DRUMSFX 8.0
March 27, 2000

{this is just an old readme from when it was separate from the main set}
{the timidity URL may have been outdated even when I last revised this}
{some of the info may still be interesting to read}

The original cfgs and most of the pats for the sfx and gsdrums were
taken from the patchset available from the Japanese site which deals with the
new hacked versions of TiMidity:

http://www.goice.co.jp/member/mo/hack-progs/timidity.html

I edited out clicks, relooped a few patches, heavily edited a few that were
not very good, and made a few new ones of my own out of other ones.  The
major work involved here was cleaning up the map files so that they were 1)
organized, and 2) were actually correct.  I corrected the XG and GS sfx
mappings, added a few new drumsets and SFX banks, played a little with the
note assignments to make them fit what I heard on my XG card, and hunted down
samples for the sound effects that I did not have good samples for.  All the
mappings *should* be correct now, at least from the SC-88 and XG lists that I
have.  All GS/XG SFX banks and drumsets should now be supported.  As of
TiMidity++ 2.7.0, all of the GS and XG SYSEX bank/program change commands that
I know of have been implemented, so there should no longer be any midi that
handle the sound effects incorrectly.  Occasionally TiMidity will not handle
autodetection of a drumset correctly, in which case you have to force it (like
with the -D 16 command line option to force channel 16 to be a drumtrack).
This almost always comes from mistakes in the midi file, so you can fix the
problematic file with a decent midi sequencer.  The SFX, Power, and Analog
patches really help a lot of GS/XG midi sound like they were meant to rather
than sounding strange or really bad.  With these extra patches, TiMidity is
the only softsynth I know of (besides the Yamaha XG commercial product) which
will play all the GS and XG sound effects correctly.  Most sound cards, and
ALL other softsynths that I have seen, do not treat drumsets 48, 49, and 50
correctly at all.  I should have the mappings right for these now, just that
the Ethnic set might need some more work since I don't know what most of those
instruments are supposed to sound like.  TiMidity may also be the only
non-Yamaha softsynth to use ANY XG drumsets correctly, since they assign
different instruments to the lower notes than the GM/GS standards (I have no
idea why).

In order to make use of these new patches, you have to be using a hacked
version of TiMidity >= Y11.  Previous versions don't interpret comments on
the same line as a mapping correctly, and don't handle the XG mappings at
all.  All GUI versions before Z1 do not support multiple drumtracks, or any
drumtrack not on channel 10, and do not have any Modulation Wheel effects
(adds vibrato).  Once again I'm going to plug using the console version :)

Just add gsdrums.cfg, gssfx.cfg, and xgmap2.cfg to the list of cfg files in
timidity.cfg and you're all set.  The total size of the addon set is ~6.8
megs (at least it was several versions ago, I haven't recalculated it
recently, but it shouldn't be too far off from that).  I also left in some
patches that I didn't use in the .cfg files, since these were not used out of
my personal preference and you might have a different opinion and want to try
them out for yourself.


<note from install.txt>:

The mt-32.cfg and proteus.cfg are only to be included in timidity.cfg if you
need to play an MT-32 or Proteus2 midi.  They will replace the normal
instrument mappings with ones to fit those particular pieces of hardware, so
normal GM midi will sound very strange if you try to play them while you
have those .cfg files included.  Only include sndfont.cfg if you are going
to be using soundfonts, and you'll have to edit it to tell it what your
soundfont is.




Eric A. Welsh <ewelsh@gpc.wustl.edu>
Center for Molecular Design
Center for Computational Biology
Washington University
St. Louis, MO
