Alas, I haven't actually got any MIDI stuff to use to see how it works in practice :P
Cheers, Carl
Hey Carl--
Dan Costello from Boise. Thought I might try to help the MIDI cause. What's funny about this current thread is that for a long time I thought DoggieBox itself must somehow be built upon MIDI principles. Silly me.
For practice MIDI bits: A search on the web will yield plenty of MIDI files to work with, and freeware/shareware MIDI editors exist as well. The free version of ProTools (in OS 9... yawn) I'm using has a great visual MIDI editing capability-- you can actually SEE all the MIDI messages as little specks on the screen. I'm pretty sure your 1680 will show you similar things on its little LCD screen, but I'm not positive-- one of the studio guys I work with here in town used to have one, but I think I learned more about its MIDI capabilities in one afternoon of flipping through the manual than he did the whole time he owned it. Might've been more work to learn than it was worth, but most of the smaller digital workstations are really handcuffed for effectiveness without harnessing MIDI.
Here's a link to a file I recently downloaded that I need to rehearse for a gig I have coming up later this summer... it has a good variety of instruments in it, but also must have some fairly detailed tempo info in it as well, as the ritards, a tempos, and fermatas are very smooth in playback (through a basic QuickTime player). Might be a good one to dissect and study.
http://www.aria-database.com/sounds/midi/gianni2_omio.mid
Also, if you're into the band Guster, they have a great website with all kinds of screwy audio files from live shows, other bands covering their songs, them covering other people's songs... and a handful of MIDI files! (last time I was there, anyway.) Weird, but cool. Might be a bit more interesting than Puccini.