The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #52960   Message #813055
Posted By: Pied Piper
28-Oct-02 - 08:40 AM
Thread Name: Tech: soundblaster, keyboard.
Subject: RE: Tech: soundblaster, keyboard.
Hi Harpmaker.
I think the "Bank" is were you enter the MIDI bank number.
In MIDI equipment the sounds (Violin, Trumpet, etc) produced (in this case by your sound card) are allocated a generally agreed number between 1 and 127 (75 is Recorder). In the early days this was sufficient to handle all the sounds available. As sound modules got more sophisticated more than 126 sounds became available, so the Bank number (1 to 127) was introduced to allow access to more sounds.
   As you can see this gives you a potential 126x126=15876! Sounds. Obviously most of these possibilities aren't used, the MIDI number is usually used to specify a type of instrument and the Bank select number specifies various different types of sounds that group of instruments can produce.
Unfortunately the Bank numbers aren't the first few (1,2,3,4...) but can be anywhere in the range. This means that you need to know what Bank No does what, otherwise you'll spend hours going through then one at a time until you bump into one. This information should have come with your sound card.

All the best PP.