Midi - Posted on 2015-04-06 by Alexander Schug

Midi stands for musical instrument digital interface. I understand that midi is not a signal and that its only just a set a binary codes that i can make with sound generator plugins in my DAW or some sort of instrument that fits whoevers preferences to make a production quicker and smoother. I use an Akai mpk25 usb midi controller when im making music. It has 12 knobs, 12 pads, and 2 octaves of keys but i can switch between octaves with one touch of a button. I think that something that resembles the keys of a piano for a midi controller would be the best option. It allows me to play all the sounds in my project on one instrument simply by switching between tracks. With midi you can write intricate music that a musician with an instrument could never play. With just one person and one controller you can make a production that would take 50+ people to accomplish. I find myself designing a synth and then just sequencing until i hear something i like. A midi connection can transmit 16 channels of data and when its turned into binary code it is called midi events. Midi events have a possible value of 0-127 which means that there are 128 possible values. There a a couple types of midi events. Midi control events are the notes you see in your piano roll or midi edit window or whatever you want to call it that you place there with your mouse or recorded with you midi controller. They look like little bars of data that change color based on velocity. They also tell you when the note is starting to play, ending, pitch of the note, the volume and other modulations. There are system exclusive events which are usually use during a live performance to change sounds on an instrument. Ive seen a peformace where the lead singer was changing the sounds that were being made from the drums with some sort of controller i couldnt see exactly which one. The last one is meta events which are non transmitted data that contain decriptive information about the song like the title and information along those lines. Now there are two different kinds of midi tracks in protools called midi tracks and instrument tracks. In order for you to sequence sounds with a midi controller you would choose a midi track. If your just placing notes in the midi editor window then you would simply choose an intrument track. Well before midi existed people had to record musicians playing there instruments into microphones. There was no highlighting all your notes and then quantizing them so they snap to the nearest grid value allowing perfect timing with the tempo. You couldn't just sample in any instrument and place them pefectly in the midi edit window. People would record over and over again until they capture the rythem perfect. I can't even imagine producing music without midi.