Adding Midi To Powermac 6500, MIDI INTERFACE Options

[dalbatross]

HELP! MY MOM WANTS TO HOOK UP A MIDI KEYBOARD TO HER POWERMAC 6500/250. SHE IS A COMPOSER AND WANTS TO TRY USING A MUSIC NOTATION PROGRAM. THE ONLY AUDIO-IN PORT IS A MICROPHONE JACK AND THERE'S NOTHING IN HELP ABOUT MIDI. DOES SHE NEED TO ADD A SOUND CARD? DOES SHE NEED SOME KIND OF EXTERNAL BOX? WHAT SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE DOES SHE NEED?

I HAVE PC BACKGROUND AND MY MOM IS COMPUTER CHALLENGED. DETAILED RECOMMENDATIONS WOULD BE MOST APPRECIATED!

[Levon River]

Hi, dalbatross.

First, please press your "caps lock" key so you're NOT TYPING EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS, 'cause it looks like you're yelling.

Your mom will need a MIDI interface. If she wants to have the music notation program drive her MIDI keyboard, and listen to the results from the keyboard, she won't need an audio interface at this point, just a MIDI interface. She can listen to the MIDI keyboard through whatever she's listening to it through now.

There are several relatively inexpensive MIDI interface options: MOTU Fastlane and others. (I think for that Power Mac you'll be wanting to get an interface that has a serial port connection--not USB.)

If it's a 6500/250, I imagine she's running OS 9.x. Is that right? If so, once you have a MIDI interface, you'll need to download and install for her one of two free programs: OMS or FreeMIDI. These are system-level MIDI set-up utilities that let you define which serial port your MIDI interface is connected to ("Printer" or "Modem"), what keyboards or sound modules you have connected to that MIDI interface, and some other parameters. You'll probably want to get OMS since it is the one more universally used by MIDI-capable programs, but you may need to get FreeMIDI if you get a MOTU MIDI interface (I can't recall what the latest situation is, not having been in either OMS or FreeMIDI in a while.) Either way, FreeMIDI has an option for emulating OMS, or does it automatically now, or something like that.

There is virtually no documentation for either of those utilities, and they are *not* terribly intuitive in more than a few aspects, so when you get to that point, if you need help there are plenty of people here who can help walk you through any troublesome steps. But you can probably figure out at least most of what you'll need to configure for her particular MIDI keyboard and the MIDI interface you get.

So, your next steps are:

1) Buy a MIDI interface and hook it up, and,

2) Download and configure OMS (or FreeMIDI) to be the System-level interpreter between your MIDI interface and your MIDI-capable programs.

There may then be a some fiddling to do in the notation program to assign what plays where through the MIDI keyboard, but that's getting ahead of ourselves at the moment.

Good luck with it. Holler (but not with yer all-caps key) if you need more help wid it.