Click on a question to see the answer.

• Will these products teach me to play the violin? Are they useful for beginners?
• Why do I need the Practice Assistant Player program for the technical studies?
• Do your products display the notes on the monitor?
• Can I use your products on my MAC?
• Are your products tuned to the equal tempered scale, or do you use "just intonation"?
• I hear the sound from your products, but the volume is way too low to play along with. What can I do?
• It looks like your products are playing, but I don't get any sound at all. What can I do?
• The sound I get is very "electronic". It doesn't sound like a violin (or viola or cello). Can this be fixed?
• I want to re-install my Performance Assistants in a different folder. How can I do this?

Do you have any other questions?

Will these products teach me to play the violin? Are they useful for beginners?

There is no substitute for a good teacher. Playing a string instrument involves many technical skills that can not be learned by ear. It is extremely important that you get individual instruction. Otherwise, you will develop bad habits that will limit your playing. These habits will be very difficult to correct later.

On the Performance Assistant list, the best item for a beginner is Katie Wreede's 24 Diverse Duets. We can provide the sheet music for this title along with the software. Just check item #70130. Another title for beginners is Bach's Ten Little Classics, edited by Seely-Brown (Item #70101).

The Practice Assistant titles are technical studies that really should be chosen by your teacher. The most elementary books are:

• DANCLA School of Mechanism, Op. 74 (item #111741)
• WOHLFAHRT 50 Easy Melodious Studies, Op. 74, Book 1 (item #186741)
• HRIMALY Scale Studies (item # 129011)

A beginner might also be interested in the Scale Master with MIDI Metronome (item #20100).

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Why do I need the Practice Assistant Player program for the technical studies?

The Practice Assistant Player program is the only MIDI player program available that offers "segmented playback". This feature is extremely valuable (and in many cases essential) when you are practicing the technical studies. For example, you may need to practice a two measure segment 4 times, and then move on to practice the next two measure segment 4 times, and so on. Or you may want the next segment to be the same two measures, but at a slightly faster tempo. The Practice Assistant Player program lets you define as many of these segments as you like. You then select which segments you want to practice, and the program will play them back in sequence. It will also remember your selections from day to day, so you can get right to work with only a few mouse clicks. The "segmented playback" feature was developed specifically for technical studies like Dancla, Hrimaly, Schradieck and Sevcik, which are intended to be practiced as a series of repeated segments. But you will find this feature to be of great value even for the etudes like Wohlfahrt, Kayser and Kreutzer.

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Do your products display the notes on the monitor?

Only our Scale Master program displays the notes on the screen. The entire scale and two arpeggios are displayed on a single screen.

The Practice Assistant and Performance Assistant series of products do not display the notes. You need to have the printed sheet music. If you do not have a good local source for sheet music, all of the published titles in our catalog can be ordered through on-line catalog stores, like Shar Products.

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Can I use your products on my MAC?

We do not yet have a MAC version of any of our products. We plan to do this in the future although we can't say exactly when.

We have customers who use our products on their MAC with the help of utilities like "Virtual PC" and "Soft Windows". We have not tested this ourselves, so we can not guarantee that it will work for you. But if your MAC is able to run Windows software, try downloading our sample Performance Assistant program. If it works, then our other Performance Assistant titles should also work.

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Are your products tuned to the equal tempered scale, or do you use "just intonation"?

Our products are based on MIDI files, which are not really "tuned" to any particular scale. A MIDI file contains instructions that tell your synthesizer which notes to play, and how loud to play them. The exact pitch that is associated with each note will depend on how your synthesizer is tuned. Sound cards for computers are tuned to the equal tempered scale, so using our products will be like playing along with a properly tuned piano. Some sound cards and synthesizers will let you "retune" the instrument in various ways, including "just" temperament. This is a rather complex topic, but if you want to investigate it further, a good starting point is the Microtonal Synthesis web site.

If you speak MIDI, you might wonder why we don't change the temperament of our products by using Pitch Bend messages. The problem with Pitch Bend is that the values are interpreted differently by different synthesizers. The only reliable way to get the temperament that you want is to retune your synthesizer, and play MIDI files (like ours) that do not use Pitch Bend messages for this purpose.

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I hear the sound from your products, but the volume is way too low to play along with. What can I do?

