Greetings MIDI Ring members!
Some of you may have noticed an interruption in the MIDI
Ring's functionality. This is due to Yahoo's switchover of the webring
system. I have a running dialouge on the MIDI RIng message board (http://www.ubikmusic.com/midiring)
with updates on the status. Please feel free to leave comments suggestions
and issues on the message board.
Your fragments "should" be up and running now, but in
the event of problems please email me at: ali@retrosounds.com for help.
You can still email midiring@hotmail.com but that account is so heavily
bombarded that it often goes over capacity and some letters never get through.
Thanks for your patience and keep those MIDI Tracks going!
Best Regards,
Ali Lexa
Ringmaster - The MIDI Ring
Greetings to all members! Hope you are all having a great Spring. There are just a couple of things to report this time, so this should be pretty painless!
CHANGES IN THE MIDI RING: Due to changes in the way the webring operates - If you need to change your URL, Page info, email address etc - you can still do this at: http://www.ubikmusic.com/midiring/news.html However there is a new field. You must enter the Ring ID (which is: midi) as well as your site's ID# and your password to access the editor.
VERY IMPORTANT: after making your changes please hit the flashing "LOGOUT" text to logout of your session.
HELP WANTED: Out tireless staff has been working very hard evaluating new sites for submission to the MIDI Ring, checking continuity and all the other tasks involved with keeping this ring the #1 music oriented webring on the net. If you'd be interested in joining our team please email me, Landru or Gale for more info. Ali Lexa: alexa@ubikmusic.com Landru: landru@mindless.com Gale: rimfire@ecsnet.net
Keep up the great work on you sites!!
Copyright Lawsuits:
There has been a lot of talk going back and forth about people being
sued for posting unathorized midi files. I'm not going to get into any
legal debates here but would like to send out a warning and some advice
for those of you that post midi files you haven't created yourselves. The
current lawsuits are being instigated by Stephen Kern of Trycho Tunes,
a company that creates general midi files of popular tunes and sells them.
He is using a law that allows one to copyright a midi file as a "performance"
since he does not own the rights to any of the actual songs himself. I
recommend going through any of your posted midi files that you've gotten
off of other sites or from newsgroups and checking them for any copyright,
ownership or "created by" info.
To do this in Windows you can right click and get the "properties"
of any file, if it has been properly signed you will be able to see this
info. A more thorogh method would be to open the files in a good sequencing
program like Cubase, Cakewalk or Orchestrator and check the data in the
list or string editor for any sort of signature.
On the MAC just select the individual midi files and hit <Command>+<I>
or go to the file menu and select "Get Info" to look for the signature,
a more thorough method would be to open the file in good sequencing program
like Cubase, Logic or Vision and use the list or string editor to check
for this info. If you have any files with; Stephen Kern, Trycho Tunes,
TMI, Harry Fox or Tran Tracks in them I strongly recommend removing them
from your site. If you have any of these files I strongly recommend against
trying to edit out the copyright info, these people have apparently been
listening through suspect files and claim to be able to recognize their
files. According to my sources no one has actually gone to court and it
seems this person is mostly eager to settle out of court. The safest thing
is to remove any files you're not sure of.
Now on with more positive news,
The MIDI Ring is now the Number 1 music oriented ring on the internet!
Pat yourselves on the back for the great work you've been doing on your
sites. You can see the stats of the Top 100 Art&Humanities/Music oriented
rings here:
TOP
100 Music Rings
Intel Pentium III
I just returned from San Jose, where I got to participate in the unveiling
of the new Pentium III processor. I was showing the new 3.7 version of
Cubase which is Katmai (PIII) optimized on a PIII running at 550Mhz. The
performance was outstanding, I also got to see some of the great work being
done with DLS (downloadable sound) midi files. DLS midi files will really
revolutionize midi. A DLS midi file can contain custom sounds/samples that
appropriate sound cards/devices will load in before playing the file, similar
to Sound Fonts but not just limited to Creative Labs sound cards. Yamaha
is really at the forefront of this technology. If you're purchasing a new
sound card I strongly recommend you get one that supports DLS!
I wish you all a great Spring!
If you are going to the Frankfurt Musik Messe/Trade Show, stop by and
say hello. I'll be at the Steinberg booth.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 1999!!
Greetings to all and we wish you all the best for this last year of the century!
The MIDI Ring has maintained a rating of #25 out of 53,731 active webrings in the webring system! And of course we are the #1 MIDI oriented ring in the system. This is all thanks to the hard work and dedication you have all put into your sites. Congratulations!
In other news, Geocities has bought the Webring system. The have promised not to interfere with the workings of the webring and NO, there won't be any pop up adds when people are surfing the webring. We all hope they remain comitted to their promise.
SENT: 22/April/98
Hello Everyone!! First off let me say that many of you have been doing an excellent job with your websites and Midi Files! The MIDI Ring is maintaining a Top 30 rating out of over 22,000 webrings all because of your hard work. Keep it up! And to all the new members-welcome!
HELP WANTED! Our trusty and dedicated staff have been working REAL hard to keep up with all the tasks of running the MIDI ring; checking for dead/bad links in the ring and dealing with the (very) numerous new submissions we get to join the MIDI Ring. Landru and Steve Kreher especially. We need a few more dedicated midi-philes who would like to participate in evaluating new site submissions. If you are interested email me or Landru <landru@mindless.com> for details and benefits.
SOUND BLASTER I was lucky enough to attend the recent Creative Labs developers conference in Santa Clara California. Those of you AWE fans out there are in for some real treats! The new "Sound Blaster Live!" is awesome. 64 independant audio streams and 64 voices for wavetable/sound font support. It uses a new EMU chipset and is a PCI card. Creative has modified the new General MIDI standard to allow you to include Sound Fonts in your Midi files. This means you can create great sounding custom files with your own sounds included and you KNOW that anyone with a sound font capable card will hear exactly what you do, even vocals!! There are some great new utils coming out that will automatically compile your general midi file and sound font into one file that will automatically load up. No more dealing with the d*mn AWE control panel every time you open an AWE song! Creative has also bought Cambridge Soundworks and is busy working with them creating some amazing new sound systems.
STEINBERG I am now working full time at Steinberg Music Software. If any of you are interested in or need information about any of our great audio software products let me know. Some of our current software line: Cubase Audio VST: Realtime Multitrack digital audio and midi recording system. Fully supports VST (virtual studio technology) Direct X and other audio plug-in formats. (Mac & PC) ReBirth RB-338: Roland TB-303, TR-808 and TR-909 emulation software. (Mac & PC) Recycle!: THE tool for working with sampled grooves/loops (Mac & PC) Wavelab 2.0 24-bit realtime audio processing, editing, mastering, audio database and red-book CD audio burning software. (PC only) If your interested, need updates or want a catalog let me know.
Ali Lexa
midiring@hotmail.com