General MIDI poly format

O

osion

New member
Hi,
I've been working in MIDI with years using Sonar/Reason. Recently someone asked me to produce general MIDI 16-poly ringtones for him and to send him the "general MIDI poly format." He also asked me if I have experience "producing MIDI tracks using General MIDI protocol"
I have no clue what this means. I have years of experience working in MIDI where I record in MIDI using Sonar/Reason Rewire and then bounce it to audio as a Wav file. Can someone please explain to me exactly what he is asking me to do and how to go about doing that in Sonar?
Any help is GREATLY appreciated.
osion.
 
General Midi was/is a protocol from the late 80's or early 90's in which you send program change #1 to a GM synth it's always a piano.

Program change #2 brings up a slightly different sounding piano.

Program changes in the 40's are where you find the basses and up near the top (#120 and above) you find a gunshot, applause and other silly effects.

The purpose of this was for the convenience of midi file makers so that all of their creations would sound basically the same on every system.

If you Google 'General Midi' I'm SURE you'll find a 'map' of the sounds and corresponding program change numbers.

GM 'poly' mode just means polyphonic --- more than one note in the same instrumental voice at one time, like a piano chord.

If you just find some softsynths or soundfonts that approximate the sounds in the GM 'map' I'm sure he wants ringtones delivered as midi files, not audio or wav files. That means you can use your own soundset to compose and be sure that the GM synth inside cell phones will do the work of voicing your compositions on the consumer end.
 
do you think he wants the files delivered with an .mid file extension? do you have any idea how to do that with Sonar? So do you think it means he wants a .mid file for each track/patch used? There is no way to have the entire piece with several patches on one .mid file, is there?
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.
 
There should be a way to export the midi file from sonar. A mid file can have a bunch of tracks over 16 midi channels. I recommend you look for a GM Midi file online (just google "free midi songs") and open one in sonar to see how its set up. It would also be a good idea to have a GM player so you have some idea of what the output will sound
 
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