User Manual

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MIDI Basics

1. What’s MIDI? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. What You Can Do With MIDI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

3. MIDI Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

4. MIDI Messages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1. What’s MIDI?

MIDI is an acronym that stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a technology that allows

electronic musical instruments to communicate with each other, by sending and receiving performance infor-

mation.

Just what do we mean by “performance information”? Let’s consider what happens when a pianist per-

forms.

The pianist presses a key on a piano or presses a pedal.

These actions are instances of “performance information” and

reﬂect how the pianist played the instrument. MIDI is used to

capture and express this information electronically. When you

strongly play middle C on a MIDI keyboard, MIDI indicates the

key number as 60, and the strength of playing as 120, for exam-

ple. In this way, MIDI precisely describes your performance infor-

mation in digital form.

This performance information—MIDI data—can be

transmitted between MIDI-compatible musical instruments, or

saved as a ﬁle for later playback. No matter what instrument or

computer you use, the MIDI data will reproduce the original per-

formance exactly the same. (Keep in mind that the actual sound

of the performance may differ from instrument to instrument—

for example, the acoustic piano sound on one instrument may

sound more full and rich than on another—but the basic perfor-

mance will be identical.)

The MIDI data saved as a ﬁle can easily be changed. For

example, you can change an incorrectly played note to the cor-

rect one, change the song tempo, transpose the song to a desired

key, etc. This feature of MIDI is very effective for creating a song

or practicing with a musical instrument.

Summary of content (4 pages)

PAGE 1
MIDI Basics 1. What’s MIDI? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2. What You Can Do With MIDI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. MIDI Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. MIDI Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.
PAGE 2
. What You Can Do With MIDI By connecting multiple MIDI devices (musical instruments and/or computer) with a cable, the MIDI data can be transmitted and received. For example, if you record your keyboard performance as a MIDI data, the recorded data can be transmitted to another instrument (or computer) and played back on it. You can even edit that data on the computer. You can also buy MIDI data (computer files) of your favorite songs from Internet websites (such as yamahamusicsoft.
PAGE 3
. MIDI Channels MIDI performance data is assigned to one of sixteen MIDI channels. Using these channels, 1–16, the performance data for sixteen different instrument parts can be simultaneously sent over one cable. For example, when you play a song on your keyboard, the song contains many parts—right-hand part, lefthand part, rhythm part, bass part, etc. On most instruments, different MIDI channels are assigned automatically to each part.
PAGE 4
. MIDI Messages MIDI data (messages) can be divided into two groups: Channel messages and System messages. The following explanation shows an example of MIDI messages. For more details about MIDI messages—for example, when you want to edit the recorded MIDI data—please refer to any of the fine MIDI guidebooks that are commercially available. ■ Channel Messages When you perform on a MIDI instrument, the following messages are generated.