Many computers come with insufficient audio power for serious music applications. First, let's make sure you are getting all the sound that your computer can produce. If you hear sound from our products, but the sound is very weak compared to the digital audio sounds you get from your computer (eg Windows Start and Exit sounds), then check your system's volume controls. In Windows 95, select Start/Programs/Accessories/Multimedia/Volume Control. Make sure that both the Master Output and the Synthesizer are set to the maximum values. In Windows 3.1 you need to find the Mixer program that came with your sound card. Look for a Program Group that relates to your sound card ("Sound Blaster" is a common one), then see if any of the applications in that group have the word "Mixer" in their name. Run the Mixer program, and make sure the Master volume control and the MIDI (or Synthesizer) volume control are turned all the way up.

If you have a stereo receiver in the same room as your computer, the best solution to the volume problem is to connect the LINE output of your sound card to the AUX input on your receiver or audio amplifier. This will almost certainly give you more volume and more control than even the most expensive "Computer" speakers.

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It looks like your products are playing, but I don't get any sound at all. What can I do?

First, check your volume controls (see previous question)

If your volume controls are up, and there is still no volume, you may have a problem with the MIDI Output Driver.

If you are using the Practice Assistant, select Configure/Midi Output Drivers from the main menu. You will see a list of all the Midi Output Devices available on your system. The names may not mean much to you, but go ahead and select one. Then click "OK", and play something. If you still don't hear anything, go back and select a different device. Some of your Midi Output Devices may send data to an external port. If you do not have a Midi instrument attached to your external Midi port, then you will not get any sound when one of these external devices is selected. You simply need to select an Output Device that uses the synthesizer on your sound card.

If you are having a problem with one of the Performance Assistant products, first check to see if you get any sound when you click on the Tuning pitch button. If you do not hear the tuning pitch, select Configure/Tuning Pitch. Pull down the list of available Midi Output Devices and select one. Click "OK" and try the Tuning pitch again. When you find a Midi Output Device that works for the tuning pitch, go back to the Configuration screen and make a note of the name of the Midi Output Device. Now close the Performance Assistant program.

If you are using Windows 95, go to the Windows Control Panel and select Multimedia, then select the MIDI tab. Make sure "Single instrument" is checked. Click on the name of the Device that worked for the Tuning pitch. Then click "OK" and try the Performance Assistant again.

If you are using Windows 3.1, go to Control Panel and select MIDI Mapper. In the box labeled "Show", select "Setups". You need to find, or create, a Setup that directs the output of each channel to the Midi Output Device that works for the Tuning pitch. To see a list of currently defined Setups, click on the drop-down list box labeled "Name". Select a Setup, then click on "Edit...". You will see a chart showing where each of the 16 Midi channels is sent. In the column labeled "Port Name" you can pull down a list of available Midi Output Devices. Before you make any changes to this table, check each of the currently defined Setups. Chances are good that one of them already directs all channels to the desired device. Just select this Setup, click on "Close" and try the Performance Assistant again.

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The sound I get is very "electronic". It doesn't sound like a violin (or viola or cello). Can this be fixed?

There are two fundamentally different types of synthesizers used in sound cards. One is called "FM" (for Frequency Modulation). The other is called "Wavetable". Many sound cards, including most older ones, use an FM Synthesizer. In this technology, the sounds of each of the instruments is generated "from scratch", using electronic oscillators, modulators and filters. The resulting instrument sounds are likely to be very disappointing to any musician.

A Wavetable synthesizer is far superior. In this technology, the sound card has a data bank of very short digital recordings (or Samples) of the actual instruments. When called on to play an A on a violin, the synthesizer will play back, in a continuous loop, the digitally recorded sample of an actual violin. The playback speed is adjusted to get the correct pitch.

When we first started to offer these products, way back in 1996, a sound card with a Wavetable synthesizer costed several hundred dollars. That is why most older systems are equipped with the much cheaper FM synthesizer. Today, you can easily upgrade to a Wavetable sound card for under $50. I believe that most multimedia computers sold today come with Wavetable synthesis. There is a broad range of quality among Wavetable sound cards, but even the cheapest Wavetable card is vastly better than any of the FM synthesizers in older PC's. Try it. You'll like it!

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I want to re-install my Performance Assistants in a different folder. How can I do this?

The first time you install a Performance Assistant product, you are given an opportunity to choose a folder. Additional Performance Assistant products will automatically be installed in the same folder. If you want to re-install your Performance Assistants in a different folder, you must first uninstall the first copy. To do this, download and run unvirt. Then you can re-install a Performance Assistant and select a new folder.

Technical details: unvirt.exe removes the [Performance Assistant] section from your win.ini file. That is all it does.

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Copyright © 2003, The Virtual Virtuoso
Last modified on: 21-Jul-2003.