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Guide to MIDI (part II)

In part II we explain how to use MIDI in practice

In the first instalment of our Guide To MIDI , we saw how MIDI can be basically considered as just a remote control system for keyboards. The simplest way to understand it is that it lets you do everything you can do to a synth or module from the panel, only at a distance. You can press keys on the keyboard remotely, waggle waggly things, slide sliders, push buttons, change sounds and even reprogram all the patches, if you have a computer or other data storage system. Whenever you do any of these things on a MIDI-equipped synth MIDI messages are sent out of the MIDI Out socket on the back. If you connect this to a MIDI In socket on another synth, the second synth will respond to the messages just as if you were fiddling, keying, button-pushing and waggling it directly. There are two levels at which MIDI works. The first, called System Common, is designed to be compatible with any synth. Sys Common messages include things like key presses on the keyboard, modulation and pitchbend controls. Hit a note on a Roland synth, and the Sys Common standard means that any other synth will respond to it, whether it's made by Yamaha, Korg, Access, or that kid from school you used to know who now builds bass synths in his spare time. Sys Common is the part of the MIDI standard that gets used the most. To make a sequencer, all you need to do is record Sys Common messages in a computer, with a tag that tells you at what point in time they happened. If the computer spits out the same messages in the same sequence (hence the name) you'll get the original performance back. Only this time it's the computer playing the synth, rather than you. In fact Sys Common is so, er, common, that the name is taken for granted and hardly ever used in manuals. MIDI of the road The second level, called System Exclusive, is specific to certain synths. Or sometimes synth families. SysEx - as it's known - deals with the numbers that define the sounds a synth can make. Because all synths are slightly different, these numbers are arranged in different formats, and there's no easy way to convert them from one synth to another. So SysEx is mostly used for saving and loading all the memories in a synth in one go; a process known, rather graphically, as a SysEx dump. SysEx is sometimes used to reprogram sounds on the fly, but that's a slightly fiddly and risky pastime and generally gets filed under the 'expert MIDI user' heading. SysEx is also related to the MIDI Sample Dump standard; a tedious and insane way to send samples from a computer to a sampler. Sample Dump is so incredibly slow as to be almost useless. And I'm only mentioning it here for completeness, and because if I don't mention I know Mr Angry from Middle Wallop will write in telling me I don't have a clue what I'm on about. Actually, there's a third sort of MIDI message called System Real Time. This keeps things that need a time reference - sequencers, and systems that work with digital audio or tape - locked in sync. Sys Real Time comes in two flavours. There's MIDI Clock, which includes Start, Stop and Pause messages and sends a regular metronome-like tick down a MIDI cable. When MIDI first arrived, MIDI Clock was all that was needed. But the problem with it is that it doesn't let you start a sequence in the middle. There's no information about bars and beats; simply start, stop and tempo. So MIDI Time Code (MTC) is sometimes used as an alternative. This includes full position information and it's compatible with tape and with hard-disk recorders. You can start a song anywhere, and anything that can make sense of MTC will lock to it within a second or two. Very useful. MIDI sensitivity Sys Real Time also includes an obscure MIDI feature called Active Sensing, which is worth knowing about. When MIDI first arrived, you could do totally pointless things with it like link two synths together, play a chord, unplug the

