George's Pedal Steel Guitar Web Site
2nd Section: Using Sound Fonts
The first thing we need to look at is the box marked "Use 1 based patching (Roland)." If you remember
back at the beginning I talked about the address of the banks? Well, here's were you need to know a little
bit about computer addressing. In our number system, the number zero carry's no weight to it and therefore
can be left off if it were to procede the number 1. For instance "01" and "1" in our number system are
exactly the same number but in the computer world, zero, is a number. We count to 8 starting at the number 1
but in the computer world, we count to 8 starting with zero. If this is confusing I'll give you a little example.
Our world = 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8
Computer world = 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7
Same amount of numbers, just the starting point is different. The SoundBlaster sound font manager starts at "0"
and the Roland cards start at "1." Don't ask me why Roland does this because I don't have an answer. All the
programming I've ever done has the base starting at "0." Because we are using the SoundBlaster you need to
uncheck this box or it will through you off. Now the box that is marked as "Enable Advanced Settings" needs to
be checked because you are going to change the "MSB" to match the bank where the sound font is. The box marked
as "Bank (ctrl.0)" needs to be checked but because the the "LSB" also known as "Bank (cntrl.32)" is always
zero for the SoundBlaster, we need not worry about it. Now lets fill in the blanks and you will see how it starts
to make sense. If you remember, the new sound font we saved in bank 10 which was empty and the location in that
bank for the fiddle which you had no control over was 110. Hey, look at the bank number, I put a 10 in it because
that is where the bank was that I saved the sound font at and the patch number needs a 110 because that is where
all of the other paremeters where put, the ones you have no control over. Now all you need to do is hit the "Play"
button and click on the "Update" and you will hear the new sound font.
As I said you can do this with any sound font you want to use and all you need to know is where it is placed
in the sound font manager for the sound card.
Back Home Page