PChannel Instrument Assignment

In Band Editor, you can assign a instrument sound, also called a patch, ** to each PChannel. The instrument sound you choose determines the timbre of the channel when it is being used to play notes. Timbre refers to the tone quality or color of the sound.

Most instrument sounds are identified according to the acoustic instrument they simulate, such as the trumpet or violin. Some sets of instrument sounds contain multiple variations of an instrument, such as bright trumpet or muted trumpet. In addition, there are some sounds that are not based on an instrument, but are more appropriately referred to as sound effects. For example, the default Gm.dls instrument collection includes several sound effects such as bird and helicopter noises. In a band, sound effects are also referred to as instrument sounds, even though they are not necessarily based on musical instruments.

In the PChannel Properties window, click the Instrument check box to enable or disable an instrument change on the PChannel. If this check box is selected, notes in a part or pattern playing on the PChannel are played by the selected instrument. If it is not, notes on the PChannel play on whatever instrument was last assigned.

Note Deselecting the Instrument check box does not disable the playback of notes on the channel.

The instrument assigned to the PChannel is shown on the button labeled "Assign instrument" in the following figure. Click this button to choose a different instrument sound.

Clicking the button displays a menu of instrument families. The menu contains several lists in which you can select one of 254 GM/GS instrument sounds. You can also select an instrument sound from another DLS collection in the project.

The name of the sound set that contains the instrument sound, and the patch number information for the sound, are displayed in the gray area to the right of the instrument assignment button.

Following the name of the sound set, the complete patch number information for the instrument sound is enclosed in parentheses. For more information, see Patch Numbers and Bank Select.

When you select a sound from the GM list in the instrument family menu, the sound set is shown as "GM", the MSB and LSB numbers are zero, and the patch number is the standard MIDI patch number for the General MIDI sound you choose.

If you select a sound from the GS set, the sound set is shown as "GM", and the MSB number is something other than zero to show that a different bank of instrument sounds is in use.

Any time the link to the sound set has become broken, the sound set is shown as "Unknown". This can happen if the sound is from a DLS collection no longer included in the project tree.

Note You should never set a component in one project to refer to a component in a different project. Doing so puts the data in your files at risk. For example, it is recommended that all DLS collections used in a band be included in the same project as the band. However, when you use the default GM.dls collection, it is not necessary to load the collection into the project tree.