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Creating a MIDI set up

© Chris Cruickshank

This week sees the start of a series about connecting a musical synthesiser keyboard to your PC so that you can create MIDI files of your own playing!

In order to do this, you will need the following items.

· A MIDI compatible musical keyboard (This rules out most "cheap" keyboards).

· A MIDI adapter - a small box that allows the connection of MIDI cables (5 pin DIN cables much used in hi-fi equipment) to your computer.

· At least 2 5pin din cables. As mentioned, these are commonly used to link hi-fi units together and are readily available from stores such as Tandy's.

· A sound package program that is capable of processing MIDI data. I use Voyetra MIDI Orchestra Plus but you could use something like Cubasis.

· A GOOD soundcard that has a MIDI port (which is often used as a joystick port)

You will notice from the above list that the word "MIDI" crops up a lot. What is MIDI?

MIDI

MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and is an industry standard for connecting electronic instruments including computers. The idea is that different instruments can send and receive digital data and respond to "commands".

For example, when I play a note on my music keyboard, the pitch and duration are sent to my computer. The computer program (Voyetra in my case) can "respond" by storing that information which can then be manipulated by the program. The result can be sent back to my keyboard. (Note: I will use the term "keyboard" in these articles to mean my synthesiser rather than my computers keyboard).

As well as musical notes, MIDI is also capable of sending commands (either from the keyboard to the PC or vice-versa). These commands may be such things as voice changes (change from piano voice to organ voice for example); drum instructions or track changes (more about that in a moment).

Hardware Set-up

The following diagram shows the hardware set-up for connecting your keyboard to the PC. The most important thing here is the MIDI IN and MIDI OUT ports found on both the adapter AND the keyboard.

The rule here is that what goes OUT of the adapter goes IN to the keyboard. What comes OUT of the keyboard goes IN to the adapter. Don't worry if your keyboard or adapter has a MIDI through port. For the purposes of a simple set up, we can ignore this.

The adapter's 15 pin D cable (which has the same type of plug as a joystick) is connected to the MIDI (or joystick) port of your sound card. Note that is MUST be the port on your soundcard rather than any other joystick ports you may have.

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