Re: changing the midi instrument; broken

[Mats Bengtsson]

Quoting Ted Walther <address@hidden>:

> I am running Debian unstable, with lilypond 2.6.3 for typesetting,
> timidity 2.13.2 to play midi files, and freepats 20060219 to provide the
> midi patchsets.

I recommend you to upgrade to the latest stable version, 2.8. The 
installation package available for download at www.lilypond.org should
work without any problems on a Debian system, just as well as other
Linux systems. In addition to a number of new features, the manual has
also been improved significantly (actually, the one for the latest 
development version is even better and is relevant also for version 
2.8).

> I notice in the manual it says the patch set has to be named exactly,
> with no variance in case allowed.  So I have been pasting in different
> instrument strings from the manual, trying to get something other than
> grand piano.  I have not had any fortune.
>
> Does anyone else have a similar setup to mine, and have they succeeded
> in making a midi file that does not come out using the grand piano?  Is
> this a lilypond bug or should I harass the timidity and freepats
> maintainers?
>
> I am using the following line:
>
> \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"oboe"
>
> I have tried it in the top level, and inside a \score section.  It makes
> no difference; the resulting midi file always uses the default grand
> piano.

Just as any other property setting that applies to a certain Staff, you 
have to do the setting within the Staff context, for example:
\new Staff {
        \time 3/4
        \key d \major
        \clef treble
       \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"oboe"
       ...
}




  /Mats