Appendix D — General MIDI Program Numbers

The 128 instruments every GM soundfont provides, in the standard sixteen families. Programs are numbered 0–127 here, matching fs.program_select(channel, sfid, bank, program) — some references list them 1–128; if your soundfont seems off by one instrument, that’s why.

This is a reference for the optional FluidSynth path in Chapter 2. Neither album uses General MIDI: Sign-Off’s pitched sources are synthesized and The Quiet Hours plays prepared Salamander and VSCO samples. But a SoundFont is the fastest way to get a whole band making noise on a machine with nothing installed, and it’s an excellent sketchpad.

Bolded entries are a serviceable starting band — the handful I’d reach for first when roughing out an arrangement this way.

Program 120, Guitar Fret Noise, was the joke instrument of the sound-card era and is quietly one of the most useful things in the list. Sprinkle a few fret squeaks between chord changes, quiet and slightly early, and a stiff guitar part starts sounding like hands on strings — the same idea as Chapter 9’s performance stage, applied to a sound rather than a schedule. Programs 121–127 reward the same re-examination: Breath Noise is a wind-player’s byproduct waiting for exactly that trick.

The percussion exception. MIDI channel 10 (index 9) is traditionally percussion: note numbers select drums (35/36 kicks, 38/40 snares, 42/44/46 hats…) rather than pitches, and the program number selects a kit. This book’s records skip GM drums entirely in favour of Chapter 6’s real drum machine samples — but the channel-10 convention explains why a melody accidentally assigned there plays as drum hits, a rite of passage worth having named.

Reality check. GM defines the names; your soundfont defines the sounds. A well-regarded free set like GeneralUser GS holds up well across the instruments above, but quality across the full 128 varies enormously within any single soundfont, and two soundfonts can disagree completely about what program 89 ought to sound like. Audition before you trust one — a for-loop over candidate programs rendering the same phrase is Chapter 6’s kit audition, transposed, and it costs you about a minute.