Kurzweil PC88 - General MIDI Considerations

MIDI Receive
General MIDI Considerations
8-2
PC 88
General MIDI Considerations
With the VGM board installed, the PC88 can be conÞgured to receive in General MIDI mode, or
it can receive in a mixed mode, taking advantage of all of its sounds.
General MIDI (ÒGMÓ) mode is turned on using the General MIDI parameter, under the Global
menu. It can also be turned on from an external MIDI device that sends the ÒGeneral MIDI OnÓ
message, which is deÞned in the MIDI SpeciÞcation. When GM mode is Þrst turned on, all
Receive channels are set to Bank 1. (The program number remains the same). In this mode,
since all channels are drawing from the VGM boardÕs sounds, the maximum polyphony of the
PC88 is 32 voices, allocated dynamically across the 16 channels.
Channel 10 is the exception: it goes into ÒdrumÓ mode as the General MIDI spec requires, and is
set to ÒStandard GM SetÓ. The General MIDI spec only speciÞes one drum set, but the ÒGSÓ
instruments from Roland, which contain all GM instruments plus some additional ones, have
six other useful drum sets. The PC88 includes equivalent sets. These can be called up in General
MIDI mode on Channel 10 (only) with Program Change commands, as follows:
0-8 Standard
9-15 Room
16-23 Power
24 Electric
25-31 Synth
32-39 Jazz
40-47 Brush
48-55 Orchestra
All of the channels are ÒlockedÓ into the GM bank. If you need a voice from another bank (or
you want to get 64-voice polyphony), you will have to go to the
Global menu and turn General
MIDI off.
The General MIDI drum sets are available when youÕre not in General MIDI mode, and can be
assigned to any channel. YouÕll Þnd them in Bank 2, with these program numbers:
67 Standard
68 Room
69 Power
70 Electric
71 Synth
72 Brush
73 Orchestra
Keep going, and you will Þnd some more drum sets in this Bank, which are not related to
General MIDI, and are mapped quite differently:
74 Clean
75 Ambient
76 Synth
And there are a couple of more percussion sets, which have totally different maps:
62 Orchestra Percussion
63 Latin Percussion
A complete list of all of the drum sounds, as well as some hints on how to use some of them, is
in Appendix C.
Note that when General MIDI mode is off, you can have different drum sets on different
channels Ñ as many as you want, if thatÕs the sort of thing you like to do.