> Having located a collection of soundfonts that I like, I'm interested in > performing. I like the graphical interface to qsynth for loading and > using soundfonts, but there are a couple of limitations for live > performance it seems. Maybe these things are ignorance on my part and if > so I hope that somebody can put an end to that state. > > First, in order to change the current soundfont, you've got to select > Channels, then right click on the channel you want to change and hunt > for the soundfont you want in that channel. This is partially mitigated > by having presets, but what that implies to me is that I'd have to have > a preset for every soundfont program that I ever want to use. What I'd > really like is a simple list of all the programs and be able to select > the one I want with one click. How do others deal with this? > > Second, it seems that soundfonts can hide other soundfonts. In other > words, the order in which you place the soundfonts in setup/soundfonts > matters. If you've got a soundfont that claims the same program number > that comes after another soundfont in the list, that program hides the > other one. Even in the best of worlds this would be a problem - the best > of worlds defined as one in which the soundfont authors actually used > the suggested midi program numbers for standard instruments (i.e. 64 for > Soprano Sax, etc). It is a problem since many soundfonts have the same > instrument with different tones (Hard Tenor Sax, Soft Tenor Sax) which > would both want to use the same number, but can't within the same > soundfont. In the world that we live in however, soundfont authors often > ignore the midi program numbers and just number their programs from 1 > all to commonly, which exacerbates the hiding problem. Now, the hiding > seems gratuitous since qsynth assigns each soundfound an SFID > (presumably soundfont ID) which means that if the key was SFID/program > number then it wouldn't matter that two soundfonts used the same range > of numbers, but for some reason in qsynth this does seem to matter. I > don't believe this is a generic issue since the same collection of > soundfonts in freewheeling allows one to browse through each soundfont > and select any program in that soundfont. > > Having encountered this problem, I decided to take matters into my own > hands and renumber the conflicting soundfonts so there was no conflict. > Having produced my own soundfont for Soprano Sax (recently corrected for > some notes tuning available at http://juraview.com/SopranoSax.sf2) using > swami, I didn't feel any hesitation about loading the fonts and > renumbering the programs. Unfortunately I can't find any way to renumber > the programs in swami which is weird since I distinctly remember having > done this with my soprano sax font, but this was well over a year ago. > Has this capability been removed from swami or am I just missing it? > > Any suggestions (other than FOAD) will be appreciated. > Hint: Bank-offsets. When you set one soundfont with a non-zero bank-offset, all its bank numbers will be shifted accordingly. That way, those banks might be accessible, otherwise hidden by same bank numbers of some other soundfont. Note: make sure you're using the latest Qsynth 0.2.5; previous versions had this bank-offsetness uselessly broken ;) Cheers. -- rncbc aka Rui Nuno Capela rncbc@xxxxxxxxx
