switching computers

Basic beginners setup tutorial by Robomusic:

When you first get MC there are a few things that will be necessary to get it up and running. First to install it you need to fake out your computer to make it think it has an older version of DirectX intalled, usually it is not necessary to actually install the older version, just go to support/music creator/FAQ/ and find the link for “dirextX 8.1 was not detected on your system” there is a patch there download it to a folder of choice and with the installation Cd in the rom driver double click that file and it will install off the CD making the computer think it has directX 8.1 . Actually you will still have DirectX9, and MC will not care in the least.

Now for audio, midi playback and recording setup. Open the program it will usually run the wave profiler for you the first time you open it. You will get two pop ups to start with first a Tip of the day box will display, if you want you can scan thru a few of those, when done close it then a project box will display, close that also. Go to the top of the screen and find options, left click that and a box will appear, find audio click that and another box will display it has several tabs at the top the first is “general”, you will see tow thin boxes that are named playback and record wave devices, they should contain the name of your sound card, if it does not then run the wave profiler again to see if it adds it. Once that is right set the buffer slider to around the middle to start with that will save another problem later. Go to the advanced tab and check the box “Always use the MME interface even when WDM drivers are available” this will force the system to use the older windows MME drivers just incase your sound card does not support the newer WDM drivers, and will give you another option for midi playback. Now go to the input monitoring tab and unhighlight anything in the large white box, proceed to the drivers and driver profile tabs and make sure that your sound card is listed there as well, click okay and go back to options/midi devices, here a box will display that has two side one for midi input and the other for output, if using a midi keyboard you will need to highlight the input that the keyboard is plugged into, for out put if your sound card has it’s own midi synth chip you can highlight that, if not highlight Microsoft synth GS, that is an internal synth chip that will playback midi. DO NOT highlight Midi Mapper, it does not play sounds. Now the program should reproduce both midi playback and wave file output.

One point to remember is that midi is not sound, a midi track or file is just a complex data stream, that tells a synth chip what note, instrument, volume, timing, velocity, etc. to play at, it takes some kind of instrument that can decifer that data and produce sound from it like a synth or keyboard. Audio files are actual recordings of sound waves on the hard drive, the two are vastly different, MC is a program that brings the two worlds together to co-exist.

Take the time to go and do the tutorials they will give you a solid basis for using MC. A lot of the folks that come here are beginners, and have read the box that says this is a snap and will have you making songs in a few minutes, while that can be true if your system is setup right, computer recording is complicated and has many variables. Be patient and ask questions, read many posts, and find other sites that are related to music, I personally have bookmarked 7 different forums that I participate in and many are far advanced over my thick head, so I am learning everyday.

And, a track could be a whole song if you're playing guitar and singing into one microphone. But a bunch of tracks could also be a song. On the left side of the MC screen you should have a vertical listing of numbers and various other icons. Each numbered listing is a track. You might have piano on track 1, bass on track 2, strings on track 3, etc. But each track also has 16 channels.....sorry, I don't want to confuse the issue. You can get into channels later. Greg