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Exporting Midi from Hookpad to FL Studio - Instrument issue?

product questions
#1

Whenever I export a midi of a complete song, from Hookpad to Fl Studios, I discover that Fl Studios is playing the song with different instruments. So, for example, if am using Clean Electric Guitar in Hookpad, it typically shows up as an Acoustic Piano on Fl Studios. Obviously, I can solve the problem on FL Studio by taking the time to change every instrument proposed by FL Studios to something resembling the original Hookpad instrument. As you can imagine this can be time -consuming if the song involves many instruments.

My question …is there anything that can be done to automatically have the Hookpad instruments accurately reproduced on Fl Studios? Is it a problem on other DAWs?

PS. In case it’s relevant to my question, FYI, I’m using Hookpad Plus (which I love) and version 20 of FL Studios.

#2

Hi, I can understand your frustration. I’m no FL user but perhaps we can figure something out. Do you know how FL Studio decides which instruments to pick if you load in a midi file? Does it try to recognise the name of the midi tracks and then select instruments or does it just select a few instruments so that you hear at lease something when pressing play.

Do you get different instruments for different midi file?

Regards, Dennis

#3

Hi Dennis, Thank you for helping me take on this challenge.

As for the questions you ask…FL Studios faithfully records the titles of the instruments used by Hookpad and the notes.

But apart from the drums, it seems that every instrument becomes an ACOUSTIC PIANO.

Multiple midis produce the same results…always an ACOUSTIC PIANO.

#5

Having done more research into Midi Software
I now believe that Hookpad could include the instrumentation we have used and which would be recognized by FL Studios and all other DAWs.

So Dennis it appears you were correct when you stated you “can figure something out.”

Presumably it would be a case of matching Hookpad’s Instruments against the standard 128 instruments in the midi listing, (plus Drums) and then including the midi code number:

FF 04 len text Instrument Name

I recognize that what started out as a request for product information, has now turned into a feature request. That said, I do hope this is something you can add, as the time savings in the songwriters/producers work flow would be substantial! In every other respect Hookpad leads to dramatic productivity improvements., It seems a shame to spoil it, especially as the instrument information is readily available. Thank you for your consideration.

PS. **You may be a drummer, but as you can probably tell, I’m NO software engineer, and usually underestimate the effort involved. So I apologize in advance for that.

#6

Yes, it should be possible. It might take some time, but I’m pretty sure we can make that happen. Thanks for the great idea!

#7

That’s really good news!

And I love the way that Hookpad listens to its customers and responds positively.

I look forward to playing my Hookpad creations on my DAWs and actually recognizing them!

#8

basically mapping classes of instruments to the “General MIDI” list of instruments should do it. the list has been in existences for ~40 years now and almost all programs can use it. and mapping variations of common instruments should find something “close enough” to the instrument in Hookpad. I’m using Cakewalk by Bandlab and so far it does a decent job of selecting General MIDI instruments from the name, but having a number mapped would ensure it’s working as expected across many platforms.
General MIDI Instrument List | Sound Programming

#9

Yes that’s true, thanks for the list!