Using Instrument Definitions - CAKEWALK SONAR User Manual

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Instrument definitions are a powerful feature of SONAR that makes it easier for you to find
the banks, patches, and controllers of your MIDI instruments. An instrument definition is a
file that contains the names of the banks, patches, note names, bank select method, and
controllers of an instrument. Instrument definitions for many popular MIDI instruments are
included with SONAR or are available on the Cakewalk web site (www.cakewalk.com). If an
instrument definition is not available for your instrument, and you are familiar with MIDI
and how it works, you can use SONAR to create your own instrument definition.
Most MIDI instruments available today are General MIDI (GM) compatible, which means
that they come with the standard set of sounds or patches defined by the GM standard.
SONAR initially assumes that your MIDI instruments are GM compatible. The names of
patches and controllers that you initially see displayed throughout SONAR are drawn from
the GM specification.
At the same time, many MIDI instruments provide additional sounds and controllers beyond
those required by the GM standard. In addition, some older MIDI instruments are not GM
compatible. If you are using one of these instruments with SONAR, you can use instrument
definitions to make sure that the names of banks, patches, and controllers that you see in
SONAR are the same ones you see on the display screens of your MIDI keyboards and
modules.
In This Chapter
Assigning Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
Importing Instrument Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505
Creating Instrument Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Instrument Definition Tutorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
Using Instrument
Definitions