Re: MIDI channels

[Francisco Vila]

2012/3/21 Martin Tarenskeen <address@hidden>:
>
>
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2012, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>>>>> For this purpose I need to write a pianotune that uses MIDI channel 3
>>>>> for
>>>>> the Left Hand part, and MIDI channel 4 for the Right Hand part. A bit
>>>>> strange, I agree, but this is what the PianoBooster docs tell me to do.
>
>
>>>> Well since Lilypond enumerates the MIDI channels as they are needed, you
>>>> could simply produce a MIDI score that has one empty staff, thus pushing 
>>>> the
>>>> other staves one channel down. (The first channel is used by lilypond
>>>> itself).
>
>
> P.S: Not true? The first TRACK is used by LilyPond, not the first CHANNEL.
> The first MIDI channel goes to the first staff containing music. Read on:
>
>
>>> That's one of the things I tried, but doesn't work.
>
>
>>> I have discovered Lilypond only creates a new MIDI channel if a Staff
>>> contains music.
>
>
>> Put music there, then.  Just s should suffice.
>
>
> That's what I thought.
> I have tried {}, {s}, {r}, {R}, but they all don't do the trick. Channel 1
> is still assigned to the first staff that has notes in it.
>
> Only if I create two staffs with at least one single note, MIDI channel 3
> goes to the next staff. You can try and check yourself.
>
> I can understand why Lilypond behaves like this. Lilypond only supports 16
> MIDI channels. Some people have already posted problems in this forum with
> this limitation when writing big orchestral scores. Just search in the mail
> archives. It would not be very efficient to assign MIDI channels to staffs
> that won't play any music anyway.
>
> Don't change this behaviour just for my little private project!
> I have found another solution (using abcm2ps and abc2midi) that does what I
> want to do. But I still think this is an interesting case and would be
> interested in a workaround for LilyPond.

It would be interesting to have an \midiChannel #number (#1 to #16) to
force the channel on current Voice. Or, it could be a context property
so you can set it per score/system/staff/voice.

Another useful feature would be \midiProgram #number (#1 to #128)
or midiProgram = #number for using instead of midiInstrument.

Just thinking aloud. Bounty EUR 40 for both.
-- 
Francisco Vila. Badajoz (Spain)
www.paconet.org , www.csmbadajoz.com