gm/gs

Purpose

Roland's GS dialect predates GM2 and uses Bank-Select LSB (CC 32) to select instrument variations on top of the GM1 base programs. The variation values differ from GM2 (Roland's "Capital Tones" sit at LSB 8, 16, 24, ...; GM2 uses 1, 2, 3, ...), so a separate dialect-specific table is necessary — sharing a table would mis-name patches on the wrong dialect.

This module exposes GS_VARIATIONS covering the most commonly supported Capital Tones plus a handful of frequently-quoted variations from the GS bank-select map. Engines aiming at full GS compatibility layer additional entries via the frozen-object idiom.

Features

GS_VARIATIONS frozen map keyed by program * 256 + bankLsb.
Covers Roland's Capital Tones and the most commonly cited GS variation banks.
Designed to compose with the gm2Key helper from ./level2.ts.
Strict Object.freeze for safe extension via spread.

Usage: Basic

import { GS_VARIATIONS, gm2Key } from "@suaveplan/midi";

console.log(GS_VARIATIONS[gm2Key(0, 8)]); // "Piano 1w"
console.log(GS_VARIATIONS[gm2Key(40, 0)]); // undefined → fall back to GM1

Usage: Advanced

import {
  GM_LEVEL1_PATCHES,
  GS_VARIATIONS,
  gm2Key,
} from "@suaveplan/midi";

function gsPatchName(program: number, bankLsb: number): string {
  return (
    GS_VARIATIONS[gm2Key(program, bankLsb)] ??
    GM_LEVEL1_PATCHES[program] ??
    `Program ${program}`
  );
}

API Reference

GS_VARIATIONS: Readonly<Record<number, string>> — frozen map; same key encoding as GM_LEVEL2_VARIATIONS.

Implementation Notes

GS uses Bank LSB (CC 32) for variation selection — the opposite of XG which uses Bank MSB. Mixing the two on the same instance leads to silent mis-naming; consumers picking a dialect should choose at engine-construction time, not per-message. The table is intentionally a curated subset; full GS coverage (~480 entries) lives in downstream SoundFont rendering packages that map their own GS-format banks to display names.

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