Tutorial

Saving Your First Instrument Set

If you have reached this portion of the tutorial, we will assume that you have successfully received a Set from your instrument. Congratulations.

You should have a window similar to the one displayed above.

To save this Set, you can either choose File/Save Set As... or click on the Save icon in the mini icon bar. A File Selector dialog box is displayed so you can enter a name for the file. You might want to call the file ORIGINAL so that you will know that this file contains your original instrument settings. Notice that your File Selector has automatically opened in the appropriate instrument device directory. If you put all of your files for this instrument in this directory, you will find it much easier to find your files in the future. After entering the file name, press the Save button to save the file.

You have successfully saved the contents of one of your instruments. You will now be able to restore your SysEx at any time in the future. This is important should you make a mistake while learning Midi Quest and inadvertently lose part or all of the contents of the instrument. You can now close this Set by double-clicking on the close icon in the upper left hand corner of the window.

Now that you have saved the Set for one instrument, you should get the default sets from each of your other instruments as well. The reason? You always want to have a backup of your studio's entire memory should something unexpectedly happen.

Loading a Set from Disk

Now that you have saved the internals of each of your instruments, let's go back to the Set loaded from the first instrument.

You have two options here, your first option is to open the file in the traditional way by choosing File/Open.... A File Selector dialog is displayed. At this point, you should double-click on the instrument's folder to open it. In the folder you will find the file you saved with an SQS extension. Double-click on the file name to load it.

The second option has the advantage of automatically placing you in the correct file directory when the File Selector is opened. Click the mini disk icon in the lower right corner of the instrument module. This will open a file selector and automatically place you in the instrument's storage folder. The file you saved will have the SQS extension. Double-click on it to load the Set.

Editing a Bank in a Set

Now that you have loaded your Set, we will edit one of the Banks in the Set. For this demonstration, it would be best to choose the Bank containing the instrument's Sound Patches. This is often called the Patch Bank. Click on the Patch Bank line in the Set and a Bank Window opens which contains the contents of the Set's Patch Bank.

Auditioning Patches in a Bank

Midi Quest lets you quickly listen to Patches in a Bank or Library, we call this auditioning. When you click on a Patch in a Bank or Library, the Patch is immediately sent to the instrument. Midi Quest then automatically plays a chord so you can hear the selected sound. Go ahead, try it.

If you would like to play a different chord, you can open open the Tones Window by choosing Utilities/Tones. From this window, you can define the number of notes to play in the chord, the chord's duration, the pitches, and the velocity of each pitch.

Swap a Patch in the Same Bank

One of the more common activities you will be involved in, while editing Banks, is organizing your Patches. This is accomplished by either pasting or swapping Patches within the same Bank or with another Bank.

In this example, we will swap two patches in the Bank you have opened to edit:

Creating New Patches with Mix All

Mix All is one of five different Randomize functions in the Bank. Each of these Randomize functions processes Patches in a different way to quickly produce a Bank of new Patches. No editing knowledge is required. This is a fast way to create or try out new sounds in a piece of music. To create a Bank of new Patches using Mix All:

You can now try out the different patches you have created. Clicking once will send the Patch to the instrument and play a chord on the instrument so you can hear the new Patch. Note: to access menus in the Set Bank us the right mouse button.

Swap Patches with Patches in Another Bank

Now that there are two Banks, we can swap Patches between them. To swap two patches between two Banks: