Re: [fluid-dev] Instrument names, selection etc. through the API

[Aere Greenway]

Nikhil:

On Linux, there is an easy way to experiment with instrument (patch) 
changes, as well as the various MIDI controls.

You can install (and run) VMPK (package vmpk).

With FluidSynth running, if you click the Edit menu, and select 
"Connections", a dialog will appear, and in the "Output MIDI Connection" 
drop-box, you will see FluidSynth (which you can select), and then click 
the "OK" button.

Then, when you click on keys of its piano keyboard, you will hear sounds 
via FluidSynth.

In the controls visible, you will see a "Bank" drop-box, and a "Program" 
drop-box, and you can use the "Program" drop-box to change instruments.

Initially, it starts out with the General MIDI (GM) set of instruments, 
but there are more banks than just that in the FluidR3_GM.sf2 soundfont.

From the "File" menu of VMPK, select "Import Soundfont", and specify 
the soundfont you are using (such as FluidR3_GM.sf2).  You can have it 
output an instrument definitions file (.ins), which you can look at with 
a text editor, but you probably don't need to output a file.

If you just import the soundfont you are using, the "Bank" drop-box will 
be filled in with the banks available in the soundfont, and when you 
select a bank, the instruments available in the selected bank will 
appear in the "Program" drop-box.  You can then select the various 
available instruments using the "Program" drop-box.

You can also experiment with other MIDI controls using VMPK.

This should give you a good start in exploring the world of MIDI on Linux.

- Aere


On 08/03/2014 05:41 AM, Nikhil Nair wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm very new to both FluidSynth and MIDI in general, and I'm working out
> how to do the basics (play notes, change instruments etc.).  The playing
> notes part is fine, as it's well described in the documentation as 
> well as
> in the example program that comes with libfluidsynth-dev.
>
> I've installed (on Ubuntu) fluid-soundfont-gm, and have found the SF2 
> file
> in /usr/share/sounds/sf2/.  I presume I just pass that full pathname to
> fluid_synth_sfload() - that's fine.
>
> When it comes to changing instrument, I presume I use
> fluid_synth_program_change().  However, there seem to be a few facilities
> missing: for instance, is there no way to find out the text name of an
> instrument, given its number - and hence no way to search for an 
> instrument
> with a given name, without first knowing its number?  Even leaving aside
> doing this through the API, there's nothing I can find in the Ubuntu
> package in terms of a list of instrument names.
>
> Do I assume all such SF2 files define all instruments in the range 0-127?
> There doesn't seem to be a function to get the maximum instrument 
> number in
> a bank.  Or do I just assume the call to fluid_synth_program_change() 
> will
> return FLUID_FAILED if that particular instrument number isn't defined?
>
> Am I missing something major here - or even a whole number of things?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Nikhil.
>
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--
Sincerely,
Aere