Understanding MIDI

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kidkage

kidkage

Bored of Canada
I've began to understand MIDI more and more over the last few months.
Obviously the main thing is figuring out that MIDI controllers send out assigned messages to communicate with the corresponding software MIDI messages. But you already know that.
Once I figured that out I started to think that "Hey, I can map anything to anything?! MIDI is uhmazing!!!"
...but then I started to think -

"Hey... how do I find out the MIDI notes of all the different softwares ("softwares"? lol):confused:?"
Does each program have it's own chart or something telling you the notes?
...or is that where the difficulty of MIDI comes from?
 
It is, but the love afaire dies. I'm still searching for a decent midi guitar, but the problem isn't the guitar. It's me and MIDI, dam youuuuuuuu.
 
Well it really depends. With MIDI, you can program whatever note you want to whatever trigger you want. There are some standard conventions. Google General midi. That's kind of a default. From there though you can change things however you want.
 
most midi instruments have this info in their documentation, and in a .ins file, which contains info about all the banks and patches that instrument has.
 
All these things are carefully defined by the creators and owners of the MIDI specification.
MIDI is not an open standard like the standards for the Internet.
The specification can be bought from the MMA, not that most people need to, as most of it is publicly available.

Try here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI as a start.
Then, still in wiki, try "MIDI 1.0", then "General MIDI", as previously suggested, and finally "General MIDI Level 2".
On the first page you'll see a graphic, on the right, which can be expanded by clicking on it.
This gives all the MIDI note numbers.

That owner of the standard is known as the MMA which is short for the MIDI Manufacturers Association.
It is a huge group of the manufacturers of hardware and software from all around the world.
They have their own web site at midi.org/index.php where loads more info can be found. Put a www in front of that url.
For one, a complete table of all the MIDI controller codes.

Try here: midi.org/techspecs/midimessages.php again put a www in front of that.
The General MIDI instrument and percussion maps can be found here midi.org/techspecs/gm1sound.php#instrument

As far as 'notes' are concerned, they have defined that 'middle C' is MIDI note number 60.
Lower notes have lower numbers and vice versa.
When using 'notes' as 'keyswitches' within virtual instruments, then each sample library creator will publish those within the included documentation.

All the programs (should) follow these MMA defined standards. (All the ones that I have ever used (since about 1988) have done so.)

Any help?
SysExJohn.
 
Last edited:
Oh, sorry :o
missed the thread for a few days.

Yeah very helpful :D

Thanks everyone. I wondered why there are people that create and sell MIDI mappings if anyone can make them. Now I see that it's a convenience thing :p
I however prefer to spend my time rather than my money
 
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