Midi and SoundFonts:

Frequent questions

Percussion instruments are located separately on channel 10. You don't have to choose a patch - each note represents a different instrument.

Okay, easy things first: Make sure your speakers are plugged in correctly, switched on and the volume is cranked up. Okay, okay - you're not stupid, eh? Three possibilities for the next step:
1) If you don't get any sound at all, check if your soundcard is plugged in and connected correctly. Are your sound card drivers installed properly? Are you using the current release of drivers? Maybe the card has been deactivated in the hardware profile? Are there any hardware conflicts between the sound card and other devices? Windows 95 users can find out by taking a look at the system properties: right-click on the desktop symbol on the windows main screen and select Properties. Open the Device manager, select Audio controllers and open the entry for your soundcard. Check info in General settings (activated?), Drivers (old release?) and Resources (conflicts?).
2) If you don't have any midi playback at all, see if you have some kind of software mixer installed (is usually done with soundcard installation): Make sure that midi is active and the volume not set to zero.
If you are using a Sound Font compatible soundcard you'd better be sure that a Sound Font bank has been loaded into memory. If you're using additional Sound Font tools like MegaFont, you won't get any midi playback if you forget to start the program or if it's not set up properly.
3) Windows plays midi files, but your sequencer refuses to do so? There are several setting you should take a look at: See if the right bank is selected and if the bank selection method is correct (in most cases bank 0 and - for Cakewalk - Controller 0 will do). Make sure the right ports for midi output are selected - If you don't know, standard settings or something like A: Midi Synth might be a good idea. Has each track been assigned to a channel and is each channel directed to a valid port? Good! Now ensure that patches have been selected for each channel and that these patches are available in Sound Fonts you possibly wish to use. Check if the basic volume for each channel is sufficient and if the settings in the mixer are okay. Try sending a Reset controllers message (controller number 121) at the beginning of your piece.

You can only assign one patch to each midi channel: If you try to use both a clarinet and a guitar on channel 7, both tracks will be played with the guitar patch. Use different channels for different instruments!
Another possibility is that you're using a synthesizer or a Sound Font that is not fully General Midi compatible. Most sequencers display the general midi instrument list by default - see How to import a my modified patch list.

There are several possibilities: You can draw them in, Use the mixer, Send them through a keyboard or insert them by hand. See article about Midi controllers for details.

If a midi file applies certain controller settings and doesn't reset them at the end of the piece, these settings remain active, resulting in effects volumes set to zero or modulation set to maximum.
To avoid such effects, it might be a good idea to reset all controllers at beginning and end of each of your pieces. This ensures that controllers settings specified in midi files played before don't affect the next piece. See article about Improving midi files for details.

There's a complete article available for this topic.

First, you can assign a certain bank to a channel from the very beginning - in Cakewalk open the 'Track properties' and select a bank. Second, you can use controllers to change a bank in the middle of a piece.
The only problem is that it won't have any effect without specifying the correct bank selection method. If you have problems with bank selection under Cakewalk, open the 'Track properties' and select 'Controller 0' instead of 'Normal' for selection method.

There are 16 midi channels available for each midi out port. If your soundcard supports more than one (as does the SB Live!), you can use more than 16 channels - in example assign channel 1-16 once to port A and once to port B.
Before releasing such a midi file into public, it might be a good idea to do a mixdown to 16 channels - people with different equipment might not be able to listen to your work! Change patch controllers can be helpful in producing such a mixdown.

You can import patch names into Cakewalk with INS-files. See Sound Fonts article for details.

You can save your layout as tpl-file: Just save your template to the correct drawer (specified in extras / global options / drawers) and it will be included in the menu that pops up when opening a new song. You should also pay attention to saving your file in Cakewalk format (wrk-file) while working on it - the final conversion to midi format results in loss of layout info.

Two things: First, you definately need a Sound Font compatible soundcard - the Soundblaster Live! is the most popular one.
Second, a lot of system memory might be a good idea - at least if you want to use big high-quality banks: 128 MB are sufficient for most banks (up to 64MB in size), 194 MB or more are required for a few top-banks.

There's a free program called MegaFont that allows you to do this. See Sound Fonts article for details.

It's a bug. There's a bugfix explained in the Sound Fonts article.

The standard program for toying aroung with Sound Fonts is Vienna, a program that usually comes with SB Live! cards and is also available for free download. See Sound Font article for details.