are reloaded with the prior data, or something like the awe32Terminate API call is used: