midiInstrument

[Martin Tarenskeen]

Hi,

I never quite liked the way a MIDI instrument is assigned to a 
staff or voice in Lilypond. You are forced to use the exact names for 
the midiInstrument property that are hardcoded in midi.scm

Why is this a problem: 1. I can't remember the names without the manual. 
My brains are getting old I guess ;-) ( "piano 2" ? "bright piano" ? 
"upright piano" ? Wrong! The correct name is "bright acoustic" )

2. The names are only correct when the MIDI file is played on a General 
Midi (GM) compatible soundcard, soundfont, synthesizer, or soundmodule. 
MIDI is more than just GM.

One solution that would already make me happy: It would be nice if 
instruments could also be selected by number (1-128, or 0-127). Would it 
be difficult to add some code to (I guess) midi.scm that would change the 
behaviour from current behaviour:

if instrumentname is wrong ... then instrumentname = "acoustic grand"

to:

if instrumentname is wrong then
        if instrumentname is a number between "0" and "127"
                pick the correct name from the list
        else
                instrumentname = "acoustic grand"

This is not real code, but I hope you get the idea.
Maybe someone can translate this into scheme ? Or maybe someone has a much 
better idea ?

Martin

P.S. This still would not be THE complete midi solution. Someone in an 
earlier thread already mentioned the lack of support for the MIDI 
bank change command.