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Sound Effects
User Tip #: 63 Offered By: Hugh Marlor Last Modified: N/A

Suppose you are creating a song called Night Train that is a song about a train traveling through the night. Wouldn't it be nice to have a train coming down the track "sound" at the start of the song? Roland Digital pianos come with a list in the back of the manual called the "Expansion Tone List".  Using this list and the NWC "Instrument Patch Command" you can access all sorts of sounds (i.e. any sound that the piano will make - even if it is not in the General GS Sound List). Here is what you do:

Create a NWC file with three staffs (Treble, Bass, Treble).

Add your notes for the Right and left hands in the top treble and bass clefs but leave yourself 2-3 measures of whole measure rests (for the train sound).

In the bottom Treble staff add some notes (see train.nwc - 1K). For a train sound the higher the note the "faster" the train wheel rotation.  If you want the train to continue through a measure just "tie" the notes together.

You can do this with any of the sounds in a Roland Piano/Instrument. You just need to look up the "Tone List" page.  Roland posts some of these on the Web at http://www.rolandus.com but the specific Controller 0 "numbers" are different for each piano.

My guess is that all manufacturers have this same ability since I think all that is really happening is that you are sending bank select and program change messages that might be specific for a particular instrument. In other words this is a really good way to demonstrate and document what you can do with the Insert: Instrument Patch command.

I hope this is helpful to someone.  Adding these sounds has been really fun for midi lesson files created for teaching kids (and of course adults).