May 18, 2004 at 2:01 am
I have been looking at MIDI sequencer software for my keyboards and there seems to be a limit of around 200,000 events within these packages.
An event could be the press of a note. An instruction from a foot pedal, joystick or whatever.
Now an event (lets think of it as a record) is going to have a set number of attributes (lets think of them as fields). Therefore 200,000 is not a large amount.
If you are into rock music then even the works of Pink Floyd or Jim Steinman are going to fit, but if you are into orchestral works Beethoven is going to anihalate your file space.
Has anyone considered storing midi data as records in a SQL Server or MSDE engine?
If interface to the database could be worked out then this would give a vast boost to the capacity of a sequencer.
May 19, 2004 at 7:37 am
This would mean basically changing the MIDI file specs, even if you still use the original specs for individual MIDI messages. Do that, and all the old MIDI-gear would stop working.
Might as well create a completely new file spec and give it a different name. Who knows, might be some $$$ down that road.
May 19, 2004 at 9:33 am
I have several sequencer packages for my MIDI which I have obtained since the late 80's. Not a single package I have is limited to 200,000 events. However, I know of many keyboards and hardware devices with built-in sequencers that are limited to some number of events.
Anyway, I am not sure that streaming MIDI data to a databse engine adds much value to the sequencer. There are a number of limitations in MIDI (since it is based on an 8-bit standard) that are just now being recognized because of the hardware capabilites with sound generation. Up until a year or two ago, MIDI data could be pumped out to a number of devices faster than the devices could process the data they received. An advanced 32-bit or even 64-bit MIDI specification would probably solve this problem, but that will cost musical instrument manufacturers lots of investment money.
May 19, 2004 at 9:45 am
I think the great thing about MIDI was that it was a standard when there weren't any standards.
To come up with a replacement for MIDI would be a major achievement, after all there are format wars going on with DVD ROM/RAM etc.
I dare say the XML zealots will recommend a formal "Midi" schema to allow midi data to be transferred between the different instruments. It might not be such a bad idea come to think of it.
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