Renoisers,
I am looking for a way to select patches from a midi synth in a quick manner.
Years ago when I was still using Cakewalk, I did so using so called INS files.
These are text based files which you can load into CW and use.
So if there allready is a way, then I’d like to find out. Haven’t found it yet tho…
Working with a lot of VST(i)'s, you really don’t need them, but for hardware synths this
kind of implementation can be a very handy tool.
It would indeed be great if you could attach a list of patch names to a specific MIDI port. Browsing through names (eg. MonsterPad 1) makes a lot more sense than just a bunch of decimals (eg. bank 13544, patch 94). No more paperwork containing all the bank- and patch information. The same can be done for controllers.
The lists do not need to be part of a song, but can be global user settings (= no alterations to the Renoise song format). Users should be able to edit, create and manage their lists (plain text?), whilst Renoise can convert them to any format the developers prefer. The converter can even be an external program, since the lists will only contain static data for most of the time. The plain text format can look something like this:
Synth=NoExist Synth ME2150
{Patch Data}
BankNo=0
BankName=ROM Patches A
000= Piano 1
001= Piano 2
…
…
127= Init Sound
{Controller Data}
000=Bank Select 0
001= Modulation
040= CutOff 1
…
…
If a MIDI port has a list assigned it should display menus containing patches of the current selected bank. Displaying all the patches at once might not be a good idea, because there are synths that can contain thousand or more. Banks can be changed in the same way (by a menu displaying the name of the bank). The controller entries can be used in the MIDI-CC device.
It will indeed be a lot of work generating the lists in the first place, but it will eventually save a lot of time and frustration. 