The Portable GR-DVM1 Mini DV Camcorder (page 4)

Make Your Own Kind of Music

Roland Virtual SoundCanvas Music Pack
($99)
Edirol Corporation
P.O. Box 4919
Blaine, WA 98231-4919
(800) 380-2580
http://www.edirol.com

tech specs

It's a common problem in the video profession: you need some quality music for a production you're working on, but you don't want to pay the royalty fees necessary to obtain popular titles. This very real demand for music, which exists at all levels of the video industry, is what led to royalty-free music. Usually sold in the form of a CD library, royalty-free music can help videographers flesh out their productions with a wide selection of tracks in a plethora of styles.

Problem is, when you buy royalty-free music, you can't provide much in the way of creative input. If you think a certain song would be better without that xylophone in the background, or with an entirely different drum arrangement, tough--you're stuck with whatever you purchased on the CD.

So what's a creative videographer to do, apart from taking up a musical hobby and recording tracks of his own? If the videographer in question owns a PC equipped with a sound card, then Roland's Virtual SoundCanvas Music Pack (marketed by the Edirol Corporation in the United States) is one way to tackle the problem. Incorporating four separate Windows95 software products in a single package, the Virtual SoundCanvas Music Pack gives users a way to create their own original musical works with a simple drag-and-drop interface.

Music, Maestro

The four software products included in the Virtual SoundCanvas Music Pack are: DoReMix2, Cakewalk Express, EasyJuke2 and the VSC-55 Virtual SoundCanvas itself. Together, these four titles provide everything necessary to start creating your own musical scores. No prior musical experience is necessary--although it sure doesn't hurt, and trained musicians will probably get more out of the system than others.

The heart of the Music Pack is the VSC-55 Virtual Sound Canvas, a sound generator compatible with two popular digital audio standards: the General MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) system, and Roland's GS format. As you operate the other software titles included in the Music Pack, the VSC-55 sits in the background, processing all of the sounds necessary to play your musical creations.

While the VSC-55 synthesizer is the heart of the system, DoReMix2 is the interface that musical beginners will rely on to help them create their own compositions. Essentially a simplified music production tool, DoReMix2 reduces the complexity of musical arrangement to the level of dragging, dropping, cutting and pasting individual musical phrases on a grid. The interface couldn't be simpler; made up of a large central grid surrounded by controls for instrumentation, tempo and other features, it offers an easy way to start making music right away, without even opening the manual.

Here's how you can create a song with DoReMix2 without any prior musical knowledge: on the upper right side of the screen, choose a category from the Phrase Directory--Classical, for instance. The first eight boxes that run across the top of the screen will now have a set of graphical musical instruments corresponding to the style that you've chosen. The Classical option, for example, displays a selection of percussion, woodwinds, strings, harpsichords, bells, flutes and such. Each instrument icon represents a single musical phrase, four measures in length; double-clicking the icon will play the phrase for you. If you don't like the first phrase that comes up, it's an easy matter to right-click the mouse over the icon and pull down a list of a dozen or so alternatives in the same category and genre. When you find one you like, you can grab it with a right-click of the mouse and drop it into the correct place on the grid below.

The grid itself is divided into frames and tracks (vertical and horizontal, respectively). Each frame represents four measures of music, incorporating all of the instruments that you place in the six available tracks. The top four tracks will accept any kind of instrument except drums; the fifth and sixth tracks are for bass and drums, respectively. A seventh track holds information regarding key changes and other events.

Back to our example: drop some strings, a harpsichord and a woodwind section into the first three tracks of the first frame; then put a bass fiddle and a percussion section into the bottom two instrument tracks. Click the play button to listen to your creation; if you like it, it's an easy matter to copy it and paste it into the next frame for four more measures of the same. Add a little variation by changing an instrument or two; change keys by pulling down the appropriate command from the menu bar.

Shaken, Not Stirred

If you lack ideas, or you'd just rather not go through the emotional turmoil of writing your own orchestral masterpiece, you can use DoReMix2's randomizer function. When you click the dice-shaker icon that appears on the lower left of the screen and drag it into one frame of your composition, DoReMix2 will place a random assortment of bass, drum and instrument phrases into the grid. The style of these phrases will correspond to that of the current Phrase Directory you're working with (classical, funk, etc.).

If you're a musician, and you'd rather have more control over your compositions than DoReMix2 can provide, the bundled copy of CakeWalk Express will provide the same drag-and-drop simplicity on a real, honest musical staff instead of a simplified grid. Basically a scaled-down, limited version of an industry-standard MIDI sequencing program, CakeWalk Express provides plenty of room for growth and learning for would-be computer musicians at all levels of competence. You can even use CakeWalk Express to build your own musical phrases for use in DoReMix2.

Last but not least, EasyJuke2 is a simple MIDI jukebox that gives you a number of tools for playing or recording your musical creations. With EasyJuke2, you can play your MIDI tracks in any order you want, for easy recording; you can also loop them (play them over and over)--a handy feature for video editors who need a quick background track or two for their video productions.

For hobbyist and prosumer video editors, the Virtual SoundCanvas Music Pack delivers versatility, affordability and creativity in a simple yet powerful package. If you haven't tried your hand at computer-based musical creation yet, the SoundCanvas just might be your opportunity to start composing today.