Editor's Note
07.14. 00

Hi Readers,

Here is the third copy of the sound that a lot of you are enjoying.
Putting sound on your website should be done with careful thought.
Some of the nice reason's to use sound on your website?
Beautiful music can be used to enhance the quality of your website
and give your visitors a truly enjoyable visit.

You can also use sound as a tool to help guide users around your website by
 voice. Furthermore, some websites have used sound in the capacity of
 customer service support. Other sites have used sound to allow the blind to 
enjoy the Internet experience. Additionally, generally speaking, most 
people like to hear information rather thanread information. Finally, many
 reader's opt to use sound to create an online jukebox, radio station or sell 
music.

On the downside, small files with just a few chords seem to aggravate more 
people than please them because they repeat over and over again. Lastly, 
keep the bandwidth of your server and the wait of your visitor's in mind when
you implement sound on your website.

On a final note, while a lot of you readers really liked this series, a few 
reader's took issue with some of the content. I will try and post all the 
feedback on a page so that all of you can get well-rounded information.

Take Care,

Pete

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Putting Sound on your Web Site III
Making MIDI Files for your site-Part3

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.

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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:

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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 EducationalSites. 

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

Peter Thiruselvam
Editor

The WebProNews Team

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