MIDI Patch Maps

Following the demise of the Windows MIDI Mapper under Windows95, Brian Heywood considers ways of setting up alternative MIDI patch maps on your PC, and looks back on his personal favourite products of 1995...

One of the more useful features of the MIDI support on Windows 3.1 was the MIDI Mapper, which allowed you to customise your PC's MIDI set‑up to match your equipment. You may not have needed to use it often, but when you did it was very handy. Under Windows95, the MIDI functions have been simplified somewhat, and there is no 'built‑in' facility to edit the patch maps and drum maps. This simplification is no doubt due to the greater prevalence of GM‑compatible soundcards and external MIDI modules than when Windows 3.1 was first introduced. It is now far less likely that the average user will need to cobble together such a system from individual components.

The default MIDI setup is controlled from the MIDI sheet of the Multimedia Properties dialogue, which is accessed from the Windows95 Control Panel. There are two basic modes; either you can direct the MIDI to a single instrument — say a soundcard or a sound module attached to a MIDI port — or you can use the Custom configuration to direct each MIDI channel to (potentially) a different sound module, or just switch it off. Unlike the MIDI Mapper in Windows 3.1, there is no direct way of editing the mapping of the MPC General MIDI sound set so that it will select different sounds on the external sound module. However, you can do the same thing by creating an IDF (Instrument Definition File) and then associating it to a MIDI port using the 'Advanced' sheet of the Multimedia Properties dialogue.

Microsoft intended that IDF files should be supplied by the manufacturer of the sound module (or MIDI keyboard), but they have also made an editor available (called IDFEDIT) which allows you to create your own instrument definitions. The editor allows you to customise the MIDI mappings or create new ones for instruments that are not supported by Microsoft, thus (finally) giving you a facility that was already available with Windows 3.1 — but there's progress for you...

A single IDF file can contain descriptions for more than one instrument, so you can create one file that describes all your instruments; for example, a wavetable synthesizer with several memory configurations, an external MIDI keyboard with built‑in sound, and so on. One interesting application would be to use the IDF mechanism to allow two PC‑based musicians to make their MIDI set‑ups compatible — say for collaborating on a song. The IDFEDIT application should be available from most music or Windows‑based bulletin boards (eg. the Windows95 forum on Compuserve), or you could try your local Microsoft support organisation.

To customise an IDF, you can either start with a new file, or modify an existing file, if you are just 'tweaking' your current set‑up. You will have to define the program mapping first.

You will need the following:

• a list of the GM patch set with the program numbers;
• a list of the patches/program numbers for your external MIDI gear;
• a list of the MIDI channels that your synthesizer can receive on (often described, confusingly, as the multitimbrality).

To edit an instrument, double‑click on it (or select it and click on the 'Properties' button). After checking that the 'ID' and 'Info' sheets are accurate, select the 'Patch Map' sheet by clicking on its tab. Now select each row in turn and edit the 'Map To' column to match the patch mapping for your MIDI module/keyboard (take a look at your module's documentation). This is quite a tedious task, but at least you only have to do it once, since you can copy the configuration between different maps using the copy/paste functions — accessible by clicking on the selected instruments using the right‑hand mouse button. To re‑map the pitches, you use the key map rather than the patch map. For instance, if you want your sounds to play back an octave higher than the default values, then you need to add twelve to each of the current values in the 'Map To' column. Incidentally, in both of these maps, any values that remain unchanged from the MPC GM standard are marked with an asterisk.

If you need to set‑up a drum module, then first use the 'Channels' sheet to select which MIDI channel the module receives percussion on, and then use the 'Percussion Map' sheet to map each individual drum to its GM equivalent. Any channels that are not used should be muted.

You will need:

• a list of the GM drum mapping (ie. drum type and MIDI note value).
• a list of the drum mapping for your MIDI synthesizer.

You can create a 'template' IDF file for each instrument in your MIDI setup and then use the copy/paste mechanism to create IDF files with multiple instruments. Simply start up a new IDF editor page for each of the templates, and then 'copy' each instrument into your 'working' IDF file. When you've completed the edit, you need to utilise the 'Add New Instrument' button before you can use the new template. Use the 'Remove' button on the 'Properties' sheet of the Multimedia Properties dialogue (accessed via the 'Advanced' sheet) to remove an instrument (ie. IDF) from a particular port . To use the instrument, select it on the 'MIDI' sheet, either by selecting it from the 'Single Instrument' list or as part of a 'Custom' set‑up.

Digital Audio News

Arbiter are now distributing Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge 3.0 software in the UK. This software is a comprehensive Windows‑based digital audio editor which — amongst other things — offers transparent audio compression and sampler support via MIDI and SCSI as well as MTC synchronisation to a sequencer application. One interesting feature is Sound Forge's 'plug‑in' architecture, allowing third‑party developers to produce additional features — currently spectrum analysis and noise reduction modules are available. The full software is fairly pricey at £499.95, but there is a cut‑down version, Sound Forge XP, available for £149.95, which can give you a good feel for the product. For more details, contact Arbiter on 0181 202 1199.

Soundcard Gossip

I've been hearing some murmurings about Yamaha's successor to their current daughterboard, and I must say it looks very interesting. By all accounts, it's effectively a fully‑specified VL1 physical modelling synthesizer on a board, and will cost around £200 — about one‑tenth the cost of the stand‑alone 'black box' equivalent. This card will undoubtedly fit on to the standard 'WaveBlaster' daughter board connection, so you could get a fairly serious PC‑based music workstation by combining it with an AWE32, or Turtle Beach Tahiti. Alternatively, you could just add it onto a Roland MPU401AT MIDI I/F card — if for example your current soundcard is already 'fully loaded'. So if you want to get into physical modelling to produce your music, it may be worth waiting to see what Yamaha can come up with.