
Editor's Note
07.13.
00
Today we conclude the 3 part
series on "Putting Sound on Your Website" written by
John Rickey.
We hope that you enjoy this issue.
With Best Regards,
Pete
 Putting Sound on your Web Site
III
Making MIDI Files for your site
HTML Codebgcolor="#003366" face="Arial" size="4">
The best way to put sound on your web site is with MIDI. If you'd
like the sound to load automatically and loop in the background this
is the best code to use with Netscape or Explorer.
<embed src="mysong.mid" width=200 height=55 autostart=true
loop=true>
<noembed>
<bgsound src="mysong.mid" loop=infinite>
</noembed>
If you'd like the MIDI file to play on request in the foreground, it's
just a matter of linking as:
<a href="mysong.mid"> Click to hear </a>
Sometimes your web server may not have the mime types configured
properly and this will prevent the MIDI files from playing. In which
case you need to contact your server.
Making Midi Files
Making your own MIDI files can be a difficult task. To make good sounding MIDI files takes a background in arranging music, MIDI
sequencing and computers. You can download MIDI files from various
MIDI archives but the quality can be poor and often not thematically
correct for your site. MIDI design below at www.scugog-net.com offers complete
customized MIDI Loops for $35 per song.
One of the common MIDI sequencing software available with free demos
are Cakewalk. This demo works great but doesn't save or print music. I
personally like using Logic with its great quantizing features. If you have some musical background, here are some hints to making
good MIDI files.
Hints for Making MIDI
The following hints are meant for beginners. An experienced MIDI arranger will usually break these rules for effect. For example, often
parts are not quantized for realism and the parts are done in a very
different order. Nevertheless, here is a template that will work for
beginners in MIDI:
1) First, play just the melody of the song on a track. Be sure the
volume is high as you want your melody to sing out above the other
parts. If you can’t get enough volume, make a copy of the melody on
another track. Pan each melody part left and right and volume will be
increased.
Remember there is no way to add reverb to MIDI but you can give a
reverb effect by making copies of a track and duplicating each track
with an increasing delay.
2)Then add quantizing to the melody. Look at the music. If you see
eighth notes as the fastest note, then quantize the track to eight
notes. Quantizing is a method pulling the notes to the nearest beat.
For example if you quintile an eight note part of the melody to quarter notes, the melody would be doubled up into quarter notes and
wouldn't sound correct. If your timing is poor, you may need to quantize an eight note melody with a sixteenth note
quantization.
3)Once you're sure your melody is rhythmically correct and in place.
The other music parts can fit into place. It's important though that
your initial melody be correct.
4) Next add a bass and drum part. Again it will be important to quantize these parts. The volume should be a bit lower than the melodyso the melody can sing out.
5) Next add a background part such as voices or strings etc. A good
idea is to make a copy of this part on another track. Then pan each
track left and right giving the background music some depth. Some instruments don't sound as good as others on MIDI. Good
instuments to use are piano, nylon guitar, bass, drums, vibes and
strings. Instuments that don't sound as good are the sax and brass.
There are many more ways to achieve great sounding effects in MIDI but
it would take a book to write them all down.
Remember to keep it simple and don't crowd your arrangement!
I will talk focus on making MIDI for your web site next.
Putting Sound on your Web Site-John Rickey © All rights reserved, July 2000.
John Rickey is an experienced MIDI arranger. He graduated from
University of Toronto with a degree in music and has worked from
studio recordings to Movies with his arranging. He's done most
of the e-card music for such large sites as Snap.com (NBC),
Ulead, All-Yours Internet Solutions and more. You can contact
him at
kingskid@netrover.com
or visit his MIDI Design Site at
www.scugog-net.com.
He operates one of the largest educational kid's sites, click on
this for Kid's Educational Sites.

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We at the Editorial Team would like to thank all our readers
for reading WebProNews. We hope you find this information
useful.
Peter Thiruselvam
Editor
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