[MPA] electric piano & midi files

[Peter Kirn]

On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 03:53 AM, Primrose Music wrote:

> The Maxell 3.5 floppy disks that I use with my SuperDisk Drive say 
> they're *Windows/MS-DOS*, so that should be okay. I am using OS X, so 
> I'll check if Sibelius is okay with DOS. I imagine it will be. (Anyone 
> know for sure?)

Essentially, all PC-formatted disks of that capacity are the same. Mac 
OS 7 and later and Mac OS X have the ability to read PC-formatted 
disks. There will be no problem opening them. (Sibelius doesn't care -- 
it's the Mac OS opening the disks.)

There is the issue of how standard the keyboard is being when it writes 
the MIDI files, but hopefully if it says it is writing "Standard MIDI 
Files" you should be okay.

> Yes, ideally we'd go straight from the piano to the Mac, but they're a 
> flight of stairs apart! One thought, though:- I wonder if you can get 
> extra long midi cables? Then we'd need a USB MIDI interface, I > suppose.

Yikes, no -- you won't want to do that. MIDI cables of that length can 
start to introduce timing issues. Besides, hooking up directly via MIDI 
is only an advantage if you can work interactively -- i.e., you want to 
have you keyboard immediately next to your Mac so that you can start 
and stop recording, play chords and notes one at a time into Sibelius, 
and so on. So if you can't budget for an additional computer, your 
instinct is probably right about going to an Standard MIDI File (SMF) 
on floppy disk.

(I am surprised about the Roland MT100 -- what format it's actually 
using that's smaller than 3.5". I've used an MT100 once or twice but I 
can't remember what it uses!)

Another possibility: think about getting an inexpensive Mac for next to 
the keyboard. Don't worry about running OS X -- Sibelius runs just fine 
under OS 9. You could get a very decent iMac for about $500. Try a 
vendor like www.powermax.com or www.smalldog.com. (They both have 
friendly staff who would be very helpful.) Upgrade the OS to Mac OS 9.2 
-- or even Mac OS 8.6, which also runs Sibelius just fine -- grab a USB 
MIDI interface (as little as $50) and you can be up and running with 
the latest version of Sibelius. You could connect the two computers via 
Airport wireless networking if you want to get fancy, that hardware has 
gotten cheaper, or get an inexpensive drive -- SuperDrive or CD burner 
-- for SneakerNet (running it up and downstairs by hand).

The iMac is nice and compact so it shouldn't be hard to find a place to 
put it, and then you can both work directly in Sibelius, which is much 
easier.

Peter Kirn