change instrument on a midi track?

I’m missing something…I’d like to change the MIDI instrument plugin on a MIDI track, but I can’t find an easy way to do it. My workaround is to delete the track and create a new one, choosing the synth plugin when I create it.

You’re not missing anything. It is a very notable feature that needs to be added, and will be shortly.

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Thanks Paul! Good to know it wasn’t just me.

you can change the plugin that is being used on the mixer page, if your using calf fluid synth you can open up the plugin gui and change the intrument or even the soundfont that is being used.

If you are using calf fluid sunth with a sound font that has multiple sounds in it, then it may be possible to automate the plugin parameters so that it changes instrumemt during playback but im not sure.

But from your post what i think you are trying to do is change on a track, which you can do on the mixer page, even with midi tracks just like you do with a regular track. you right click in the plugins area on the track and go to plugins manager. and it will list all plugins. you will need to filter them to only show midi otherwise you will be scrolling through a lot of plugins.

Thanks, veda, you’ve almost got my meaning. Yes I can change plugins; but not MIDI instruments, whether from a track or the mixer. As Paul indicated above, this is not currently do-able. Which is okay- just a minor hassle.

Hi do we have any change to that ability of ardour to change instrument to the midi?

You can simply replace the synth plugin in the mixer. Also when loading a second synth plugin, Ardour ask if to replace the existing instrument plugin.

I’m not sure if that answers your question though.

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Hi I found a solution to my problem. I used a-Fluid Synth and I downloaded a library with free drum kit from here and now I am experimenting with them.
But Now I have 2 problems. First the latency is big and I can not play and here the sound from ardour.(I guess the solution is when to record to listen from the sounds directly from the drum kit)I don’t know if it is possible to minimize the latency .
And the other thing that I want to do is to have every midi input of the drum kit to different midi channel So that way it will me easier to change the sound only of one part of the drum kit and it will be more clear to me where is every thing. For example it the kick to be in a different midi channel from the snare. It would be really helpful if someone could help me with that. Thank you.

Has this feature been added yet? I am attempting to adjust the instruments on a pre-made midi track for a client and I’d like to be able to do it in this software

Since Ardour 5.0 adding a new synth plugin to a MIDI track will ask you to replace an existing instrument plugin.

As opposed to simply removing and loading a new plugin this feature allows to do this in one step and also retain custom routing (pin-connections, multi-out mapping if there’s any).

However, there is no midi-event mapping provided by Ardour itself.

If the goal is to map note-events, you have to resort to use a plugin. That could either be a rule-based https://github.com/x42/midimap.lv2 or a Lua script: https://github.com/Ardour/ardour/blob/master/scripts/_midifilter.lua is a basic example.

What you’re asking about is completely different from what this 4 year old question was actually about.

The question is about changing the instrument plugin.

This is completely orthogonal to and independent from changing the instrument specified in the MIDI data (which technically is just a patch/bank change command).

I ran across this oldish thread and would like to point out for people like me who are still looking for a solution, there is indeed one, by using Robin’s x42 Midi Channel map plugin. The channel mapping can be automated. Yeah, Robin - you do amazing stuff. Thanks.

midi is pretty complex, it could also depend on the workflow as multiple ‘program changes’ and different channels can be recorded within the same track session… midi support is already versatile within ardour so I guess that plugin must be used sparringly for occassions that specially need it as some kind of workaround…

So, I am unclear if the original problem has been addressed in Ardour (now Ardour 6)?

To repeat it:

Is it possible to change the MIDI instrument plugin on a MIDI track or is it still necessary to delete the track and create a new one ?

There has never been the need to delete a track to change the instrument.

You can just remove the instrument plugin (select + delete the plugin on the mixer strip) and load a different one.

Or simply directly load a different plugin. Ardour (already since version 5.0) asks if to replace the existing instrument instead of just adding the plugin.

Yes forsure. Doubleclick in the mixer strip of your track and choose your instrument.

You will be prompted to keep or replace the old plugin, so you will obv select replace .

I was actually quoting Paul’s answer above…but OK. It’s great to know it is possible.