what is a soundfont
Can someone explain what is the connection between which instruments are available and which sound font is being used? I thought the instruments were in the sound font????
I ask because I use the midi-export of musescore to export a song, then imported it into garageband. But garageband thinks all the instruments are saxophones. In fact garageband does not have any of the instruments which I selected in musescore. This despite the fact that musescore is (i think) using the same soundfont: GeneralUser.
I think I have misunderstood something fundamental.
Please help.
Jim
Comments
I suspect you have come up against the severe limitations of Garageband - you would probably be better using Logic Pro (assuming you're on Mac).
Basically Garageband sucks as a MIDI sequencer!
As to what a soundfont is this Wikipedia article should help you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundFont
In reply to I suspect you have come up by ChurchOrganist
Thanks ChurchOranist for the hints. Do you know if there is a connection between a sound font and an instrument set? Does the soundfont actually define instruments and what they sound like? or does it actually just define sounds for standard instruments all of which are assumed to already exist?
In reply to connection of soundfont to instrument library by jim.newton.562
The word "font" in the name "soundfont" is meant to be evocative of what it is. Just as a text font defines how all the letters of the alphabet and other characters it defines should *look*, a sojndfont defines how the all the instruments it defines should *sound*. And just as text fonts use a system called "Unicode" (or, before that, "ASCII") to define which letters a font needs to orovide and where each letter should be found in the font (the letter "A", for example, is character number 65), soundfonts use a system called "General MIDI" ("GM") to define where each instrument should be found in in the soundfont (an alto saxophone, for example, is number 65).
Not all soundfonts are GM-compatible, so some soundfonts will play a guitar sound when you select a flute or whatever, because MuseScore by default uses the GM standard to to tell which soundfont instrument for any given instrument in your score. It uses the file instruments.xml to tell it which soundfont instrument to use for each MuseScore instrument. As long as you stay within the world of GM soundfonts - which GeneralUser is, as is the default TimGM6mb, as is FluidR3 - everything just works.
Which is to say, if Garage Band isn't understanding properly, it probably isn't MuseScore's fault.
In reply to connection of soundfont to instrument library by jim.newton.562
The word "font" in the name "soundfont" is meant to be evocative of what it is. Just as a text font defines how all the letters of the alphabet and other characters it defines should look, a baptismal font defines how his/her holy waters it defines should smell, a soundfont defines how all the instruments it defines should sound. And just as text fonts use a system called "Unicode" (or, before that, "ASCII") to define which letters a font needs to orovide and where each letter should be found in the font (the letter "A", for example, is character number 65), soundfonts use a system called "General MIDI" ("GM") to define where each instrument should be found in the soundfont (an alto saxophone, for example, is instrument number 65).
Not all soundfonts are GM-compatible, so some soundfonts will play a guitar sound when you select a flute or whatever, because MuseScore by default uses the GM standard to to tell which soundfont instrument for any given instrument in your score. It uses the file instruments.xml to tell it which soundfont instrument to use for each MuseScore instrument. As long as you stay within the world of GM soundfonts - which GeneralUser is, as is the default TimGM6mb, as is FluidR3 - everything just works.
Which is to say, if Garage Band isn't understanding properly, it probably isn't MuseScore's fault.