Raspberry Pi Synthesizer

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Changing the Instrument

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Looks like I just need to change the SoundFont that I load when starting up FluidSynth. Each SoundFont contains a bunch of samples and information about how to play them depending on how hard the key is pressed. Does it also adapt to how the key is released?

Orchestral SoundFonts might be what I’m looking for. Is it better to use a cello Soundfont or something … generic like… I guess one of the generic MIDI soundfonts that are used to standardize the sound across systems.

Computer Game MIDI in the 1990s

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Man, this brings me back. It must’ve been in the 90s, my sister and I really liked the music from some of the computer games we played and managed to find MIDI files that would let us listen to the songs outside of the game. Must’ve been using Windows’ built-in MIDI player. I can’t even remember which computer game it was but I distinctly remember listening to a song we knew well using different software—perhaps on a different machine?—and it sounded… wrong. The notes were all there but the instruments sounded different so now know that it’s because it was using a different SoundFont.

Insect Wing

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A few updates so that I can draw both the left and right wing and export the image without the slider panel. I also added randomization of the root segment direction. It just adds a little more variety.

Right now I’m rendering the wing to two surfaces, flipping one, and blitting both to the screen. Technically I could get the VeinRenderer to accept a parameter to indicate whether it’s the left wing or the right wing and blit them both to a single surface.

Or just have it blit them both. I probably won’t ever need to blit just one wing anymore. No parameter needed.

I need to generate separate cross veins for the left and right wings anyway so it’s worth doing this step to move the logic for left and right wing into the VeinRenderer class.

It works! Minor differences in left and right wing cross veins!