Ye Macce Threade

[ironbut]

Open GB.

Find the midi file in Finder.

Drag the file into the Tracks (left side) area.

GB should open the files with whatever the default instrument you've chosen in Preferences.

Hit Spacebar to play.

[Torpedo]

I can't choose instruments in preferences, there there's other stuff about midi output, looping, optimization for number of tracks or short delay, etc. However your suggestion, since the .mid file cannot be added to the left pane, made me to create a "new project". This opened a different window with just a "grand piano" track. When adding the .mid file there, it caused a crash and the program closed itself. On restart, creating a new project now showed plenty of instruments in a center pane, where I chose guitar. Now adding the .mid file was possible and it opened all the instruments into the .mid, but the sound is awful and I can't see any score to play along.

Thanks!

[ironbut]

The piano is probably the default.

I forgot to tell you to start a New Project (or whatever GB calls it).

If the sound is garbled, you should save you project (command s) and restart you computer.

There should be a place you can display the midi as a score. Probably in the View menu.

Sorry I can't be specific but I've never used GB. These are just general audio/midi/mac things.

[ironbut]

Forgot again!

As far as I know, you can't "daisy chain" usb devices on a mac. You can with firewire but in most cases, OSX will see each one as a separate device so most of the time (such as hdd's) there's no point and you might as well just use a hub.

An exception is working with some audio devices. In Audio Midi you can create an Aggregate Device with multi channel interfaces and combine the channel count.

[Torpedo]

Something wrong happens to my GB. I've been able to see the individual instrument tracks. While some part of the program knows that one is the drums, other the bass and so on, and as such display in the central pane where the track advances (although no score and no way that I can find to make it show the music score), most of them just play and display on the left pane as "Grand Piano". I'm trying to change that assigning the right instrument to every single track, but now the damn GB says that it needs to download the instrument banks. This is not happening, it opened the Appstore but nothing is downloading  Now that the drums sound like drums and not some devilish fat piano, this begins to sound as it should. Thanks for placing me on the right track

The idea with the HDD is not really daisy chaining them but while having them plugged into different USB ports, forcing the system to handle both as a single larger unit, so no need to move files or changing disk id's to get software finding the files.

[ironbut]

Giving a novice multitrack midi files with No instructions is a cruel prank IMHO!

Whoever created these tracks is the only one who knows how they were mapped. Even if they were all stock instruments, you need to know which drum kit or which string ensemble. It's kind of crazy that they didn't just print the tracks to audio like a sane person would.

Contact the creator and find out which track gets which instrument before you waste any more time guessing.

He/she should be able to tell you how to open the Score Editor too.

BTW, check to be sure they didn't include some sort of Read Me file with the midi tracks.

[Torpedo]

The midi came from an online resource at Floydhead.com, no other information. As a matter of fact the website cannot display the page where the midis are supposed to be stored, but the file is there http://www.floydhead.com/PF_MIDI/Money.mid

It seems that my GB lacks a lot of instruments, which are not available to download from Apple anymore. Using the ones I have available (some synth bass, acoustic guitar, a few types of organ and so on) I've managed to make it sound more or less OK, but the point is finding the score to play along the tune, which I've not been able to do. I've asked the mate who gave the midi download link, but he hasn't got back to me yet. Maybe he knows how to display the music score plot.

[ironbut]

Take a look at this YouTube video;

In the View menu, click on Show Editor.

This will open the Piano Roll on the bottom half of the window.

At the top of the Piano Roll is a button that is either Piano Roll or Score.

You may have to adjust the Tempo or Time Signature.

There are tons of great audio related YouTube tutorials.

Just bear in mind that working in a DAW (even a simplified one like GB) with midi is not a trivial pursuit.

Don't expect it to be easy or intuitive.

[Torpedo]

Found it. Mine has no "view" menu on top but from your indications I found a button at the bottom of the pane which opens a secondary window with the score option. Now the tough part of transposing a score made for piano into a more usable guitar one a whole octave higher As if I were able to read music :palm:

[ironbut]

You're doing great Antonio!

Like I said, these things aren't easy so be patient with yourself.

And don't forget about the manual. IIRC Apple provides some tutorial videos with GB.

[Torpedo]

It seems that the main problem was my version of GB being very old (like 5.1 while the current one is in the 10's). I thought this was a music game like Guitar Hero, so go figure, I haven't opened it since this computer was new and running Snow Leopard. Likely OS upgrades won't upgrade GB. However without me realising and after several attempts, the sound banks got there and now I have a few more instruments available. Not all the ones I'd need, but enough to make it sound kind of right.

Looks like the second matter, the one about making some sort of dynamic drive based on two different HDD is not feasible in OSX   It'd make my life way easier.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Torpedo

[Dusty Chalk]

20 hours ago, ironbut said:

Whoever created these tracks is the only one who knows how they were mapped. Even if they were all stock instruments, you need to know which drum kit or which string ensemble. It's kind of crazy that they didn't just print the tracks to audio like a sane person would.

Isn't that why General MIDI came into existence?  I think most online MIDI files are expected to follow the General MIDI mapping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI

[ironbut]

You might be right Dusty,

Maybe the point is that the user needs to get creative regarding which vsti to use on the tracks and edit any commands that don't conform.

