more than 16 general midi channels, how to?

[Thomas Van Beeck]

I can write music the best in guitar pro.
The only thing is .... you only have 16 midi channels, so only 16 different instruments to work with (actually fifteen: one needs to be percussion)
Isn't there a way to make it more, or perhaps a very small library that I can use in Cubase?
The problem right now is that due to my pc's limits I work in templates and switch over and over.
For example I have a strings, brass and woodwinds template. I work in one template at a time, export the whole as a wav file, import it in the other template and so on. If I could work with a very small library ... or the general midi sounds... I could write my music much faster and just throw the midi files in the templates and finish everything.

[Thomas Van Beeck]

Alright
well I have Guitar pro 4 and 6, Sibelius 6.
Cubase SX3 and 5.
I run windows XP 32bit, Windows 7 64bit but I don't use that much (yet).
4GB ram
Amd athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5200+
Just a standard soundcard, but I mainly use my M-audio fast track pro (low latency!).

I was designing a template with the RSE in GP6, but they don't seem to have all orchestral instruments in the RSE library.
Next thing I thought was using some general midi sounds but it seems you can't use both RSE and general midi at the same time?
I don't like writing in Sibelius, writing in Cubase is ok for me as well, although I prefer Guitar Pro since I can work really fast with it.
I don't know if there is a possibility to run the Sibelius soundbanks in Cubase, like a VST plugin?
It doesn't have to sound good, but I just want to be able to write everything in one template instead of switching all the time.

[Jerry Tremblay]

I've had this problem too, that's actually how I fell on your post through Google, and I've found a solution that can sometimes fit.

The above screenshot is using Guitar Pro 5, so I imagine it's similar in GP6, but here's what you can do:

(from left to right): You've got the Track number, the name you give it, Solo, Mute, port number (mine above are all 1's), then you've got Channel 1 & 2 ( under Ch and Ch2 ). You can right click an existing on and "link" it to another one, this way you can free up some channels for tracks which you might want more control (such as volume and panning). Of course, it's not always the best solution, but in some cases, if you know 2 or 3 instruments can sit at the same panning spot (and volume), you might as well link them to free more space for the extra channels you'd want to pan around (or volume) independantly. Hope this helped.

 

[Thomas Van Beeck]

I currently only have GP4 installed, but have GP5 & 6 on my other machine.
If I try this in GP4, the linking works but the linked channels share the same instrument.

Is that what you mean? Or do you mean that linking them shares panning and volume but the instrument is different?
That would basically solve most of that problem for me, so I hope it is in GP5 :-)

Thanks for replying!

[Jerry Tremblay]

Oups. I just noticed that too (in GP5), sorry for the false hopes.

[Thomas Van Beeck]

No problem, atleast you took the effort to reply on this.
Welcome to the forum!

[Anthony Berlin]

Do you maybe by any chance use the NI versions of EWQL for your orchestra? Then, if you use 7200 rpm harddrives, or ssd harddrives, I have a great solution for you. But I won't bother writing it all down here if you don't have it :) It won't work with other libraries.

[Thomas Van Beeck]

I use PLAY version.

[Anthony Berlin]

Then I can't help you. The NI version has a DFI (Direct From Disc) feature, made by NI, and you can set it to load much of the instruments from the harddrive, which means less ram memory is used. It works pretty well and you can get around 14-15 sessions of the plugin loaded at the same time, all with 8 articulations each.

[Thomas Van Beeck]

I don't have a problem with loading all my stuff, I currently run a template with more than 130 midi tracks.
It's mainly that I wish to write my stuff in guitar pro (I'm really fast with it) and I don't have a problem with the general midi sounds, only problem is I can only use 16 of them at a time.
Thanks anyway.