Customizing QuickTime MIDI
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FIG. 4: Unlock the QuickTime MIDI instrument editor to gain access to a host of parameters
(click image for larger view).

FIG. 5: The default instrument’s sound fades quickly. Change the Sustain Level to 100 percent and check the Infinite Sustain box to create an instrument with no decay (click image for larger view).

When you drop a sample onto a track, QuickTime Player Pro automatically creates an Instrument definition consisting of preset envelope, LFO, and effects data. The default volume envelope has a fast decay, which is unfortunate if you just want to fire off your sample. The sound fades to silence quickly, so I had to open the envelope editor by Option–double-clicking on the track name.

That caused a new Edit button to appear on the New Instrument for Part dialog box, which provided access to a basic set of Instrument parameters (see Fig. 4). I put the screen into expert mode by clicking on the lock icon; then I opened the Volume parameters (see Fig. 5). There, I found the culprit. The Sustain Level was set to 50 percent, and the Sustain Time was set to 5,000 ms. This meant that the sound would fade to half volume within five seconds. Well, I didn’t want my sound to fade, so I set the Sustain Level to 100 percent and checked the Infinite Sustain box. I also used the Overall Volume slider to adjust the instruments’ mix levels.

Expert mode offers a large number of parameters to play with, and many can radically alter an instrument’s behavior and sound. For example, resetting the default Release Time to the maximum value effectively creates an instrument that plays the entire sample regardless of the triggering MIDI note’s length. This is good for percussion, but don’t use it on a looped sample—the loop will never stop playing.

Other parameters create a wide range of effects. The Pitch and Volume LFO parameters can be set to add delayed vibrato to a flute or tremolo to an electric piano. You can set stereo placement defaults, play around with the filter effects, or transpose the instrument to a different key. You can also modify the instruments’ settings from the Roland GS bank to create wild new sounds.

Try, Try Again
After I loaded my samples and set the envelopes, I simply played the movie to hear the MIDI file with the triggered samples. Of course, I didn’t get it right on the first try; some samples were out of place, the bass wasn’t loud enough, the hi-hat was too loud, and so forth. All I had to do was modify the MIDI data and reimport the file.

QuickTime Player Pro’s editing limitations, however, made this process tedious: I had to reload the samples and reset the envelopes each time I imported a new version of the MIDI file. When I finally mixed everything correctly, I selected the Save As Self-Contained Movie command, which compacted the file to about 1.6 MB. That was a bit larger than I hoped it would be, so I downsampled the sound files to 8-bit, 22 kHz, which is the resolution the Roland sound set uses. After importing the audio and resetting the envelopes for the umpteenth time, I ended up with a file size of 770 KB for my three-minute song.

Whereas creating an entire song this way pushes the technology’s limits—and my patience—a simpler approach can also prove to be quite effective. Say you want to use your own kick and snare sounds to enhance a mediocre-sounding GM rhythm track. You can easily break out the kick and snare trigger notes into separate tracks, import the MIDI and audio into QuickTime Player Pro, and then save it as a QuickTime movie. Adding even a couple of sound effects, vocal riffs, or guitar lines in that manner can liven up an otherwise ordinary MIDI composition.

Reprinted with permission from

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