Choose sounds and shape your loop

Voices that carry a loop

The instrument picker includes sounds such as Wurlitzer EP200, Black Fingered Bass, Etherealwinds Harp, and VSCO strings, brass, and winds. The instrument picker shows those names and searches them alongside the GM catalog. Filter by family, pause playback, then use arrow keys to preview and Enter to choose. Bass previews use a low register; pipe instruments use a higher one.

The role choices are starting points, not quality measurements. The current MuseScore General 0.2.0 and SpessaSynth release includes 40 sampled melodic overrides. Audition each part in context. gm:N is the conventional 1-based General MIDI number; the stored program is N − 1.

Drum kits

Choose from twelve drum kits. Their CLI program numbers are: Acoustic 0, Room 8, Lo-fi 9, Breaks 10, Techno 11, House 13, Rock 16, Electronic 24, 808 25, 909 30, Orchestra 48, Ethnic 49. Every kit answers on every percussion pitch. Playing a closed, pedal, or open hi-hat cuts off the previous hi-hat sound.

Loop size and limits

• BPM 40 to 240; pitch 0 to 127 (C4 is 60); velocity 1 to 127; bars 1 to 16; swing 0 to 100.
• Canonical bytes are the binding limit: 24,493 per loop. The event cap (832) is secondary; soundfish analyze prints bytes used and lint warns above 80%.
• A loop is one idea that repeats. A song is sections that differ in arrangement, built from loops that share one tempo, one swing, and one track roster.

Balance the parts

Try alternating strong and soft hi-hats, keeping bass below the chords, and changing one part near the end of the loop. Lower track volumes if the mix feels crowded. Keep reverb and delay light on kick and bass. These are musical suggestions, not requirements.

Reference files

The Soundfish skill includes these references. Open a file for instrument numbers, drum maps, mixing examples, or CLI instructions.

• gm-programs.md: Every General MIDI program with a mark for how it sounds in this release and a table of first choices per role.
• drums.md: The percussion map with compose aliases, the twelve drum kits and their GS programs, default rows per kit, and velocity habits.
• mixing.md: Register per role, accents, volume and headroom, sends and returns, delay presets, pan, cutoff, swing, and the byte budget.
• critique.md: The twelve-line rubric a loop is read against, aligned with the lint codes and the verb that fixes each.
• cli.md: CLI procedure: exit codes, stdin rules, operations, templates, songs, export and import, and the local song importer.

Genres

• house: House: a compose skeleton, a before-and-after transform pair, and the stage order.
• boom-bap: Boom bap: a compose skeleton, a before-and-after transform pair, and the stage order.
• half-time: Half time: a compose skeleton, a before-and-after transform pair, and the stage order.
• breakbeat: Breakbeat and jungle: a compose skeleton, a before-and-after transform pair, and the stage order.
• jazz: Jazz: a compose skeleton, a before-and-after transform pair, and the stage order.
• orchestral: Orchestral: a compose skeleton, a before-and-after transform pair, and the stage order.

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