It contains parameters to specify the pitch of the note as well as the velocity (intensity of the note when it is hit). The NOTE ON message is sent when the performer hits a key of the music keyboard. The main messages are the NOTE ON and NOTE OFF messages. You can also use this MIDI RUNNING STATUS when you generate MIDI messages, but you should care about how the target synthesizer or software will receive it, to be sure it is well interpreted. An example would be a pitch bend or crescendo volume curve. It is useful for instance to optimize transmission when a long series of the same messages are sent. The STATUS byte is then supposed to be the same as the last STATUS byte received. In such a case, you can receive a message that only has DATA bytes. While reading bytes coming from a MIDI message, you must know that the STATUS byte can in fact be omitted (except in the first message of that type). In the same MIDI cable, up to 16 MIDI channels may be used to control up to 16 different instruments playing independently. In practice, musicians and software refer to the MIDI channels by counting them from 1 to 16, so that there is a difference of 1 when you program them in hexadecimal (channel '1' is coded '0', channel '10' is coded '9' and channel 16 is coded 'F'). There are 16 possible MIDI channels, numbered from 0 to 15 in hexadecimal. The number of DATA bytes that follow depend on the type of the message.Įxcept for some system MIDI messages, the STATUS byte contains the MIDI channel number. The STATUS byte determines the type of the message. A STATUS byte has bit 7 set to 1 and a DATA byte has bit 7 set to 0. The first byte is a STATUS byte, often followed by DATA bytes with additional parameters. The MIDI messages are sent as a time sequence of one or more bytes (8 bits). The important point is that the MIDI language does not define the sound itself, but only the sequence of instructions to create the sound in the target synthesizer. Various messages are defined to transmit the information needed to perform the playback of music.

' Real time' means that each message is sent exactly at the moment it must be interpreted by the target synthesizer (which can be a hardware synthesizer or software synthesizer). The MIDI language is used to transmit real time information for the playback of a piece of music. This MIDI tutorial will help you to understand how you can use the MIDI language to control any device that uses the MIDI protocol.

Let it go piano midi