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Craig

ABOUT MIDI PATCH CHANGER

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Download and Installation Instructions
How To Use Midi Patch Changer (SETTING and DATABASE MANAGEMENT)
Using Midi Patch Changer - PERFORMING

Hi there. Thanks for trying out Midi Patch Changer - I hope it's as useful for you, as it has been for me.

I wrote Midi Patch Changer when I was recently taking part in a production of Heathers the Musical. I could have sourced some MainStage patch files to suit the show, however I have a Windows 10 laptop - not a Mac - so MainStage is not an easy option for me. In the past, I've used a program called SampleTank, which has a great bank of sounds - even in the free version. (If you also play keys for musical theatre productions, then you'll know that there are a few "pre-packaged" keyboard patch solutions out there - but they do cost money (and $$ can be tight in community theatre productions), and not every show has patches available, anyway. Also, the patches can sometimes be a little, well, "patchy" - so to have an alternative like SampleTank, or similar for Windows, is handy). Occasionally, then, you'll want to create your own set of patches for a particular show - or, if you're performing in something other than musical theatre, you're still likely to have a set of songs that you'll be performing, and each of those songs will have a particular sequence of sounds that you need to trigger. Most importantly, you'll want the ability to be able to easily scroll up and down through the sequence, and also jump directly to a particular spot in the sequence, if required. (For sound patches, I can certainly recommend SampleTank - from IK Multimedia. Check it out at http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/sampletankcs/)

The latest version of SampleTank (3.5) has an excellent feature, where you can build up a "Set List" of songs, and then use that set list in "LIVE" mode. There's one drawback, however - there's not really a simple way to scroll up and down through each of the sound patches in the set list, unless you're using a synth (or some other external midi control) that can send all of the necessary Program Change commands. In my case, I have an electronic keyboard that doesn't have the full General Midi sound bank - it just has a half-dozen built in sounds, and a couple of effects. (Admittedly, when changing sounds, or turning effects on or off, it does send specific midi commands, but not enough of them to be able to individually control up to 100, or so, different sound changes). For Heathers, there were 43 songs in the "Set List" - and each song ranged from one or two patch changes, up to about 15 (for some of the larger songs).

I know that there is other software out there, which works in a similar way to SampleTank's "LIVE" mode - so hopefully Midi Patch Changer will be useful to others, even if they're not using SampleTank. If Midi Patch Changer proves popular, I'm thinking my next project will provide a more generic UI, where the user can have custom buttons to trigger events (ie. not just restricted to Previous Song / Previous Sound - Next Song / Next Sound). This is, however, the basic concept of Midi Patch Manager - that you have a sequence of songs (each with their own corresponding set of sound patches), and you will be moving from song-to-song (and sound-to-sound, within each song) in a sequenced fashion.

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