I hope to use GP to que up sets of songs on General MIDI files that I will use as backing tracks and need a recommendation for a General MIDI VST (so Windows) that sounds good that will play up to 16 separate instrument channels simultaneously. i.e., are Roland SoundCanvas or Purity/Sonic Cat a good fit? Is there a different solution?
Note 2 (and 1/2) other critical live performance requirements
Requirement 1) I also play other instrument VSTs live over each MIDI song backing track using multiple keyboard controllers running different VSTs and FX (ie piano, organs, lead synths, guitars, percussion, horns).
Requirement 2) one more performance layer is created on by using another keyboard controller that’s used to trigger VST instruments that play keyswitched phrases and loops in real-time (live) that are synced to the song’s MIDI tempo.
These instruments include Kontakt Session Horns, Session East West Hollywood Brass, Addictive Drums, etc - so when I load up a GM song (in GP?) which plays through the 1 GM VST, the other specific instrument plugins for that song will also load so I can add live elements.
Optional requirement 3) I need to use GM files since I play different gigs with different vocalists - and I often back people in an open mic setting - so I need to do a global transpose on the MIDI song (except ch 10) on the fly to the vocalist’s prefered key. Any thoughts about how I would NOT transpose ch 10?
Like I said, I’ve been doing this with Cakewalk by simply loading the DAWs file, which includes the GM MIDI tracks, the other instrument VSTs pre-assigned to channels and keyboard controllers, as well as FXs, and one-shot samples. I accomplish the same goal in Ableton Live 10, but I haven’t used a GM VST in that setup yet so whatever I select for GP will be used in ableton.
Roland sound Canvas seems to be 32bit only, and not working with wrappers, from what ´ve read.
Sonic cat looks good (and interesting) from what i gather from their webpage and: has a demo ! https://sonic-cat.com/purity/
other possible options might be the two Korg Workstations:
Korg M1, Korg Triton, both available as VSTs.
Can´t vouch myself if they have a GM midi mode. ( i´d expect the Triton to have a GM mode)
Has a demo available, too.
Thanks! I have the Triton Extreme VST - which curiously offers multiple GM sound banks - but it only seems to offer 8 channels of multi-timbral voices through a “combi” setting. I believe the hardware keyboard has a “multi” setting that accepts MIDI in (and through) on separate 16 channels and routes them to the GM patches - but I don’t see how it’s done on the VST. The M1 may have the same limitations - unless I just haven’t figured it out yet.
After doing a deeper dive w/ google, the Roland Sound Canvas is now updated to a 64bit vst - but it requires a cloud subscription and I’ve heard (but not verified) that it sometimes hangs when it fails to login to the roland server for authentication - which can create issues during a live gig. The other complaint I’ve read is that Roland Sound Canvas instruments have not changed (aka improved) for decades.
I have found other VSTs that I will try out - such as Steinberg HALion 3 SE, a free “lite” version with fewer instruments and sound editing capabilities than the main software. I’d rather avoid going down the rabbit hole of searching for, buying or testing the other options out there (listed below) so it would be great to hear from someone who has already figured out 1) something that sounds good, 2) is stable in performance mode, 3) doesn’t have add a major CPU load, and plays nicely with GP.
Here are the reasonably updated 64 bit VST options I may have to test - (ugh…)
No GM SoundFont needed
OmniSynth 2 a SampleTank Expansion
Requiring a GM SoundFont (double ugh trying to find, install and test all the GM Soundfonts out there… so anybody have a fav?
Hi Hume, I’m on a very similar search. Asides from the sound quality reservation there is the requirement of having to run through a DAW on Mac. I use an M1. How has Purity worked for you?
Sorry for the delay. I haven’t tried Purity yet but still intend to. I’m just starting to experiment with Steinberg HALion 3 SE - but installation and setup was overly complex and the documentation wasn’t helpful to me. I may try out Roland Sound Canvas as part of a Roland $199 promotion running until 12-31 where you can subscribe to their plugins for a year and keep 1 or 2 plugins, such as Sound Canvas - even if you cancel the subscription Play 4 Life
Purity works very well to get started, easy to use, etc
What I have typically done is to start with Purity, and then where necessary (if necessary) I will route some of the channels (eg drums or strings) to other plugins if I want the extra quality.
I can’t speak to the latest version of sound canvas….I’ve used it in the past, never found it reliable, it wanted to connect to mother every time I started it and I gave up on it years ago.
I once tried Sound Canvas, but i cannot recommend it… it seems that isn’t actually maintained anymore and as David stated, it’s not what i would call reliable. (While i do like the rest of the Roland bunch quite a lot, but always keep in mind that you’ll have to connect to the internet regularly to keep’em running!)
No worries! We’re busy people so I truly appreciate your reply. I’m trying to switch my MIDI playback from a Yamaha Motif Rack XS to preferable Kontakt hosted VST’s hoping to avoid extensive tweaking.