.DirectMusic Tutorial #1: MIDI to .WAV

The problem with a MIDI-to-WAV tutorial is that there seem to be so many easier ways to do it than the method presented here. No question, this is The Long Way.

• You could play your music into a microphone and record it with the system .WAV recorder.
• You could play the music on your system, set the Volume Recording options for StereoMixer Input or What You Hear (as detailed in the Melody Maestro FAQ), and record it with the system .WAV recorder.
• You could get a dedicated program, such as MIDI2WAV or WAVmaker.

So why go through all this rigamarole? It depends on your needs.

• Constructing the .WAV file with DMP gives you much cleaner sound than simply recording from a microphone. And you don't have to figure your way around outside sound sources, such as clocks, telephones, air conditioning, low-flying planes, and kids on an after-school sugar high.
• In DMP, you have absolute control over panning, volume, and effects for each MIDI instrument, in the same program that's playing the MIDI file. Greater control, fewer programs, less system overhead, less chance of interference in the recording process.
• The sounds are the Roland SoundCanvas, licensed by Microsoft. Good noise.
• The other programs have their learning curves as well. All are easier than DMP, but all have their quirks or limitations as well.

The choice is absolutely yours; I merely offer a method for constructing a clean .WAV file from MIDI in DMP. It's up to you as to how much trouble it is.

How I Did It, by Victor Frankenstein

The first time you Run DMP, you'll have a rather intimidating display. It's not anywhere near as bad as it looks, though. For a full tour, click on Help, and choose Contents, Introduction, Getting Started, and DirectMusic Producer Environment for a comprehensive screenshot. (I'll get some more help on this page real soon.)

The most important things for you to know are:

• All of the screen components can be moved around to a configuration that's comfortable for you, and the program will have them there every time you run it.
• The main Transport is very simple: the two red triangles (one with a line to the left, Play from Beginning, and the other, Play from Current Cursor Position) and one green square (Stop).
• The Project Tree, which starts off to the left, is where you'll be doing a lot of important setup work.
• That odd-looking bar with a blank space, a button with ellipses (...) and another button with a red squiggly line, and then another set of those... that's your MIDI-to-WAV tool. This is your friend.

A musical work in DMP is called a project. When we get into meatier tutorials later, we'll be creating our own projects from scratch... but, for the moment, just to give you a feel of how to create a project (as well as give us something for the MIDI-to-WAV tutorial), we'll create a new project by importing an existing MIDI file.

1. Your Project Tree (which starts out on the left side of your screen) lists all of your open projects. If you find this getting cluttered, or if your system bogs down because too many projects are open, you can click on a project to highlight it, then select Close Project from the File menu. Do this right now with whatever projects might be open, so that we start with a clean slate.
2. Go to the File menu, and select New > Project. This will open a requester asking the name of your new Project, as well as its directory path. Name your Project, and leave the default path alone for now.
3. The Project name is now in the Project Tree. Right click on the name, and select Import > MIDI File as Segment. Browse your hard drive until you find the MIDI file you want to use, click on it, and then click OK.
4. Let's hear what it sounds like. Click the Play from Beginning button (a green triangle pointing to the right, with a green vertical line just to the left). You should hear the MIDI sequence playing -- but what a lot of reverb! Somewhere on the screen you should see a dropdown menu, defaulted to "Standard Stereo & Reverb". This is your Audiopath, and it will become blazingly important in only a few minutes. If it's too much reverb for now, change it to "Standard Stereo".
5. A little orientation before we move on. In the Project Tree, you'll notice:
   • a folder with the Project name. That folder has a branch with a little treble clef icon, followed by:
   • the Segment name (based on the name of the original MIDI file, replacing .mid with .sgp). Below that is:
   • a branch with the name of your original MIDI file (.mid or other suffix stripped off) and an icon that looks like part of a brick wall. (If you use SuperJAM, you will recognize it as looking like the Song window with its segments. If you think of the MIDI sequence as a component of the overall segment, along with information about the musical style, band, etc., the icon might make more sense -- all in all, it's just a... nother brick in the wall.)
6. RIGHT click on the brick wall icon of the MIDI sequence, and select New > Audiopath. When it gives you the option, choose Create an Empty Audiopath and click OK. (Notice the new branch with a red-arrow icon labeled "Audiopath" that shows up in the Project Tree.) A requester opens, labeled Add/Remove PChannels. This makes MIDI Performance channels available to the program for processing. If you try to create a .wav file with MIDI data on 16 tracks, and you've only got channel 1 open, the .wav file will only contain sound data based on the MIDI information in Track 1. For right now, you've probably got a vanilla 16-channel MIDI sequence, so click on the button labeled Add Next 16. Now your first 16 MIDI channels are active, so that the program will properly process their output rather than just play them. Click OK.
7. You are now in a frighteningly blank screen, with something called an Effect Palette on the right. This is the most important part of this example, and one of the most powerful screens in the program. At the top you will see "Mix List" with some information about the mix & processing for this segment. In the Effect Palette, click on FileOutput and drag it over to the first line. (You will know when you're in the right place when your icon changes from a barred circle [the international "no" symbol] to an arrow with a plus sign, showing that you're about to add something.) The word "FileOutput" appears in the Effects List. Now you can convert the MIDI sequence to a WAV file.
8. Double click on the brick wall icon for your MIDI sequence back in the Project Tree, and you'll be back in the MIDI sequence.
9. Go to the MIDI-to-WAV bar, and click on the left ellipsis (...). This will ask you to Set the Filename of whatever you're Exporting to WAV. Put in a file name and click OK.
10. Note that the button just to the right of the ellipsis has just become active, turning bright red. Click on the red button. Nothing happens. Well, actually, yes, something has happened -- the MIDI-to-WAV is waiting for you.
11. Now click on the Play from Beginning button, and the MIDI sequence will begin playing. When it's done, it will stop automatically.
12. Click the red WAV button again to be sure it's stopped recording. Ta da! You've now got a WAV file of your MIDI, which you can edit in any standard WAV editing program.

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