Hi all,

I've read various threads of a similar nature on this forum but I can't seem to quite get a grip with something so perhaps someone can help me.
I have a Roland MKS20 soundfont, and a Yamaha Motif Grand soundfont, a famous combo that cuts through a mix. Is there any way I can play these two at the same time, some easy to use programme or any fairly simple way? It seems with such an old style technology there's no way to just shove them in a programme and hook it up to a midi keyboard and play.
Any help even if it's a yes this is possible or no this is foolish would be hugely appreciated.
Best wishes

Chris

Maybe try Viena?

http://www.synthfont.com/Downloads.html
http://www.synthfont.com/Viena_news.html

..or possibly the older Vienna from CreativeLabs

what are you trying to do? do you want to play a midi file and use the sounds of the two fonts on separate tracks?

No, I just want to use the sound of the two pianos together in a live mix scenario,

bw

Chris

I can see several ways to interpret your question and the answer varies depending on the interpretation, particularly of the term "live mix scenario", i.e., does that actually mean a live, on stage, performance?


1) You want to play your keyboard and use the MIDI to simultaneously play both soundfonts. You consider that BiaB may be a tool to allow this, but your main intent is to play both soundfonts live.

1a) You want to do that and also have mixer control of the sound within, e.g., BiaB.

1c) If playing live, is that also with BiaB supplying accompaniment?


2) You want to play your keyboard and record the MIDI so that you can later play that MIDI with both soundfonts simultaneously as part of a BiaB or similar project.


3) You want to create tracks with MIDI to play the two soundfonts, but they need not play exactly the same MIDI, e.g., you'll play the keyboard twice to get a duet-type performance, which you'll then mix.

Hi Gordon,

Basically, in an ideal world, I'd like to use the two soundonts at the same time, so if I set my midi keyboard up on a stage I could sit at it, play a song and the two soundfonts would come out of the speaker, currently, I can only use one with szofando, I use a midi lead to the laptop and just an auxiliary cable to my mixer, so what I'd like to do if at all possible is add that depth of the other piano sound to the mix.

thanks for your reply

Chris

Hi Chris,

That's what I'd suspected.

My immediate reaction is that a DAW might be a better platform for that than BiaB.

BiaB's 'live' stream is the 'Thru' track. One can put a plugin onto that track, e.g. something like the VSTSynthFont64 that comes hidden away a bit in BiaB (manual p8 or p9 IIRC) and set each of the available channels to whatever MIDI channel it should respond and set a soundfont and instrument.

My keyboard here is sending on MIDI channel 4, so I set what had been MIDI channel 3 of the plugin to also use MIDI channel 4 and set a different sound on each. I then get two sounds playing in response to me keys, rather than one.

The catch with that arrangement, is that I can't see a way to control the volumes, mute/solo in any way, though the instruments can be panned in the plug-in.

A DAW should let you control those things per instrument and also allow other actions like signal-processing per instrument. In principle it should work OK, subject to whether latency causes you any issues.

I have a hardware mixer that allows me to do all that and also to record its 32 channels to a USB drive, so I don't normally use either BiaB or a DAW for live work, so a PC doesn't usually get involved for that.

https://www.tx16wx.com/

Since it's midi, the answer is YES. Use a DAW.

In a recording situation just clone the midi source track and send it to two instances of your soundfont player..... each on a different channel and running a different font. You can also send the data OMNI and the synth modules in a live situation will play it....although, if you send it on individual channels vs OMNI you can send unique data to a drum module, bass module and so on. I wouldn't use BB for this task.....but that's just me.

My philosophy with music gear is ....Simple is always best. Follow the KISS principle.

For a live situation, I would suggest Gig Performer. Add a second "MIDI In" block to the default one in a new gig file. Configure each of them for a keyboard split, or use two keyboard controllers, one for each instance. Then connect each MIDI In block to a separate instance of Plogue's Sforzando VST (which you presumably have as part of your BiaB installation), and load each of the two Sforzando plugins with the soundfont of choice (you will have to import the .sf2 file where it gets converted to an ARIA format and saved to a folder on one of your drives.

Gig Performer

The Gig Performer forum is excellent, very responsive.

Gig Performer forum

You can try the demo version of Gig Performer to see if it works for you before buying a license. I've been using it for years. Once I found it, I never went back to Cantabile. And Forte is no longer in development. It's a superior option for live use. One of the developers is a keyboard player and tours extensively using it.

This video is focused on using two keyboards, but if you stop the video when a MIDI In block window is open, you'll see on the left side, middle, a section to define a MIDI split, so you could use two MIDI in blocks, each with the proper section of keys on your controller defined for the instrument it's connected to.



This video also covers keyboard splits.

Ah ... I was pretty sure there should be something like that out there for Windows, I just didn't know what it was. That's nice.

The unified GUI makes it friendlier than my usual Linux setup, where I set-up session using scripts to load the instruments and effects, distribute the windows around the workspaces and patch them all together via jack. It works really well, but it's not trivial to do. And I really like those neat "sticky-tape" labels.

Thanks for the material on Gig Performer. I wasn't familiar with this previously, but it seems to be a very versatile product.

Thank you all SO MUCH! This has been not only informative but super friendly as well as helpful. I'm going to give everything here a go, just downloaded the free version of gig performer to try. I've a solo show in a couple of weeks so hopefully I'll be blending my piano sounds by then! I can't thank you all enough for this help and advice, it's been most useful!

Best wishes

Chris

Definitely, thanks for the info on Gig Performer. Looks like just what I might need!

Jeff

Since I stopped playing live...and that was with a full band back in those days, I have only done a small handful of live solo events.

On those occasions, I had my set planned out in advance and took the time to record ALL the parts I was not going to be playing live. Remember in my former post I mentioned keeping it simple? So the tracks would be lacking my lead vocal and the guitar.... normally the acoustic guitar. Everything else was in a stereo track including the harmony vox. I played the tracks with either an MP3 or Wave player of from a CD.

If I was doing blended piano live..... one of those pianos would be on the CD/MP3/Wave and I'd play the other one live. Kinda like if I was doing a twin guitar harmony lead.... one is recorded, I play the opposing part live.

But that's just me. Feel free to do whatever works best in your circumstances. And most of all.... have fun. That's what I liked about the keep it simple solution. I could stop playing and in most cases, my part wasn't missed. Any time I was on stage, the most important thing to me was to have fun because if I was having fun it was contagious and the audience had fun too, and the best way to do that is to not be worrying about the technical stuff.... Keep it simple.... Did I mention that you should keep it simple?

BIAB supports the free Aria Player which can play any SoundFont format I know. From 7 years ago:

Configuring BIAB to use Aria Player

You can also use SampleTank 4 CS (also free) to convert any set of sounds into a useable SampleTank Instrument. Can't find the link but I've posted it before. The free Kontakt Player has similar capabilities but ST is deeper than deep for this use.

Kontakt no longer supports soundfonts and when it did, only the full version.

You can use KV Element and have 2 or more VSTi on the Thru
https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=678813#Post678813
In Options MIDI Drivers uncheck "Route MIDI Thru to MIDI Driver"

One is set to the left channel and one to the right with 2 different soundfonts.


There are a lot of Piz midi plugs like midiForceToRange.dll or transpose to put one soundfont on another octave.



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