MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE)

[DM60]

Too much to explain here, but I just learned of this as a part of the new MIDI standard. For those of you who use MIDI but might not be aware. Something to look into when looking for MIDI plugins in the future.

If this has already been discussed, my apologies. But it looks like a good addition to MIDI. Not all DAWs or plugins support, so check both software applications (DAW and Plugin). You can read more about it to see if you even care

 

[rob aylestone]

Cubase has had MPE for three, maybe four years and it's pretty well integrated. I don't have any sending devices that use it, but I guess one day I'll buy something. The Cubase community seem quite happy with it. The key issue from the announcement back in 2018 was how editing would work - as in when you move notes, or quantise them, would the individual note channels remain locked together. What I heard was that it was kind of an anticlimax- it just worked fine. I'm by no means an expert on what happens inside the DAWs, but my understanding is that all our continual talk of MIDI has been a bit out of date for a while - in so much as the DAWs read incoming MIDI data, and will chuck it out again but inside the system, it's just data from the moment - you split it out to a synth or sampler or other gizmo. Continuous controller data gets processed, as do the note ons and off and velocities, pitch bends and aftertouch data. Unless it actually needs to leave the DAW, it's not really MIDI data. I think things started to get done differently as soon as we connected gear by USB cables and not DIN cables. That was the MIDI 1.0 standard, so it's been bent and twisted quite a bit really.