A possible replacement for a GM player in Sonar.

[John Vere]

Some of you may have watched my recent  video's where I tried a bunch of GM midi players.  

Another project I was working on which also involves using General midi was trying different software programs that create auto accompaniment. 

I tried Band in a Box, found out it doesn't really export midi that well,  and then I also bought one called Chord Pulse   http://www.chordpulse.com/    which does export midi perfectly.  

Then I stumble on another one called JJazzlab. https://www.jjazzlab.org/en/doc/ 

Its free and right away one thing I noticed was it seemed to sound more realistic that these other GM players I was testing including the TTS-1. I loaded a song I had created in jjazzLab into Cakewalk and it was noticeably lame played through the TTS-1. 

I says it uses a player called FluidSynth. I was thinking, is this a VST?  If so I want it!  Sadly it isn't. 

 A visit to this web page  https://www.fluidsynth.org/     and you soon learn is it is an OPEN SOURCE midi player that can (easily?) be embedded in software. Example JJazzlab.   

So there you go @Noel Borthwick@Jesse Jost  just an idea,  but it seems if this code is open source it might be possible to add to Sonar in some way to replace the TTS-1 as a default GM player. It doesn't have a GUI I guess you have to create one like they did in jjazzLab.  I find the drums and bass are exceptionally good for a sound font rig. This is what they use for the GUI and I posted a quick demo song. 

    

Edited March 8 by John Vere

[Max Arwood]

Great find John. That thing sounds great. 
 

 

[Dave Gelzleichter]

Thanks John Vere, I downloaded JJazzlab and took a quick glance. Primarily I'm looking for a tool write bass parts for me.

Next week I should have time to dive in.

[John Vere]

2 hours ago, Dave Gelzleichter said:

Thanks John Vere, I downloaded JJazzlab and took a quick glance. Primarily I'm looking for a tool write bass parts for me.

Next week I should have time to dive in.

I just am putting vocals to a new original song that was 100% inspired by typing a chord progressions into Jjazzlab and trying different styles. I found one called Happy Reggae. Perfect.

The process forced me to learn about how to use the software. But I got far enough in a few hours to be happy with the results and then I exported as midi. I opened it in the New Sonar. 

The song sounded flat and boring due to TTS-1. It was the drums. 
 

I exported the drum track as audio from Jjazz. I Inserted Addictive drums and worked out the missing parts of the important percussion fills that made the drums interesting. I guess the midi wasn’t 100% GM. 
The bass line was too repetitive so I recorded real bass and converted to midi. I replaced all the other midi tracks with proper VST instruments and deleted TTS-1 

I added a couple more tracks and overall it’s sounds excellent. the drums are one of the best drum tracks I’ve  ( should say AI've)  ever come up with. 
 

But this is what made me realize that if Sonar included FluidSynth a lot of folks would see there’s better sound quality available and loosing the TTS-1 was timely and a positive thing.  

And I imagine that it isn’t actually FluidSynth that is why it sounds good, I think it’s really a matter of choosing good quality SF2 files.  

And it’s fairly new to the game. All of the players I found in my research a few weeks ago were rooted in the very early days of sound font Tech. So it might be much better up to date code. 

 

 

Edited March 8 by John Vere

[Jim Fogle]

Fluid Synth is a great find John.  I like that it can be embedded and appears to be updated about twice a year. 

Over the past few years PG Music has offered multiple midi sound sources but they are all add-ons, require user setup and are customized in some manner.   As an embedded application Fluid Synth eliminates all the setup frustrations users experience.

Say what you will about the TTS-1 sound but it really set Sonar/Cakewalk apart from the rest of the DAW crowd when they made it an embedded, default midi synth.

[John Vere]

Thanks @Jim Fogle  That’s for sure. Seems only Cubase and Studio One are one the same page.  It’s most certainly a different fan club when it comes to GM midi , backing tracks and Band in a box  type software.

 

[Glenn Stanton]

On 3/8/2024 at 12:32 PM, John Vere said:

I think it’s really a matter of choosing good quality SF2 files.

this ^^^

finding good quality SF can be tricky but a good one can often be as nice as another multiple sample sound source and convenient to boot. early versions of Sonar included some Sonic Impact SF which are really nice - drums, bass, horns.

Edited March 9 by Glenn Stanton

[John Vere]

Thanks Glen I meant to thank you for the links to those sound fonts you posted in my tread  a week ago. For the life of me I couldn’t get anything to do with sound fonts to work unless it was already part of the player. 
I always wrote sound fonts off as being something of low quality wrongly judging them on my Sound Blaster days. 
 

[Xoo]

Please just let GM die!

[azslow3]

On 3/8/2024 at 4:23 AM, John Vere said:

I says it uses a player called FluidSynth. I was thinking, is this a VST?  If so I want it!  Sadly it isn't.

You have even "liked" my post in the previous thread, about FluidSynth VST...

I have checked and I am not delivering SysExes. I don't remember why, in the source I have a comment  "todo" for it 😏

There was several technical problems with GM in VST3 format.  And I have not invested time into GUI... But that does not prevent current version more or less  working.

[John Vere]

17 hours ago, Xoo said:

Please just let GM die!

I guess you don’t get out much. You can travel the world and every where you go, especially tourists hot spots there will be a little duo with a keyboard and guitar player pounding out Proud Mary and all those other classic rock and country songs. And guess what a lot of them are using  for backing tracks? General Midi. 
 

It gets the job done. You get paid and you’re hopefully having fun. 
 

It’s live music at its lowest common denominator.  But one thing you will learn as you grow older,  is the punters can’t tell the difference. All they hear is Rolling, Rolling Rolling on the River . They are dancing , drunk and having fun.  
GM can help you be part of this with out needing a whole band. Whole bands take up table space and cost too much. 
 

I actually didn’t use GM until much later in life. I just made my own midi files.

I personally can totally get by with out a GM player.
I’m just making a suggestion I feel would benefit Sonar.  
 

Cakewalk has a much bigger following of old school GM users that many of you realize. This is a global community. 
I can tell from the names of the people who are subscribing to my YouTube channel how global we really are. My tutorial on using the TTS-1 has double the views of most of my other videos. 
 

Edited March 10 by John Vere

[User 905133]

I am wondering if anyone with the full version of MSoundFactory has created a GM Instrument that works with the Free MSF Player.  I have no idea if its possible and I imagine it would take a whole lot of time to create, so I am not suggesting any one take the time to do it; just wondering if anyone created one already.

Edited March 12 by User 905133
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