The Collection Window

Purpose:

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The Collection is a simple yet powerful SysEx storage facility which allows you to take ANY combination of SysEx collected by Midi Quest and store them together in one place, the Collection. The Collection can hold, for example, a Yamaha Motif 6 Set, a Korg Kronos Set, an M1 Patch Bank, an M1 Combi Bank, 2 DX7 Voice Banks, a D-10 system setup dump, and a Wavestation Performance all in a single file. It can, in fact, hold virtually any combination of SysEx that you can think of.

Unlike other Editor/Librarians, we have chosen not to limit the flexibility of this window as we have learned over time that different people like to organize their information in completely different ways. While Sound Quest originally envisioned this window would be used take system backups, some of our users prefer to have a Collection store all of their Banks for one or more instruments. Others keep an entire collection of sequences stored in their Collections. The system backup, however, is still the most common use for the Collection.

A backup stores the current state of one or more of your instruments or other devices in your MIDI setup. It contains all of the SysEx necessary to restore the instrument(s) to the same state as at some other time. After the backup is made, the Collection should contain all of your instruments' Banks along with any other SysEx which has been customized for the project. With this feature, it is possible to work on one project then take a snapshot of the instruments' settings before going on to a different project. When you return to the first project, in the afternoon, the next day, or a year from now, you will be able to send the SysEx back to your instruments and be confident that they will be properly configured for the piece.

After completing a piece of music, you should always create a Collection which has all of your instrument's relevant Patches, Banks, and other SysEx stored in it. The structure can act as an isolation area so that the SysEx isn't accidentally changed for use on another project.

You may display simultaneously as many Collections on your screen as desired (limited only by available RAM). You may even cut or copy components of one Collection into another.

Sorting

The Collection supports column sorting. To sort the Collection using any column parameter, click on the header of the column. Midi Quest will alphabetically sort the Collection using the text in the selected column.

Drag and Drop

The Collection window supports drag and drop. Dragging and dropping any Midi Quest patch or bank file from the file manager into a Collection window will add the file to the existing list. Collections also support drag and drop for MIDIX files (.SYX). In this case, the file is automatically converted to Midi Quest format and added to the list.

For information on each column in the Collection, see Collection Contents

To send the entire contents of a Collection to the instruments, see Sending a Collection.

To send one or more components in a Collection, see Sending Components.

Key Commands

Shift+Esc cancels any drag from a Collection window to another window currently in progress

Collection Menu

The Collection contains menu functions to organize the Patches, Banks, and other SysEx used by your various instruments. These functions are all contained in the collection menu. The Collection window must be activated before you can see and access the Collection menu.

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