In reply to David Smith's request, "MIDI Advice, Please" [171124 MMD].

David,  There are multiple steps required in order to arrange music for
a MIDI-controlled device.  The first step is to understand the available
notes for the instrument.  In your case, there are 31 notes, which will
not include every note in a chromatic scale and will give you a limited
number of bass notes.  Once you know what notes you have available and
have selected a tune to arrange, you will need to determine what notes
are missing when you try to play your tune using only the available
notes.

It is likely that you will need to transpose the tune into a different
key in order to get the most number of notes in the tune to play.
Knowing what bass notes are available will be an important clue to the
puzzle.  With experience, you will know what keys are available for the
organ.  Working with a limited scale is a skill that separates good and
bad arrangements and is not as easy as it might seem.

Once you have arranged your tune into a key that works for the
instrument, the next step can be a challenge.  I am not familiar with
the 31-note scale, but you need to study some of your existing music
to determine what MIDI event is used to play each of the musical notes.
For some instruments, the events are in order of the tracker bar.  In
others, the MIDI "pitches" match the notes.  Yet in others, the events
appear to be random.

You will need to figure out the map between the MIDI "notes" and the
musical notes.  With any luck, that information is available, but to
create the map should not take a lot of time if it isn't.  I would
suggest that you create a file that plays the notes for the instrument
in tracker bar order as a check.  It will be the easiest way to catch
errors and will serve as a test file for your organ in the future.

When you have your map, the next step will be to translate your
arranged music, which plays the musical pitches, into the MIDI control
pitches.  You could do this with a CAL routine in Cakewalk, which will
select each note one at a time and transposes it to the new value.  The
trick is to do it in an order that will not move to a note that will be
translated in a later search.  When the translation is done, you are
almost finished.

The last step will be to adjust the tempo to work with your instrument.
When you get that right, all that is left to do is enjoy the music you
have created!

I hope this helps you get started.

Jack Breen
Southborough, Massachusetts