A Sound module (sometimes referred to as tone generator) is an electronic musical instrument without a human-playable interface such as a keyboard, for example. Sound modules have to be "played" using an externally connected device. The external device may be a controller, which is a device that provides the human-playable interface and may or may not produce sounds of its own, or a sequencer, which is computer hardware or software designed to play electronic musical instruments. Connections between sound modules, controllers, and sequencers are generally made with MIDI, which is a standardized protocol designed for this purpose. An electronic musical instrument is a musical instrument that produces its sounds using electronics. ... Hello People who love keyboards!!!!!!!!!!!! Headline text This article is about keyboards on musical instruments. ... A device, real or virtual, which generates and transmits MIDI data for operating musical devices or other devices which are electronically enabled for MIDI operation. ... In the field of electronic music, a sequencer was originally any device that recorded and played back a sequence of control information for an electronic musical instrument. ... Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, is a system designed to transmit information between electronic musical instruments. ...

Sound modules may use any number of technologies to produce their sounds. A sound module may be a synthesizer, a sampler, a digital piano, or a rompler. A synthesizer (spelling var. ... An AKAI MPC2000 sampler // Overview The emergence of the digital sampler made sampling far more practical, and as samplers added progressively more digital processing to their recorded sounds, they began to merge into the mainstream of modern digital synthesizers. ... A digital piano is a modern electronic musical instrument designed to serve primarily as an alternative to a traditional piano, both in the way it feels to play and in the sound produced. ... Rompler is a nickname for an electronic musical instrument that specializes in the playback of samples stored in ROM chips. ...

Drum modules are sound modules which specialize in percussion sounds. Drum modules may be triggered by external trigger pads or pickups as well as through MIDI. Drum modules are distinguished from drum machines through their lack of dedicated on-board triggers and lack of an integrated sequencer. Percussion instruments are music instruments played by being struck, shaken, rubbed or scraped, hence the percussive name. ... A Boss DR-202 Drum Machine A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument designed to imitate the sound of drums and/or other percussion instruments. ...

Sound modules are often rack-mountable, but might also have a table-top form factor. Equipment mounted in several 19-inch racks. ... Form factor refers to the linear dimensions and configuration of a device as distinguished from other measures of size (for example Gigabytes; a measure of storage size): in computing, form factor is used to describe the size and format of PC motherboards (see AT, ATX, BTX), but also of hard...

A sound module has the same advantages over a fully-integrated instrument as does any system with a modularized design:

• Cost — a sound module is cheaper than a comparable instrument equipped with a controller
• Space — a sound module takes up less room than an instrument equipped with a controller
• Obsolescence cycles — when it becomes obsolete, a sound module can be replaced without changing a favorite controller, or vice versa.

Because most electronic instruments are designed in a modularized way, manufacturers often release a sound module version of their fully-integrated instruments. A sound module may have all the other features of the controller-equipped version, but it often has a smaller display or limited programming controls. In this case, sounds can be loaded through MIDI or external media. In some cases, sound modules have expanded capacity for sounds in comparison to the controller-equipped version.

Hardware sound modules have in recent years been replaced to a large extent with software equivalents. A software synthesizer, also known as a softsynth or virtual instrument is a computer program for digital audio generation. ...

Notable sound modules

• Yamaha TX16W (1988), sound module with an ability to boot OS from diskette; known particularly well for having a third-party OS codenamed Typhoon 2000 by NuEdge Development, a group of hackers who were dissatisfied with original OS.
• Roland Sound Canvas series (1991), first sound module to implement General MIDI standard with GS extensions.

The Yamaha TX16W is a rack mount sampler sound module made by Yamaha. ... An operating system (OS) is a software program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ... Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas The Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas is a MIDI synthesizer module released in 1991 by Roland Corporation. ... General MIDI is a specification for synthesizers which imposes several requirements beyond the more abstract MIDI standard. ... Roland GS, or just GS, sometimes vaguely transcribed as General Standard, is an extension of General MIDI specification. ...

External Links

• Introduction to Sound Modules at Sweetwater.com