Where are the Renaissance instruments in General Midi soundcards?
The short answer is that there aren’t any. Even modern instruments with the same name often have a subtly different sound. But then even the best wavetable sound cards have a different sound from actual modern instruments, and with a bit of picking and choosing, it is possible to get a “Renaissance” sound, at least from my Ensoniq Soundscape. Some general principles: • Look for substitutions in families of instruments that make sound in the same way. For example, bagpipes, oboes, and reed organs are very different instruments, but they all rely on reeds. You could not easily play organ music on a bagpipe, but if you assign the bagpipe patch to an organ score, it will sound unusual, but not bizarre. • Use patches outside of the natural frequency range of the instrument. You can’t, for example, easily play treble on a contrabass or bass on a piccolo, but the patches have qualities that may mimic early instruments. A french horn played low, for example, is similar to the sound of the Rena
