File Formats ⇝ General MIDI Level 2

General MIDI Level 2 is a specification tat was released by the MIDI Manufacturer's Association in 1999. It is based on the earlier General MIDI specification, but includes many enhancements.

Device Capabilities

GM Level 2 mandates that all compatible devices support:

32 notes of polyphony
16 MIDI channels
16-part multitimbral
2-part multitimbral percussion
Chorus and reverb effects

Instruments

Level 2 builds on GM by adding another 128 instruments to the core set. These sounds are in "variation banks" with the same patch number as GM1. For instance, patch #1, "Acoustic Grand Piano" has the bank 1 variation "Wide Acoustic rand" and bank 2 variation "Dark Acoustic Grand".

See here for the full General MIDI 2 instrument list.

The number of variation banks vary by instrument and some instruments such as the Celesta and Glockenspiel don't have variation banks specified.

Some instrument names have changed. For the most part they are the same instruments, but some have changed names enough that they might result in different sounds than a level 1 sound set:

#5: Electric Piano 1 is now Rhodes Piano
#6: Electric Piano 2 is now Chorused Electric Piano
#16: Dulcimer is now Santur
#17: Drawbar Organ is now Hammond Organ
#22: Accordion is now French Accordion
#24: Tango Accordion is now Bandoneon
#50: String Ensemble 2 is now Slow String Ensemble
#55: Synth Voice is now Synth Choir
#86: Lead 6 (voice) is now Solo Synth Vox
#87: Lead 7 (fifths) is now 5th Saw Wave
#92: Pad 4 (choir) is now Space Voice Pad
#93: Pad 5 (bowed) is now Bowed Glass Pad
#97: FX 1 (rain) is now Ice Rain
#103: FX 7 (echoes) is now Echo Drops
#104: FX 8 (sci-fi) is now Star Theme

Drum Kits

Drum sounds are based on Roland GS.

These kits are:

#1 Standard Kit (same as General MIDI 1)
#9 Room Kit
#17 Power Kit
#25 Electronic Kit
#26 TR-808 Kit
#33 Jazz Kit
#41 Brush Kit
#49 Orchestra Kit
#57 Sound FX Kit

Drum Notes

These added drum notes are based on Roland GS.

#27 High Q
#28 Slap
#29 Scratch Push
#30 Scratch Pull
#31 Sticks
#32 Square Click
#33 Metronome Click
#34 Metronome Bell
#82 Shaker
#83 Jingle Bell
#84 Belltree
#85 Castanets
#86 Mute Surdo
#87 Open Surdo

See here for the full General MIDI 2 drum list.

New Control Changes

GM2 adds a few control change messages:

#71 Filter Resonance
#72 Release Time
#73 Attack Time
#74 Brightness
#75 Decay Time
#76 Vibrato Rate
#77 Vibrato Depth
#78 Vibrato Delay

In addition to the added control changes, sysex messages have been added to control the parameters for reverb and chorus effects. It also added key-based instrument controllers so that the different drums in a drum map can have different pan, chorus, reverb, or volume settings.