MIDI frustration

[cellio]

On every past computer on which I've run Encore (my music-composition software), I could pop open the "instrument selection" dialogue and choose a named instrument for each track. This is useful if you're, say, trying to evaluate a choral piece and you want to hear the voices distinctively rather than piano all across. (Piano is the default.)

On my current computer, I can choose a number between 1 and 128. No names. This gets old really, really quickly if I just, say, want to find the damn violin. I can't seem to find the map.

Annoyingly, I don't seem to know enough about this to conduct an intelligent search. Or, at least, so far my time with Google is bringing me no answers.

My sound settings report that my MIDI playback is via "Microsoft Software Wavetable Synthesizer Featuring Roland Sound Canvas digital samples". My digital audio output device is "Realtek AC97 Audio". (I could have sworn that the guys at CompUSA said the sound card was SoundBlaster, which I at least recognize as something that would work, but one of us was mistaken.)

If anyone reading this has advice to offer, I'd be grateful.

Comments

Standard MIDI instruments

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know why you're not getting the names of the instruments now. Chances are, they're GM compliant; this site lists the patches:

General MIDI Level 1 Sound Set (http://www.midi.org/about-midi/gm/gm1sound.shtml#instrument)

I hope this helps.

Rob of UnSpace (http://www.unspace.net)

Re: Standard MIDI instruments

[cellio]

Woo hoo! Thanks very much! A couple quick experiments seem to confirm that this is in fact the set the software is using.

Re: Standard MIDI instruments

[(Anonymous)]

I have worked with Music Maker. Right now, I'm using Sonar 3. Sonar 3 works with both audio and MIDI files. It's a bit of a system hog - I need a new computer, really, one with two hard drives!

That's probably why I haven't upgraded to Sonar 4...