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A simple way to make one part stand out is to increase its volume while decreasing the volume of all other parts.

This can be done directly in NoteWorthy Composer but

  • each and every song has to be adjusted to achieve the desired effect
  • unless you have paid for your copy of NoteWorthy Composer, you will not be able to save the modified version, so you will have to do it all over again next time. Tedious!

The method described here is external to NoteWorthy Composer. It has the advantages that

  • it applies to all songs, i.e. it is not necessary to modify any song
  • it works with NoteWorthy Composer (even the free demo version), NoteWorthy Player, NoteWorthy 2 Viewer and the NoteWorthy browser plug-in.

The software that makes this possible is MIDIOX, which is a multi-purpose tool. It can perform filtering and mapping of MIDI data streams. It displays incoming MIDI streams, and passes the data to a MIDI output driver or the MIDI Mapper. It is a very versatile tool and I use but a fraction of its capability. It is freeware (when used personally by individuals), although a donation to defray expenses is invited.

MIDI YOKE is also required (from the same source). This is a MIDI Patch Cable driver. MIDI YOKE is used to connect any Windows MIDI Application output to any other Application's input.

What follows was my first attempt to use MIDI-OX. While it may still be of value to understand the workings of the software, I do not use this configuration any more. A more useful, though perhaps more complicated, example is described here.

Two filters need to be defined in MIDIOX to modify the volume of MIDI 'NoteOn' commands, one to increase the volume and one to decrease it. These are illustrated in the following diagram.

Now these filters need to be applied to the appropriate MIDI channels. For example, to make the Second Bass part stand out, apply the loud filter to channel 4 and the soft filter to all other channels. The configuration is illustrated below

and the MIDIOX Port routing that makes this possible is as follows.

Finally, the implementation of soft and loud filters is shown in the following screen snapshots. The NoteOn command has volume as one of its parameters and this can lie in the range 0-127. In this example the soft filter maps 1-127 onto 1-63. A NoteOn command with zero volume is a special case and should not be interfered with; it actually means NoteOff.

Similarly, the loud filter maps NoteOn volumes 1-127 onto 64-126; again zero volume is left untouched. At the top end, this filter also illustrates how it can be used to deal with other problems: my Casio keyboard has the unusual property that a note with volume 127 is actually played very softly (no idea why!), so by mapping 127 onto 126 the problem goes away. Here is a screen snapshot of the loud filter:

Brian Maskell