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526| MIDI
Introduction to MIDI
Ports, channels, messages
What is MIDI?
MIDI stands for Musical Instruments Digital Interface. This interface lets you
connect two (or more) musical instruments, or a computer and various musical
instruments.
From a software point of view, MIDI is a protocol that describes messages for play-
ing notes and controlling them. It is sort of a grammar to let different instruments
and computers speak the same language, and let the one tell the other what to do.
From a physical point of view, MIDI messages travel across the classic
MIDI in-
terface or the USB port, a connector replacing the MIDI ports with a single port
and cable. Personal computers, tablets and external controllers can be connected
with a single USB cable.
Pa5X can be connected to a personal computer with no need of special software.
However, for full and easy use of all its MIDI features, we suggest that you install
the
KORG USB-MIDI Driver, a special software that you can download from our
web site (www.korg.com).
No audio signal is transmitted through MIDI. MIDI only consists of control mes-
sages.
Channels and messages
Basically, a MIDI or USB cable transmits 16 channels of data. Think to each MIDI
channel as a TV channel: the receiver must be set on the same channel of the
transmitter. The same happens with MIDI messages: when you send a Note On
message on channel #1, it will be received on channel #1 only. This allows the
instruments to be multitimbral: you can have more than one sound playing on the
same MIDI instrument – one for each MIDI channel.
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