What MIDI player are you using?

He is using Midiplayer for windows. I use the same one myself for the reasons he already gave hehe. But I can also change instruments on the fly pretty easily through the banks off the module with this player.

thorr wrote:

What MIDI player are you using?

I'm using my own player also known here on Vogons as 'FSMP'
You can find its topic by clicking on my signature, but you can also download it from my site:
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#midiplayer

Very cool! I think I have heard of it too. 😉 I also created my own MIDI player (sort of) back in the old days that had the same reset functionality, but I cheated. I programmed Quick Basic and ran "shell" commands with another MIDI file player to do GS resets before each MIDI file. Basically, I made a DOS front end that you could select which MIDI file you wanted to play, or it could play all files in a directory, and it would play a GS Reset MIDI file before playing each file. I think I still have it somewhere. Most likely I will use yours however. 😉

Edit: I just found mine and attached it here. I haven't tested it, but I wrote it for myself, not for distribution, so I think I may have hard-coded directory names. I used this with my SCC-1B. I will probably try to get this working too, just for the nostalgia.

Falcosoft wrote:

I'm using my own player also known here on Vogons as 'FSMP'
You can find its topic by clicking on my signature, but you can also download it from my site:
http://falcosoft.hu/softwares.html#midiplayer

Just got my Sound Canvas just in time for the weekend. Loving it already! I am using your Midi Player, and I have a couple of questions. I noticed that on my Sound Canvas, the program number on the MIDI player is one lower than the number displayed on my Sound Canvas. I am not sure if that is by design or a bug (Brass 1 is 62 on the SC display and 61 on the software display). Also, does your player automatically perform a GS reset before each song in the play list? Is there a way to turn that feature on and off?

Thanks!
Mike

1.FSMP uses the real Program Change numbers that are 0-127 as in Midi specification. Some vendors (maybe because of afraid of zero) uses a scheme of 1-128.
But the instrument names match so 0 - Piano in FSMP is 1 - Piano on your synth. The tendency is that software and players use the real 0-127 scheme for both Program and Bank numbers but HW synths use 1-128 for Programs but 0-127 for Banks. (Notice: When you want to set your manual Program Change translation in Midi-OX you will also have to use the real 0-127 numbers !)
To get the exact instrument names for all banks as your SC-55 provides you should open Main menu -> Instruments -> Custom Patch definitions and select Roland SC-VA.ins and then SC-VA 55 for melodic channels and SC-VA 55 Drumsets for drum channels.
2. FSMP performs the kind of reset you select on the right click context menu of the first aid like 'Reset' button on the right hand side of the player. If you select 'No SysEx' as reset type no SysEx reset is sent between songs.
(You can also select custom SysEx resets like GS_MT32_Mode.syx that sets your synth into MT-32 emulation mode.)
You can also prevent Midi files to send their own SysEx resets by deselecting Main menu -> SysEx Options -> Enable SysEx in files. You can find out if a Midi file contains explicit reset messages by inspecting the upper GM/GS/XG badge on the left hand side of the black display area. If this sign is not a grey 'GM' but black GM/GS/XG etc. then the Midi file contains the corresponding Midi Reset SysEx message.
If your are an advanced Midi geek you can also inspect the exact messages contained in Midi files by opening the Event Viewer/Debugger dialog (shortcut icon on the right hand side of the player).

Thanks again! That sounds perfect. Have a great weekend!