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Name: Dave Barnes
Category: Sequencing
Well I'll try to help -- Others please chime in also, please...
On guitar and other string types of fill-in instruments: Whenever I can get them, I prefer scores that show the guitar parts and other parts specifically, but like you said, they are hard to find. One place has some of them -- Hal Leonard Music -- they have an online presence -- do a search for them... My Beatles pieces are from a score book that was great, as were the Steely Dan sequences. All of my Billy Joel and others are from piano scores. I prefer piano scores with chords -- which is quite common in music stores. I don't have an easy answer for you on adding the parts. I am principally a guitar player (over 30 years now), so I hear guitar and other accompaniments because that's what I'm familiar with.... I've played so long that I know exactly how I want the guitar to sound like -- and keep at it until I get it. Chord structure differs between keyboards and guitars (and violins and banjos, etc, etc) because of the voicings available on the instruments. Hard to explain unless you study the instuments you're trying to represent via midi. I know that horn parts are hard to mimic -- I also play saxophone and know if you only have four saxes in a section, you can't have eight-part harmonies... If you do, it sounds like a keyboard playing a sax sound -- get the idea?
On changing pitch on held notes -- there is the pitch bend controllerthat has a numeric range of minus 8191 to positive 8191. The range of the pitch bend is default 2 semitones up or down for the full bend value, but can be adjusted to 2 octaves up and down. The adjustment is done via RPN (Registered Parameter Numbers). It's a bit technical, but if you want to go more than the default +-2 semitones, you'll have to learn about it. RPN's are set with MSB and LSB (Most Significant Bits and Least Most Significant Bits), then a data command setting the bend range -- you may want to get a book on this.... There are also good primers on this if you search the net...
Another good way to investigate this is to take a midi sequence that you know has a pitch bend in it like the guitar part from my version of Aja on my Steely Dan page and load it into your sequncing software and take a look at how the process is done by examining the track in the event list -- you won't see it in any piano-roll type of window....
Good Luck -- If anyone else has more help -- please add a note...
Dave