General Midi - Roland F-110 Owner's Manual

General MIDI

The General MIDI is a set of recommendations which seeks to provide a way to go beyond the limitations of proprietary designs,
and standardize the MIDI capabilities of sound generating devices. Sound generating devices and music files that meets the
General MIDI standard bears the General MIDI logo. Music files bearing the General MIDI logo can be played back using any
General MIDI sound generating unit to produce essentially the same musical performance.
General MIDI 2
The upwardly compatible General MIDI 2 recommendations pick up where the original General MIDI left off, offering enhanced
expressive capabilities, and even greater compatibility. Issues that were not covered by the original General MIDI
recommendations, such as how sounds are to be edited, and how effects should be handled, have now been precisely defined.
Moreover, the available sounds have been expanded. General MIDI 2 compliant sound generators are capable of reliably playing
back music files that carry either the General MIDI or General MIDI 2 logo.
In some cases, the conventional form of General MIDI, which does not include the new enhancements, is referred to as "General
MIDI 1" as a way of distinguishing it from General MIDI 2.
GS Format
The GS Format is Roland's set of specifications for standardizing the performance of sound generating devices. In addition to
including support for everything defined by the General MIDI, the highly compatible GS Format additionally offers an expanded
number of sounds, provides for the editing of sounds, and spells out many details for a wide range of extra features, including
effects such as reverb and chorus. Designed with the future in mind, the GS Format can readily include new sounds and support
new hardware features when they arrive. Since it is upwardly compatible with the General MIDI, Roland's GS Format is capable of
reliably playing back GM Scores equally as well as it performs GS music files (music files that have been created with the GS
Format in mind).
XGlite
XG is a tone generator format of YAMAHA Corporation, that defines the ways in which voices are expanded or edited and the
structure and type of effects, in addition to the General MIDI 1 specification. XGlite is a simplified version of XG tone generation
format. You can play back any XG music files using an XGlite tone generator. However, keep in mind that some music files may
play back differently compared to the original files, due to the reduced set of control parameters and effects.
Introduction
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