General MIDI Instrument Set and Percussion Map Search Engine Home Page

General MIDI
Search Engine
Home Page

General MIDI is a standard subset of MIDI rules designed to ensure compatibility among different instruments. General MIDI instruments all store sounds in the same memory areas, and always use MIDI Channel 10 for percussion parts. They can all play at least 16 sounds at once, and have at least 24-note polyphony. The General MIDI standard has 128 sound sets and 47 percussion maps.

This page provides an easy means of identifying instruments when working with MIDI files. The information is provided in two forms, a table providing a list of all the sounds by channel and a search engine which allows you to determine what sound is assigned to a map number or to determine what number to use for a specific sound. The information is also split up between the instruments and the percussion sounds unique to channel 10, since they use overlapping numbers. You must have a javascript capable browser to successfully use the search engines. They have been tested to work with the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape.

To go to the tables or search engines, use the links below.

To go to the General MIDI Instrument Set Table click here.
To go to the General MIDI Instrument Set Search Engine click here.
To go to the General MIDI Percussion Map Table click here.
To go to the General MIDI Percussion Map Search Engine click here.

The tables and search engines are self-contained and can be copied locally onto your computer for use (you will lose the pictures and sound unless you copy them too, but it will still work). This webpage is free for your personal use, but it is copyrighted, the copyright information must be retained on any copy, and appropriate permission must be obtained for any other use.

The title, design, and content of these web pages is
Copyright 1998-2007 by W. J. Harnden, Jr., all rights reserved.

Last updated on 5/25/07.

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