Using Sonar with a GM application - need some ideas

Do you mean you want to change patches on the same track during the course of the song?  You can do that by editing the View Events list, i.e. inserting a program change.

What are you using for sounds, an external or software synth (Kore?) ?

I want a GM program change to select an instrument in a channel. What have people done to solve this problem in a general way?

The difficulty there is most modern VSTi's are not GM compliant.

How I normally deal with that is to start with a GM synth like the TTS and then assign the 'proper' instruments I'm going use from there.

The only channel I can pretty much guarantee is routing Channel 10 to whatever drum sampler.

I've never found a way of setting up a 'template' type environment to choose for me.

Even if I was setting up a solely GM compliant midi session I'd still have to decide what channels were going to be assigned to what and what patches I'm going to be using per track on each project.

Karl looks like he is onto something which may interest you here using live control.  Let's pick his brains some more...

It's often the way I work.

I start out with one of the default Midi Scoring templates to sketch out the arrangement and just progress out from the GM instruments as I go along.

If anyone shows up with a cool alternative way of doing it I'm interested too.

Standard brass, piano or string setups say I have a good mix of track templates I use for those with all the bus processing required already in place, so I tend to choose one of those and just assign to corresponding midi track to the new instrument chain brought in by the Track Template.

That way I have a bunch of favourite setups I can quickly bring in for each sound I'm after.

How I normally deal with that is to start with a GM synth like the TTS and then assign the 'proper' instruments I'm going use from there.

...   

I've never found a way of setting up a 'template' type environment to choose for me.

Even if I was setting up a solely GM compliant midi session I'd still have to decide what channels were going to be assigned to what and what patches I'm going to be using per track on each project.

...

Yes, that is the problem. It's pretty easy to just use a GM instrument, but I want different settings for the channels.

I just added some more info in the last post as you were typing.

Track templates are the key for me to quickly bring in the cool sounds after I've quickly laid out an idea using just the TTS-1.

FastBikerBoy


Sorry to be dumb but when you say "the application" are you referring to Sonar? The reason I'm asking is I was thinking of sending a GM reset message which can be done automatically via a midi file loaded into Sonar.

The instrument choices are then read from the file. I use something like that for a live solo project I run but I'm not using Sonar as my mainstay, only as a backup. I'm not sure whether Sonar would respond to a GM reset from a controller, or rather whether it would get passed to VSts correctly.

As Jonbouy has pointed out though, there's lots of VSTs that aren't GM compliant.

No, to me Sonar is 'just' the recording tool. The application (I should say performer) is the note event generator. I suppose I could set up Sonar's MIDI effects and arpegiators to do this, too, but I don't.

Sorry I'm dense at times so I'm still a little confused on exactly what you are trying to do but if the idea is to set a GM instrument at the outset then using a midi file to send a GM reset is quite feasible even if the GM reset is the only thing in the file that you load.

You can then use realtime patch changes to change patches as you wish. As I said I don't use Sonar as my main playback device but I do use a similar method to set up my Sonic Cell. At the beginning of each file it loads a GM reset to reset all 16 channels and then loads patches per channel as needed. In my case read from the file but there's no reason it couldn't be sent in real time from a controller, and in some cases I do via my Boss effects unit.

It also sends patch changes out to my vocals FX processor (a Quad 4). I could use SOnar to do all of that and in fact have done in an emergency but I prefer the sounds of the Sonic Cell to anything I have available within Sonar.

Don't know whether that helps you at all of course.

ducatibruce2


If I understand correctly, the external applications are generating midi note & patch change data, which is fed into Sonar to drive VSTs loaded in Sonar. The patch change data is GM compliant & the setup works using TTS (which is GM compliant too). But you want to drive other VSTs inside Sonar.

I think the problem is that the other VSTs are not GM compliant & you need to translate the patch change data to suit. I'm not aware of a way to do that in Sonar.

I think another problem is that many VSTs do not respond to patch change messages at all, I'm reasonably sure Kontakt & Reaktor don't (though it may be possible with Kontakt's scripting (KSF)
 
Edit to add: If it were me, the next thing I'd be doing is making sure the VSTs being used respond to patch change data.

Yes, this is the situation. You've described it well.


Actually Reaktor, Kore and Kontakt do respond to MIDI program changes - or at least I believe so. I am in the process of checking that out now. In some cases, they only react to channel 1 - so I have to get a bit creative in the channel assignments.


Ideally, I'd like to choose a VST based on a MIDI program change - but that is probably not realistic. I don't think Sonar allows an application to adjust a VST assignment.


I'm not all that fluent in using Sonar yet - I have more experience with Live.


This is all a bit tricky and touchy and maybe even not possible or dependent on specific VST behaviors.