Today, I'm going to tell you something about my writer's Midi system, who's called Johnny. It's composed of various instruments working together and talking each other with Midi protocol. The scheme and a few photoes of the system isn't available at the moment, but if you get back here in some days, you'll probably be able to see them.

First of all, I'm gonna list you what you can find in Johnny:

• Roland A-880 Midi Patch Bay
• Roland U-220 RS PCM Sound Module
• Roland U-220 RS PCM Sound Module
• Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas Sound Module
• Roland SB-55 Sound Brush Midi Files Player/Recorder
• Roland RSP-550 Stereo Digital Signal Processor
• Roland ME-16 Stereo Mixer
• Boss GE-231 Graphic Equalizer
• Roland DJ-70 Digital Sampler
• Roland RD-300s Digital Piano
• Roland E-86 Intelligent Synthesizer
• Solton MS-5 Multisynthesys Keyboard

And now I'll try to briefly explain the connections. Well, Jack (the computer) sends and gets his Midi signals to the Patch Bay, who provides the division of the informations to the right device. Each device has its Midi out connected to a Midi in of the Patch Bay and its Midi In to a Midi out of a Patch Bay. In this way, you can drive what you prefer with what you want. Each device can store it's special settings and/or important infos on a disk through the sequencer and can play Midi Files getting Midi events from it or from Jack. Each device can be played using, as master keyboard, the piano or the Roland synthesizer or the Solton keyboard or the sampler. Besides, you can play songs using both samples from computer and samples stored in the sampler (which has a 3-octave keyboard) and sounds from the expanders. One of the programs that opens you these possibilities is Fast Tracker, a very powerful shareware program. I suggest you to use version 2.06, because it runs also under Windows 95.

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