MultitrackStudio Instruments

The MultitrackStudio Instruments are a General MIDI-compatible instrument collection. It contains over 100 instruments, including a drum kit.

The Instrument box lets you pick an instrument. The instruments appear in five categories: Keyboard, String, Wind, Percussion, and Synth. You can type (part of) an instrument name in the Search box to find an instrument quickly.

The Controls section contains knobs, drawbars, or buttons which control the sound of the selected instrument. Not all instruments offer controls.

The Effects section contains three effect slots. Some instruments use one or more effects by default.

Note 1: Most instruments do not have any reverb, so a Reverb effect should be used to add reverb.

Note 2: You can play back a MIDI track containing multiple streams ("instruments"). However, it is recommended to click the track's file name box and choose "Split Streams". This gives you more control over instrument sounds, levels, and effect send levels.

Keyboard instruments

Acoustic pianos have a Timbre Range knob, which determines the difference in tone color between softly and strongly played keys. At the lowest setting, note velocity 127 corresponds to ff (fortissimo), at the middle setting it corresponds to fff (forte fortissimo). Good weighted keyboards and piano plugins are often in this range. At the highest setting, note velocity 127 corresponds to ffff. This leaves a lot of room for extremely soft or loud playing, as Yamaha pianos such as the Clavinova do. The Dynamics knob determines the difference in volume between softly and strongly played keys. For a Yamaha piano, a Dynamics value of 6.5 equals a natural acoustic piano response. You'd typically use slightly lower values with other keyboards. The Color knob detemines the tone color. Higher values cause the sound to be "harder" and brighter. "5" is the neutral position.

The electric piano's Bass and Treble are tone controls, as found on amplifiers or even some electric pianos.

The Percussive Organ is always percussive even if another note is playing. Drawbar Organ follows the traditional style.

String instruments

Violin Section, Violin Section 2, Viola Section, Cello Section, and Contrabass Section are specialized versions of String Ensemble 1. There are two violin sections in order to reduce phasing problems with unison notes. Bowed strings feature a Vibrato knob similar to the winds (see below).

Wind instruments

Most wind instruments feature a Vibrato knob. Vibrato is applied automatically depending on the musical context (especially note duration). The knob controls the amount of vibrato. You can avoid vibrato on certain notes by programming MIDI controller #1. The value at approx. 300 ms after the note onset is the one that counts. It's not possible to add vibrato where the automatic system decides it's not appropriate.

Percussion instruments

The Drum Kit uses MIDI channel 10 in order to be compatible with General MIDI. A suitable channel is picked automatically when you load an instrument, so you typically don't need to pay attention to the Channel box.

If you'd rather hear the Drum Kit from the drummer's perspective you can use a Stereo Imager effect with the Reverse Stereo preset.
You can use per-note pan controllers for detailed panning of the Drum Kit. It's probably best to set the Width knob to zero, so all panning is done with per-note pan controllers.

Synthesizers

Almost all synth sounds use the same synthesizer, which comes in three versions: square, sawtooth, and triangle. The bottom-right corner of the Controls box shows the version. The sawtooth version is used for most sounds.

The four drawbars control the level of four oscillators. 8' is the root note. 8'D is a slightly detuned version. 5'1/3 is a fifth, and 4' is one octave up.

The Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release knobs represent a classic ADSR envelope. If Sustain is higher than "5" the level will rise during the decay phase. The pad sounds use this swelling effect.

Muting notes

Some instruments, like Harp and Drum Kit, ignore note-off messages. A sustain-off message will mute all sounding notes for which a note-off message has been received, so you can use the sustain pedal to mute harp strings or cymbals, etc.

Articulations

A few instruments support MultitrackStudio Articulations:

• Overdrive Guitar / Distortion Guitar: Normal, Muted, Harmonic
• Electric Bass (finger): Normal, Slap
• Violin / Viola / Cello / Contrabass: Bowed, Pizzicato

MIDI Implementation

The MultitrackStudio Instruments respond to Volume (#7), Pan (#10), Expression (#11), and Sustain (#64) controllers. Pitch Bend is also supported.
Acoustic pianos respond to Sostenuto (#66) and Soft (#67) pedals, and they support continuous "half pedal" sustain (the half pedal range is value 44 to 84).
Bowed strings and many winds respond to Legato (#68).
Brightness and Treble knobs respond to #74. Vibrato knobs respond to #1. Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release knobs respond to #73, #75, #79, and #72 respectively. Drawbars and drum level knobs respond to #12, #13, #14, etc.

The MultitrackStudio Instruments respond to poly aftertouch and MIDI 2.0 per-note pitch bend and release time.
The synths respond to MIDI 2.0 per-note brightness, timbre, attack time, and decay time. Per-note brightness and timbre control the filter cutoff frequency and resonance, respectively.
For attack time and decay time, the value at note-on counts. For release time, the value at note-off counts.
Drum Kit and Timpani respond to per-note pan.
Synth Drum responds to per-note decay and per-note pan.

GM compatibility

• Most "Sound Effects" programs (Gun Shot, etc.) are not available.
• A couple of percussion instruments are not available: vibraslap, guiro, and cuica.
• The MultitrackStudio Instruments include a few instruments that are not part of GM. The MIDI file will contain a program number that closely matches the sound. For example: if you pick "Violin Section" the MIDI file will contain the "String Ensemble 1" program, so the file plays back correctly using any GM player.
• The MultitrackStudio Instruments are typically limited to the "real" instrument's note range. Violins, for example, won't play notes below the open G string.

Under the hood
The MultitrackStudio Instruments use a highly optimized sound synthesis engine, they don't use samples. This allows each note to have a unique sound, which reduces "machine gun" effects. All 65535 MIDI 2.0 note velocities can have a unique timbre, which makes the instruments more "playable".