Authoring Bands

A band is a set of instruments, with their performance parameters, associated with particular parts in a piece of music. This is not the same as a DLS collection, which represents a set of instruments that can be downloaded to the synthesizer and thus made available to any application.

In a tool such as DirectMusic Producer, the author creates a band by assigning instruments to PChannels. These instruments can be from any DLS collection, and instruments from different sources can be mixed within a band. For example, a band might have a jazz guitar from the General MIDI set in part 1, a sixties organ from the Roland GS set in part 2, and an ethnic percussive instrument from a custom DLS collection in part 3. Each of these instruments is also given volume, pan, and transposition settings.

PChannels map instruments to parts. If a pattern calls for a particular note on PChannel 1, that note is played by the instrument in the current band that is assigned to PChannel 1. The sound is modified by the band's settings for the volume, pan, and transposition of that instrument.

Bands can be saved as separate files or included in styles or segments.