SFontEditor - Editing
Editing a .pset file:
Note that .pset files are just text files.
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Ok. Background time...
Many musicians go through a synth's factory presets
and pick out the good ones.
Sometimes, they don't even TRY to create NEW ones!!
That's just sooooo WROOOONG!
The preset controls how the sample is dumped through
the audio path of the synth
It gives life to aftertouch and the mod wheel and pitch bender and
pedal and... (insert other controls here)
So find a good soundfont sound using PianoCheater,
load it into SFontEditor to see what makes it tick.
The .WAV samples will likely be most of the sound's beauty.
But it might just be the
- oscillator detuning
- frequency filtering / resonance
- amplitude envelope
- LFO'ing
- effect params
that the preset parameters control that make the sound shine.
You can do a LOT with simple waveforms (not to mention complex ones)
if you make em change via different controls.
For example,
lower velocity could filter the sound to "muffle" it a bit.
So it plays bright upon strong velocities and mellow for low ones.
Most presets just have the mod wheel modulate the pitch - laaame.
Make the mod wheel do something ELSE! Have it control an LFO that pans.
Read up on sound synthesis techniques and
make the controls that you've got do COOL things to the sound.
Not just sit there and do boring tremelo or vibrato - bleh :P
Ok. Enough background.
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Load a sound into SFontEditor and see what params it has.
Try tweaking it.
And save your changes as a NEW file so you still can use the old sound.
After saving a new preset, make sure you do "Gluing" again to
add it to PianoCheater's list of sounds.
Goof around and let me know where you get confused.
(Can you tell I'm still workin on these docs:)
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What the heck IS a soundfont preset???
Ok. Soundfont presets are a pretty detailed beast.
Creative has a (somewhat ok, mostly lame) tutorial
here
specs here
It covers not just presets, but the whole SF2 file format.
You may want to avert your eyes. Seriously. ;)
I'm not sure I can fully document it WELL yet, but I'll give you a starter :/
If you're familiar with editing sound presets,
you just might recognize most of the params.
Soundfont presets have the top preset level that references
instrument level params which ref
sample level params
Samples have their own set of params.
Preset params sometimes replace, sometimes modify Instrument level params.
(sometimes - it's confusing:)
In addition, GLOBAL params are at the inst and preset level
which can be overridden as well.
Here's an example... It's all I can do for ya right now - sorry :)
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.pset file format - QUICK intro: (very quick - sorry)
description on line 1
# for comments
inst=name starts an instrument definition
GLOBAL params that apply to all WAVs of the inst
gen=val
mod=ctrl[mod]+ctrl[mod]*amt ex: fltCut=velo.desc+velo.desc*0
path\WAVfilename
gen=val
mod=...
...etc
---------- ends an instrument definition
GLOBAL params that apply to all insts of this pset
gen=val
mod=ctrl[mod]+ctrl[mod]*amt
InstName (or path\WAVfilename for a no gen/mod instrument)
gen=val
mod=ctrl[mod]+ctrl[mod]*amt
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Next up, Mid2Wav...;)
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