[fluid-dev] Re: Mapping GS, XG to GM

[Josh Green]

Funny you'd mention this.  Over the weekend I coded up a virtual bank
instrument type in libinstpatch.  It will be XML based and allow for
virtual banks to be created from components from one or more other
instrument files.  I was planning on initially just having support for
mapping presets/instruments/samples to arbitrary bank/program numbers
and also allowing splits to be assigned (for making new percussion banks
or assigning multiple instruments to different ranges of the keyboard).
Files will be indicated by name and MD5 hash, so a user's instrument
library could be treated as such and a given SoundFont looked up and
loaded (or downloaded from the Internet if not found locally).

The thought has occurred to me to allow for arbitrary modification of
any parameter, but at first I was just thinking of allowing the root
note and/or note ranges to be modifiable.  It seems like not much of an
additional step to allow for any parameter to be modified though.

At some point I'd like to create a new instrument format.  Lots of ideas
in that area, but it will also have to wait until some of the higher
priority stuff in Swami and FluidSynth is done.  But this virtual bank
format would be a good start in the direction of creating a new format.
Cheers!

        Josh

 
On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 12:08 -0800, jimmy wrote:
> Hi Josh,
> 
> With Fluidsynth depends on soundfont files for
> instrument mapping.  Let's say we start with one
> specific GM soundfont and do the mapping so everyone
> is on the same page here.  Tha could be done in code
> or configuratin file.
> 
> What if we want a different GM soundfont with slightly
> different set of instruments.  I suppose that some
> kind of a mapping configuration file for that
> particular GM sound font (for GS, XG instruments) is
> better approach.  This way, people can create and
> share configuration files for any common GM soundfonts
> and Fluidsynth doesn't have to require specific
> soundfonts.
> 
> Basically, we could have one configuration per GM
> soundfont, which is read in when the soundfont is
> loaded.  If that's what we want to do, next up for
> discussion is the format of the file, particular
> variables/parameters allowd (i.e. special effects,
> volume-scaling,...)  So for example, the same drum
> sample could potentially sound mellow in one
> particular mapping and could sound lively in a
> different mapping, which could make 128 GM instruments
> sounds like a few hundred instruments.
> 
> If it sound like version 2.0 features should consider
> this, please feel free to pass it along.  I dont know
> anything about version 2.0, only saw it on the
> Fluidsynth home page.
> 
> Jimmy
> 
> 
> 
> 
>       
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