QuickTime is Apple's de-facto standard for multimedia on the Macintosh and Intel PC. It contains a wealth of "components" for creating and presenting movies, VR panoramas, sound, and music. QuickTime 4.0 has gone into pre-release at this time with even more amazing capabilities.

QuickTime comes bundled with every Mac as a system extension. To gain the capabilities of QuickTime you must have it in your Extensions folder along with its companion parts which extend its abilities. QuickTime 3.0 has the following files:

In your Extensions Folder....

QuickTime™
QuickTime™ MPEG Extension
QuickTime™ Musical Instruments
QuickTime™ PowerPlug
QuickTime™ VR

In the Control Panels folder....

QuickTime™ Settings

QuickTime also includes....

MoviePlayer (QuickTime Player)

FretPet can make use of QuickTime™ Musical Instruments to play music through the Mac's built-in sound output. If this component is not in the Extensions folder then FretPet will not run.

Get a copy of the latest Quicktime from <www.apple.com/quicktime/>.

Enabling MIDI Support

FretPet can play its sequences through your sampler, synthesizer, or drum machine using QuickTime's MIDI support. This will give you a wider range of sounds and produce higher quality output.

Here's how to set up MIDI using the QuickTime Settings control panel under QuickTime 2 and 3:

QuickTime 2

1. Open the QuickTime™ Settings Control Panel.
   
2. Select the Music panel from the popup menu.
   
3. Select a MIDI option from the list.

On most systems all the MIDI options will be disabled except for QuickTime Music Synthesizer. On my system the General MIDI On… Port options were never available, even with Apple's own Midi Manager.

The last option, OMS, stands for the Opcode Music System™. OMS is an excellent set of tools to give your Mac an automatic rapport with external MIDI devices. FretPet will automatically play through OMS if it is enabled in QuickTime™ Settings. FretPet can also detect OMS and use it for MIDI input. This is the only MIDI input solution FretPet can use under QuickTime 2.x. (You can find the latest version of OMS at <www.opcode.com>.)

QuickTime 3 and 4

1. Open the QuickTime™ Settings Control Panel.
   
2. Select the Music panel from the popup menu to see a list of synthesizers QuickTime knows about. The first time you do this there will be only one option, QuickTime Music Synthesizer.
   
3. Click on the Setup… button. This brings up a new window where you can add more synthesizers to the list.
   
4. Click on the Add button. This adds a new synth to the list. Give it a name.
   
5. Select General MIDI from the first popup. (You can try anything you want here, but only General MIDI would work for my setup.)
   
6. Select any of your synthesizer sources from the second popup.
   (If no options appear make sure you've correctly configured your MIDI driver software - i.e., OMS, MIDI Manager, etc.)
   
7. In the popup at the bottom of the window you can select a MIDI input source. Select any synth you want to use for input.

The Instrument Settings Dialog

The FretStuff >> Instrument Settings menu item presents you with the QuickTime Instrument Picker (shown below). The Dialog lets you select from any of 137 different sounds.

If you're connected to a real MIDI synthesizer or you have QuickTime 3 you can use all 137 sounds. QuickTime 2 only supports a fraction of these. Unsupported instruments appear in Italics in the "Instrument:" popup menu. (See the List of GM Sounds below for a summary.)

In the Instrument Settings dialog you can click on the keyboard to hear the sound you've chosen. You can use the following modifier keys for a variety of effects:

• Shift - Sustain the notes indefinitely (pedal)
• Control - Bend the note using the mouse
• Option - Louder
• Command - Louder
• Option+Command - Loudest

Beyond QuickTime™ Sound

Synths are pretty cheap these days, and most of them now have MIDI support. If you're serious about using your computer to do any music work you can't go wrong by getting a synth.

I recommend a small rack-mount or half-rack synth box and a separate "dumb" MIDI keyboard. This provides you with a decent setup for sequencing and makes it possible to control multiple synths from the same keyboard with or without turning on the computer.

While developing FretPet I used the 640-sound Alesis NanoSynth™ and the Roland PC-200 MK II MIDI Keyboard Controller. For a MIDI interface I chose the Mark Of The Unicorn FastLane™. All of these fit nicely in the confines of a small multimedia workstation. Just remember these essential words of wisdom: "Adhesive-backed Velcro™"

The NanoSynth™ is the equivalent of an Alesis QS6 in a tiny 5.5" x 1.5" x 4.5" case. This unassuming black box conceals a powerful 64-voice multitimbral synthesizer. As a slave to the Mac it does a beautiful job.

The Roland keyboard has 4 octaves of full-size velocity-sensitive keys, octave-shift buttons to extend its range to 6 octaves, various MIDI commands for changing instruments, etc., and a bender / modulator to add color.

All-in-all this makes a killer amateur MIDI setup (especially with a cool tool like FretPet!)