I guess I'm used to folks wanting the mix to sound like they originally intended.

[shellylh]

I bought my mom a MacBook Pro Retina 13" (standard) from the Apple store for Christmas. I noticed that it didn't have El Capitan on it which means it was built at least 3 months ago and has been sitting around unused. In theory, it could have been built in March since that's when these came out. Do you think this will cause earlier failure of the battery? If so I can have my mom return it and I can order a custom order. I'm hoping this computer will last her a long time.

I did notice that in the desktop it says the battery is now charged but if I go into the system information and look at power it says

"fully charged: no" and "charging: yes" which seems weird. This concerns me since an exploding battery can be very dangerous.

[shellylh]

Not worried about it not having El Capitan, just want the battery to last (she is not good at noticing if there was something wrong with the battery). The box looked kinda dirty on one end So I imagine that it may have been in storage for a while.

I'll probably wait to put El Capitan on it because I have to leave tomorrow and I'm just getting things set it for her now (and the internet here is like 2Mbps so even basic updates are taking a while). Do you see a reason that she needs to have El Capitan on it? It may be a while before I'm back.

[archosman]

New one for me.  Any ideas what this means?

 

Edited December 26, 2015 by archosman

[shellylh]

My mom told me she was taking some free online course at "Apple Courses Online." (http://applecoursesonline.com/webinar-registration8275299)  Sigh...

Does anyone know anything about this?  Are they just going to try to get money out of her or might she get malware from the site?   

Is there another legit place where she can go to learn tricks to using her new computer? 

[Salt Peanuts]

Shelly, Apple Stores have some free workshops on basic stuff, though not all workshops are offered at every locations.  I also have no idea how good the basic workshops are.

[shellylh]

Yeah, I told her about that.  I wonder if they might be too basic though (she has been using a Mac for a while but wanted to learn more than the very basic stuff). 

[ironbut]

I'd suggest the tutorials on Lynda.com.

They aren't free but IMHO the $20-25 a month is well worth a monthly subscription.

I've taken a ton of online classes and tutorials and the one's at Lynda are a few steps above most others.

They use instructors that have credentials and there are enough classes that you can usually find exactly what you need.

Many of my Music Tech college courses have used their tutorials as supplement.

There's a 10 day free trial (just be sure and cancel your sub when you're done) and if the course has practice projects or some other extra material, you need the premium subscription (an extra $5 per month) to download it.

http://www.lynda.com/

 

Other than that, you could always check the MOG's like Coursera or Futurelearn (Udacity isn't free). They may offer something she'd like but you might have to wait till it's offered.

 

[Torpedo]

I decided to update my 2010 MBP (with 8GB RAM and SSD that I installed) from Mavericks into El Capitan. Not a clean install It's been running a black screen with a spinning white wheel for almost one hour. No other messages or activity cues, but the noise from the cooling fan. Should I leave it alone longer? How much time? If intervention is needed, what must be done?

[Torpedo]

Nevermind. After another half an hour without any action I manually forced reboot by pressing some keys combination, then it started to actually install El Capitan. It seems to work fine, but have had to update a program. Not sure if there will be any more issues 

[ironbut]

Having all your apps and plugins updated seems to be important with the last few OSX's.

It's pretty common for installs to get hung up by ones that are a couple of versions out.

I'm still at 10.10.4 (I heard that 10.10.5 was a dog).

I hated Mavericks but I'm loving this version of Yosemite (Mtn Lion and Snow Leopard were fantastic for me too).

Hope El Capitan treats you well!

Edited January 18, 2016 by ironbut

[Torpedo]

Most things seem to work just fine, kind of snappier. Time Machine seems to take less resources while creating the backup, and it's possible the search in Finder is faster too. Hard to say.

[HeadphoneAddict]

I always make both a fresh time machine backup and a bootable clone before I do a major update, and only if I have no bills or projects due for the next week.  I actually have a USB time machine backup and a network time machine backup, not just one (paranoid has come in handy a few times).

I make sure all apps are updated that I can think of, and make sure I'm stable after they're updated, and do both backups again if needed.  If one of the updated apps is unstable I revert back to my backup.  If everything is fine, after my new backups I then turn off all extensions and background apps and reboot before the update.  

After the update, if all is stable I start turning on my most important extensions one at a time, starting with Dropbox, then Drobo Dashboard, then SoundSource, Google Drive, and Air Display, and finally log-me-in. Air Display and LogMeIn have been big culprits in the past with new OS X crashes.

Regardless, because updating from iTunes 12.3.0.44 to 12.3.1 killed my Macbook music library and I had to revert to a backup library and the older iTunes version, I've been afraid to update from Yosemite 10.10.5 to El Capitan.  

The new iTunes 12.3.1 wouldn't work on my Macbook unless I started fresh without my 1500 playlists, and if I started fresh then I couldn't turn on iCloud Music Library to get my playlists off of my iMac without iTunes locking up. Hundreds of people posted about this issue but Apple would never acknowledge that iTunes broke with some libraries that had been used for 10-12 years through multiple upgrades over the years.

PS:  Always run disk utility before an update to "repair disk" and "repair permissions".