Hello Sherry, yes, I am a newbie here and in sounds, since with my ears I could never hear more than 3 kHz, and when this even degraded to 1 kHz over the last 15 years I was lost to music. Now with a new Cochlear Implant I can hear up to 8 kHz, so music makes sense again. In our aging society this problem - while generally less extreme - is quite common. Thus I thought to use MidiNotate to learn "hearing by composing" and by listening to MIDI-music and comparing the sounds with what I see. If the music is too fast, I can slow it down, and if the sounds are too terrible, I can look for better sounds. I am just beginning to understand how to use better sounds. General Midi is horrible - even for me.

My main objection to most help-files is : For the beginner they are too general. What is needed is a simple "how to" method : Most people have either a Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, Win7) OS, or something from Apple. And there are only two or three typical sound-cards around. So if you would write a little booklet (online and expandable over time) on "what to do" about sounds - every single step in the "monkey see - monkey do" way, this would be helpful for both sides, since if something does not work, the users could tell you exactly at what point they encountered a difficulty. All general advice leaves the incompetent reader helpless with "what does Sherry speak of here ?". If readers got encouraged by some simple success ("ah, now I hear the new sound for the first time !"), the next steps will be easy.

So assume that I have MidiNotate available, and a soundcard with a GM bank too, and I want to tell my soundcard how to use new soundfonts in the *.wav-format. Where should I put the soundfonts so that the card can find and use them ? This is what I call the "monkey see - monkey do" way.

F.i., you wrote But what does "just load them into your soundcard" mean ? There is "start > settings > system controls > sound and media > soundcard etc., an then what to do ? Or there is a file "programs" on the systems-partition where to drop the new sounds in the soundcard subfolder ?

As you see, it is not at all clear for the layperson what to do - while it may be obvious for you !