Reference Guide

1062
Instrument definitions
Instrument definition tutorial
Start of tutorial
Let’s say you have a Roland XP-10 and you want SONAR to display all of its patch names from all of
its banks, including any self-created sounds you add to it.
Let’s start by importing the names of the built-in banks and patches that the XP-10 has.
To import a Roland instrument definition
1. Go to Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Instruments.
2. Click Define to display the Define Instruments and Names dialog box.
3. Click Import to display the Import Instrument Definitions dialog box.
4. Choose the file that contains instrument definitions for your manufacturer, which in this case is
the Roland.ins file, and click Open. SONAR displays a list of all the instrument definitions in
the file.
5. Scroll down the list, select Roland XP-10, and click OK.
6. Click Close to close the Define Instruments and Names dialog box.
The instrument definition you imported should now appear in the Uses Instrument list in the Assign
Instruments dialog box.
When you import an instrument definition, it is added to the master instrument definition file
Master.ins. The contents of this file determines the list of instruments that appear in the Assign
Instruments dialog box.
Now let’s assign the XP-10 definition to some channels on a MIDI output:
To assign the Roland XP-10 bank and patch names to a MIDI output
1. Go to Edit > Preferences > MIDI - Instruments.
2. Let’s assign all 16 MIDI channels on output 1 to use the XP-10 bank and patch names:
• Drag through the first 16 items in the Port/Channel list to select them.
• From the Uses Instrument list, click Roland XP-10. A black line connects the two lists.
3. To save these changes permanently, enable the Save Changes for Next Session option.
4. Click OK to apply your changes.
From now on, any track that uses any of channels 1 to 16 on output 1 displays bank and patch
names from the XP-10.
To check this, assign a MIDI track in a project to Ch 1, assign the Output field to 1-Roland XP-10,
and then examine the drop-down lists in the Bank and Patch fields of the track. You should see
bank and patch names that are specific to the Roland XP-10.
Let’s check some of our bank and patch lists to see if they match up with what we see on the screen
of the XP-10. On the XP-10, let’s look at the Vari 1 bank: if we look at tone (tone means the same as
patch) #005 in the Vari 1 bank on the XP-10, we see that it is called Detuned EP1. If we change the
bank on a MIDI track to 128-Roland XP-10 Var #01, and look at the menu of patches in the Pch
field, we see that there is no name listed for patch #004 (Roland numbers its patches from 1 to 128;
SONAR numbers patches from 0 to 127, so patch #004 in SONAR is the same patch number as