(12-23-2022, 01:53 AM)johnno56 Wrote: My next question is in relation to 'channels'... When it comes to midi playback is QB64pe capable of being polyphonic?
Can an individual instrument be selected from the soundfont or must the soundfont be of only one instrument?
I haven't gotten around to testing the MIDI/SF2 functionality of QB64PE.
Otherwise, it depends on the capabilities of the Soundfont player. Some players are rather inefficient, forcing the user to load one SF2 file for each MIDI channel which gobbles up a lot of RAM. Others (like Muse Score) could only support one Soundfont for the 16 MIDI channels. I remember Qsynth has a system to load Soundfonts but it's not for people who like consistent settings for MIDI bank and program. What I mean is, the order of load of Soundfonts in that program is very important. One doesn't want to load an SF2 file with only one "instrument" which was "recorded by hand", before a 128-instrument SF2 file, when the music calls for more instruments than is supported by the file "recorded by hand".
My guess is QB64PE supports one Soundfont at a time, for up to 16 MIDI channels. Each MIDI channel should have an assignment for program at least, from 1 to 128. Bank is possible too but it depends on the Soundfont to support more than one bank which would increase its size. QB64PE could ignore the bank requested by a channel in the MIDI file, always assuming the first bank. Most of the General MIDI sound banks have only one bank of 128 instruments anyway. It gets dicey if drum kits should be supported as well, like those loved so well out of R____d and Y____a.
EDIT: Since you are already tinkering, you should get a good MIDI editor which allows changing the MIDI program for a given MIDI channel. A single-digit program is usually for piano; try changing it to 32 or so to get a bass sound, to around 50 to get a string sound, to at least 112 to get ethnic percussion and so on. The MIDI channel 10 should be reserved for drum sounds in some music creation software.