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MIDI line, and then have the chord sustain forever. One of MIDI's problems is that it's prone to stuck notes. If a note on message doesn't get a corresponding note off message, it will play for ever. This is bad enough in a studio, but live - if, say, someone trips over a lead and pulls it out mid sequence (as if that's ever going to happen to you... famous last words) - it can be a seriously bad thing. Active Sensing checks for this by sending a digital blip to a receiving synth a few times a second. If the blip doesn't arrive, the synth assumes the MIDI line has been unplugged and kills any hanging notes. (Usually with a rather pathetic 'Nnnnng' sort of sound.) So that's an outline of the theory. How does it all hang together in practice? Plugged in and ready to rock On the back of every modern synth you'll see two or sometimes three sockets. The sockets themselves are known as five-pin DIN. The 'five-pin' bit is easy and refers to the fact that they, er, have five pins. The 'DIN' bit, well that's because these sockets are made to a German standard known as the Deutsche something complicated or other (two words obviously starting with 'I' and 'N'), which you don't need to remember. Hey, I certainly can't, so why should you? MIDI leads have plugs that fit into these sockets. Some hi-fi systems also use the same kinds of five-pin DIN leads. It's worth knowing that you shouldn't use these for a MIDI system, even though they're cheaper and easier to get hold of. The problem is that in a proper MIDI cable - the kind a music shop will sell you - only three of the pins are connected to anything. In a hi-fi cable all five pins are connected. When you use a hi-fi lead in a MIDI set-up, you can sometimes get clicking or rasping noises breaking through to the audio. This is bad. Proper MIDI cables can help avoid this. With that out of the way, let's look at the world's simplest MIDI connection. You have a synth (let's say it's an Aardvark Gigaplex 2000) and a synth module (a SuperBarg DJX Pro) and you want to connect them together. To make this happen, plug a lead into the MIDI Out on the Aardvark, plug it into the MIDI In on the SuperBarg, and Robert is your father's very close biological relative. So, what about that other socket marked MIDI Thru? Well, that's just a straight copy of what comes in through the In socket and is used to daisychain synths together in a long line. We'll come to that in a minute. If you're lucky, when you play notes on the Aardvark's keyboard, the SuperBarg will respond with some noise. Only sometimes it won't. You're sending Sys Common messages from one to the other, so why not? Well, there's another complication. Sys Common messages are always sent on one of 16 channels which work very much like radio or TV stations. The sender always sends on one channel, and the receiver has to be 'tuned' into that channel or it won't be able to see or hear anything. Let's say the Aardvark is sending on - now, let's see - Channel 1. If the SuperBarg has been set up to receive on Channel 2, it will ignore the Aardvark completely. Set it up to receive on 1 though, and it will spring into life, serenading you with sound as you plink the keys on the Aardvark. Just like magic. (Where's Paul Daniels when you need him?) Most synths have a button marked 'MIDI' somewhere on the panel where you can set up things like send and receive channels. Sometimes you'll see a receive channel setting called Omni. This means that channels are ignored, and the synth will make a noise, no matter what channel the notes have been sent on. When MIDI was first invented, synths were crude unwieldy things that could only make one kind of sound at once. If you wanted a massed synth orchestra, you'd buy 16 synths, connect them all together In -> Thru -> In -> Thru (etc), set them up to receive on separate channels, and then you'd be able to control them all with a single MIDI OUT from a computer or other sequencer. This kind of multitimbral operation (as it's known) seemed cool at the time, but as synths improved it became possible to fit all of those synths inside a single box. So one single keyboard or module could eat up enough information for all 16 MIDI channels. Suddenly a single MIDI Out wasn't enough. So before long, computers started sprouting multiple MIDI Out sockets. Each one gives you up to 16 channels to play with. And some computers also give you multiple MIDI In sockets. These are useful if you have two different keyboards as the computer can merge information from each one. It's also useful if you use SysEx messages to store bulk dumps of patch information. You can record a bulk dump directly without needing to swap cables.

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Multiple MIDI But there's another, more subtle advantage to using multiple MIDI outs, which has to do with timing accuracy. If you actually try to send 16 busy synth lines down a single MIDI cable, you'll hear all kinds of nastiness happening. MIDI just isn't fast enough to cope. Drum parts and block chords can get smeared out, especially if they're on the start of a beat. Throw in a lot of modulation and controller messages, and MIDI really starts to get out of its depth. But if you split those parts up between different synths on different MIDI connections, each connection can give it its full attention, and the music sounds cleaner and tighter as a result. You can get the extreme version of this if you use a multiple MIDI interface like the MotU Midi Timepiece. With eight ins and outs you can connect up to eight synths to a computer, control them all independently, send and receive SysEx to and from any of them, and generally have a large sea-dwelling mammal of a time. Big studios have a handful of these multi-way interfaces all working together, giving independent access to every synth in the place. Messages Here's the list of the most important System Common messages. You can edit any or all of these with a MIDI sequencer. Note on: Including velocity, ie, how hard a key is pressed. Note off:Including note off velocity - how fast a key is released - although this is hardly ever used. Program change: ie, patch select. This is just a number. The sound you get depends on how the synth has been programmed! Controller change: There are about 100 different kinds of these, from modulation wheel and master volume, to Bank Select messages. Channel aftertouch: Ie, how hard you press on the keyboard. It's often used for modulation effects. Polyphonic aftertouch: Sent from keyboards that have an aftertouch sensor under every key. Very useful, but really very rare.

And that's it for MIDI basics. It doesn't get any more complicated. Well unless you start trying to hook up non-MIDI gear, that is. Old analogue kit can sometimes be retrofitted with a built-in MIDI interface. This is often an expensive option - we're typically looking at a few hundred quid - but it's the easiest way to hook up antique monosynths and drum machines. The alternative is a MIDI-to-CV converter box. This converts MIDI information to control voltages and trigger signals that can drive an old-style synth directly. A few - a very few - converters let you go the other way, converting voltages to MIDI information. Mostly though, once you get one of these boxes and plug it in, you can forget about it, and treat the synth it's connected to as just another MIDI'd up synth. MIDI maturity And is there more? Actually, no. That really is just about anything anyone needs to know about MIDI. Although it's been around for nearly 20 years now, MIDI still seems to be doing the job just fine. It's likely we'll still be using it for at least another five, and possibly even ten years. When a bright shiny new replacement appears we'll tell you about it here. In the mean time, now you know the theory, why not go and have some fun with the practice?

Richard Wentk Future Music 04/00

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