Re: Setting the midiInstrument to "woodblock" ruins the woodblock sound?

[Lukas-Fabian Moser]

Hi Kevin,

Thinking I was doing the "right thing" I added `\set
Staff.midiInstrument = "woodblock"`
to a "metronome" snippet. I was puzzled when wbh and wbl sounded identical. Lo
and behold, when I removed it, the two sounded quite different.
This seems very counterintuitive and confusing to me. Why would telling it the
instrument o use break it?

%%%% Fails %%%%
metronome = {
   \global
   \set Staff.midiInstrument = "woodblock"
   \drummode {
     \repeat volta 66 {
       wbh4 wbl4 wbl4 wbl4
     }
   }
}

%%%% Works %%%%
metronome = {
   \global
   \drummode {
     \repeat volta 66 {
       wbh4 wbl4 wbl4 wbl4
     }
   }
}

I'm not an expert on this, but if I understand the MIDI world correctly, 
then

- \drummode creates drum sounds from the MIDI channel 10 drum world 
(where each 'pitch' encodes a different drum instrument),

- Setting midiInstrument to "woodblock" selects woodblock as an 
instrument from the same category as piano or cello, in particular, not 
the woodblock sound from the channel 10 drum collection.

So from this point of view, the behaviour you observed is not surprising 
I think.

Lukas