A 60s meme put to rest.

   In the 1950s, the audio of a car crash was recorded. In that crash, someone died and their scream can be heard at the moment of impact. For years, the sound of the crash was used as a sound effect.

One of the most famous uses was by the 60's musical duo Jan & Dean in the song 'Dead Man's Curve.' The crash audio segment is cut up and repeated in bits and pieces, but at least one full repetition, including the scream, occurs in the song.

Tennessee Department of Safety ran drunk driving commercials during the holidays then, that featured the crash audio as an effect.

I also remember, there was a public statement on the television, one year, that they were going to cease using the audio. It was deciced that incorporating the sound of someone's death in a television commercial was inappropriate.

I agree.

Winter is coming... (updated)

   I've not posted much lately. I've been busy building, and using, my new home entertainment center and my solar panel power station.
  Perhaps, this winter, I'll have time to spend on this blog.
  Having successfully programmed the basics of my Yamaha keyboard in Csound, I need to adapt the Hammond organ Csound script, by Josep Comajuncosas, to a new graphical user interface language.    The original is now obsolete in Csound. The script still works in period software versions of Csound, but there's no guarantee the older software will continue to work in the Windows operating system environment in the future.

UPDATE:
   There is an alternative option.
   Use a virtual machine to run obsolete software in current versions of  Mcrosoft Windows.

Keyboard output in CsoundQT

I finally managed to get the output of the keyboard to show up in Csound front end, QT.

If I want to use any of the earlier work of Comajuncosas, Mikelson, etc., I will need to rewrite the GUI (Graphical User Interface) sections.

The original works were written with the gtk (Gimp Toolkit) gui toolkit.
That system has been retired and replaced with ftlk (Faster Than Light toolkit).

A lot of work will be involved, especially with Josep Comajuncosa's B6 instrument, formerly 'Direct Hammond.'

The keyboard is here and working with Midiox

I've received the keyboard, a Yamaha PSR-GX76, A 76 key digital keyboard.
The unit has MIDI in and out ports using 5-pin DIN connectors.
I've gotten the keyboard ouput in Midiox.

What remains is getting the keyboard working with Csound in the QuTe gui (graphical user interface).

Digital keyboard on the way

I purchased a used Yamaha digital keyboard at an online auction and the nit should arrive tomorrow.
The PSR-GX76 is an entry level keyboar, some years old, but I want to try MIDI with my laptop and sound system. I'll use Csound, the software suite from MIT, to map a Hammond B3 Csound instrument onto the keyboard.

I have a 1968 Hammond H-182, touted by some as a Super B3, but I'm interested in MIDI programming.
The keyboard is not as sophosticated as I would like, but the price was right for an experimental instrument and there are 76 keys, a deciding factor. The only thing better would have been a full 88.

I've already received a power charger, purchased from eBay, to replace the one not accomanying the keyboard.

I may need a special cable to go between the keyboard an my laptop. I'll have to order one after I've set up the GX76.

Updated Hammond B3 - Csound emulator

   This morning, I spent some time with the emulator and the Csound and CsoundAV software.
   I had forgotten much of what I had to do to get the setup working. This was almost a new beginning for me.
   What I found was that some of the older program aids I had used were now antiquated and would not work in the Windows 10 operating system. Eventually, I found a similar software that was compatible with the current version of Windows. Still there was much to do.
   The B3 emulator is a program that consists of a list of parameters and commands, including some for the GUI(Graphical User Interface) (emulated knobs and switches on a control panel). I had to tweak the command line options, known as 'switches', to get the thing to run in CsoundAV. The command line options can be, and are in this case, included at the top of the instrument/score file. The command line I ended up using is:
-+q0 +p1  -m0 -+O -+K -b400 -+P

   There was another problem. The control panel for the emulator has a page for loading, setting, and saving lists of presets. Presets are lists of settings for the virtual organ. The settings are for all the knobs and switches on the control panel, similar to the ones found on a Hammond B3.

   I tried to load the set that comes with the emulator. They're contained in a file:"b3_snap.txt" that is read into the program when the load button is 'clicked.'

   When I tried to select a preset from the loaded file, CsoundAV would crash/close. I tried moving the file out of the Program Files (x86) directory used by the o/s since there are usually permission issues to deal with when accessing that directory, issues that do not exist outside of that and one or two others. That didn't work. What seems to work is changing the name of the file and the default name in the CsoundAV settings panel. CsoundAV no longer crashed. I don't know why.

   To run the Hammond B3 emulator, download Gabriel Maldonados CsoundAV, his free version of VMCI (v2.2), and Josep Comajuncosas DirectHammondv2rt.csd file, along with the presets file mentioned. Locate a midi driver such as loopMIDI.

   The package will install itself. Run the program. Locate the Hammond file. Set the defaults in CsoundAV, Load and run the Hammond emulator with the command line switches listed and you should see a panel pop up, brown. Wait a second and another panel will open up to allow you to select the input source. Wait another 10 or fifteen seconds and an output panel will pop up. I select 0 and 5 respectively. The VMCI will give you a virtual midi driver and a virtual keyboard to play the organ with. I use Midiox. Midiox is a versatile piece of software designed to do the same thing but has more features. The keyboard icon has too be 'clicked' for the computer keyboard to play notes.

   Midiox must be opened/run first and left running, of course, and the focus must be shifted to Midiox before the computer keyboard can sennd midi signals to the CsoundAV software running the Hammond B3 emulator.

   I haven't got the emulator to work with the current version of Csound proper, which now also, has a virtual keyboard for computer keyboard input. That may come later. I'm running the 64-bit version of Windows 10 Pro, and the 64-bit version of CsoundAV, and Csound. I don't know if the same setup will work in a 32-bit environment.
   Csound now incorporates a Real-Time feature. Gabriel Maldonados software is not necessary.

The nature of instruments and their effect on music; a brief disourse

   Several years ago I began studying the potentials of computers in relation to music. I explored midi file composition using several software programs. As mentioned before, I used  the computer to record organ compositions on my 1968 Hammond H-182. When I discovered Gabriel Maldonado's CsoundAV for real time performance, I had no way to input note data to the computer software. I discovered a couple of pieces of software that would, together, allow me to do that.
   This introduced me to the use of a computer keyboard as a musical instrument. After some time, I began to dwell on the differences between instruments and the nature of the physical possibilities and limitations in playing them.
   One of the advantages of a computer keyboard over the standard 88s is the small physical space of the keyboard corresponds to a greater musical space. For example, octaves are mush easier to play on a computer keyboard than the 88. A guitar can only be played six notes at a time, thus the keyboard, of any kind, tends to be an advantage over the fretboard. The fretless nature of classical string instruments can have certain advantages over the fretboard.
   All of these differences affect the writing and performing of music. I would even suggest that some music, read in notation form, can infer some things about the instrument for which the music was written.
   This is another indication of the potentials and limitations of the nature of the instrument and their effects on musical composition and performance. There is a reason why I prefer the keyboard over the guitar. There are many more possibilities due to the nature of the instrument alone.