In the process of demonstrating St Annes for our church organist, I ran into a problem.
First a recap of my equipment: Hp Pavilion with 6 G memory (but running Free Edition I know I can only load 1.5 anyway), M-Audio Fast Track interface for MIDI in and sound out, reasonably powerful home stereo, and one highly proficient but completely (and I mean completely) computer illiterate organist.
The organist is interested in possibly using Hauptwerk as an interim when scheduled repairs on our pipe organ get funded. So yesterday I set it up for him and we did a mock service, since we knew all the music scheduled for Sunday.
The problem: sound died in the middle, maybe a half hour into playing with it. MIDI still came out of the keyboard - I could see the lights on the Fast Track flashing, I could see the keys on the St Annes manuals going up and down, but nothing came out of the stereo. We had not changed anything, were just in the process of playing, listening, discussing, changing registrations, etc. I exited Hauptwerk and reloaded, and then it worked fine. This was a bit scarey, if it happened when playing a real service we'd be in trouble. Any idea why this happened? Maybe there's a timer on the free edition?
The observation: it is risky to let a computer illiterate person near this. I gave him a stop list and asked him to mark it up with what stops he wanted on what pistons. I set both manuals and pedals so he could play it from one keyboard. He never understood what would play, and I ended up redoing it many times. I would have been far better off just registering it myself and telling him this is what you get. Secondly, I stupidly set unused keyboard keys to work pistons. Naturally I asked him what was the highest note he would ever play, and since there another 8 notes above that I thought I could use them. Wrong! He lied, he did play them even though he didn't intend to, and since I'd set a couple of them to pp and FF just in case, he was constantly getting frustrated. Lesson learned: do the registration myself, don't set hot keys, just sit at the computer and change registration when he nods his head. Also, I set up speakers in front of us, and hearing what it sounded like meant walking out in front. I should have put them behind us, but I thought of that only when we were finished.
Good thing though, I keep learning more about this stuff.
First a recap of my equipment: Hp Pavilion with 6 G memory (but running Free Edition I know I can only load 1.5 anyway), M-Audio Fast Track interface for MIDI in and sound out, reasonably powerful home stereo, and one highly proficient but completely (and I mean completely) computer illiterate organist.
The organist is interested in possibly using Hauptwerk as an interim when scheduled repairs on our pipe organ get funded. So yesterday I set it up for him and we did a mock service, since we knew all the music scheduled for Sunday.
The problem: sound died in the middle, maybe a half hour into playing with it. MIDI still came out of the keyboard - I could see the lights on the Fast Track flashing, I could see the keys on the St Annes manuals going up and down, but nothing came out of the stereo. We had not changed anything, were just in the process of playing, listening, discussing, changing registrations, etc. I exited Hauptwerk and reloaded, and then it worked fine. This was a bit scarey, if it happened when playing a real service we'd be in trouble. Any idea why this happened? Maybe there's a timer on the free edition?
The observation: it is risky to let a computer illiterate person near this. I gave him a stop list and asked him to mark it up with what stops he wanted on what pistons. I set both manuals and pedals so he could play it from one keyboard. He never understood what would play, and I ended up redoing it many times. I would have been far better off just registering it myself and telling him this is what you get. Secondly, I stupidly set unused keyboard keys to work pistons. Naturally I asked him what was the highest note he would ever play, and since there another 8 notes above that I thought I could use them. Wrong! He lied, he did play them even though he didn't intend to, and since I'd set a couple of them to pp and FF just in case, he was constantly getting frustrated. Lesson learned: do the registration myself, don't set hot keys, just sit at the computer and change registration when he nods his head. Also, I set up speakers in front of us, and hearing what it sounded like meant walking out in front. I should have put them behind us, but I thought of that only when we were finished.
Good thing though, I keep learning more about this stuff.