You see them all over the internet... General Midi sequences. You wish you could play them thru your M/T Series synth but the M/T's aren't General Midi compatible and have several limitations to making them so... They can only receive on 8 Midi channels at once, they don't respond to General Midi's effects settings, they don't have General Midi's 128 patches, they don't have all the Multisounds needed to emulate all of the patches, the drums aren't mapped to GM specifications, you can't load General Midi songs into their sequencers, and General Midi songs played from an external sequencer will not play properly. Having said all that it's still possible, with a few modifications, for M/T Series Synths to do a respectable job of playing General Midi songs. OK, let's make the modifications. 
Drums - Drums need to be remapped to the GM spec. This can be easily done. There's just one problem... only 30 Multisounds can be mapped to a drum kit. That's less than what the GM spec calls for but in most cases this won't be a problem since the extra Multisounds needed to fill out the spec aren't used very often. Programs - Programs need to be remapped to the GM spec. This can only be done for the first 100 patches because M/T synth program banks are limited to 100... 28 short of the 128 needed for GM compatibility. Again, in most cases, this won't be a problem since the upper 28 patches are mostly sound effects anyway. Sure, you could route the upper 28 to another sound bank but the M/T synths don't have the Multisounds needed to emulate most of the sound effects anyway. Effects and Panning - Nothing you can do here. They don't respond to this type of GM data and that's that. Best thing you can do is make a general effects setting that can be used for most songs. Combinations - Combination Multi Mode is the preferred mode for playing back GM sequences from an external sequencer. You could do it in Sequencer mode but Combo mode has fewer drawbacks. The main problem with using Combo mode is that program changes sent on Midi Channel 1 will change the actual combination, not the program. To remedy this channel 1 should not be used. All channel 1 data should be rechanneled to another channel. Easy to do with most sequencers. The second problem is that these synths can only receive on 8 midi channels at once. If a sequence uses more than 8 channels of midi then tracks will have to be modified to share the same channel or be eliminated. Not a big deal in most cases. Internal Sequencer - These synths don't load GM sequences. You could sync them to an external sequencer and record the sequences into their sequencers. The M1 has a limited amount of sequencer memory though and in many cases not enough for an entire song... let alone several. T's have much more sequencer memory so I guess this is an option... though not an easy one. Below are links to all necessary sysex files needed to enable your synth to play General Midi songs. General Midi sequences are also included for demonstration purposes. Be sure to read the readme.txt file included with the zip for further instructions. | 
