XG Music Series: Twelve Days of Christmas

Music: Twelve Days of Christmas
MIDI file sequence: Unknown
Specialities: MT-32 sounds, clever instrument changes, great use of dynamics
Player: vanBasco Karaoke Player
Synthesizer: Yamaha SW1000XG in GS mode

XG format was devised in 1996 by Yamaha to expand on existing General MIDI standard which was quite limiting. The SW1000XG was introduced in 1998 basically as a MU100 tone generator in PCI card format. At that time it was the most powerful musician's sound card available.

Occasional cracks are due to buggy Windows XP driver, this can't be helped. Clipping is a result of weird volume behaviour - when master volume is set to more than 50% louder notes tend to clip especially if more than one play at once. This can only be helped by setting the volume to 50% or less, sometimes even more is possible if the notes are soft enough. Why is this so I haven't figured out.

Why vanBasco Karaoke Player? Simply because it neatly shows all the notes that are being played at once.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• yamaha
• xg
• midi
• sw1000xg
• twelve
• days
• of
• christmas