Making MIDI Tracks


This week's offering is about creating tracks in order to make MIDI files (those files that end .MID) using the MIDI set up covered in last week's article.

In order to make real use of your synthesiser keyboard with your PC; you need a program that can handle this kind of data. Many are around, one of the most famous being Cubasis. I use Voyetra Orchestra Plus which came with my SoundBlaster AWE 64 gold sound card. Whatever program you use, the principles are the same.

Before we begin, it is worth looking at what kind of data we are handling here. In very simple terms, the PC handles two forms of data. Sampled sound which is actual sound (such as talking, dogs barking etc) that is usually stored in .WAV files. Because each fraction of a second is sampled, these can be extremely large.

The second form is digitised sounds. Here the data is a series of numbers and as most of you are aware, computers just love numbers! Each element of the sound, the voice (that's musical instrument rather than a Human voice), the pitch of the note, the duration of the note is stored as numbers. The result is much smaller files!

MIDI Files

A MIDI file contains the following type of information within a single track (or channel):

· Pitch of the note

· Instrument voice

· Note duration

· Volume

· "Command" data

Commands are instructions either to the computer or the MIDI instrument and are often such things as voice changes, tempo changes, mute voice (channel), make channel "solo" (turn off all other channels except one).

Channels

A channel is a single track that carries a voice (as mentioned before, MIDI's don't carry sampled sounds so a voice in this context means a "musical instrument"). The voice can also be a drum track. The number of channels you can have is dependent on two things. First and foremost is your soundcard. Soundcards can carry 8, 16, 32 and 64 voices are the norm.

Most soundcards these days carry 32 or 64 voices with 64 or 128 polyphony. Polyphony is the number of notes that can be played at the same time (for chords etc).

The second element that determines the number of channels you have to play with is the software. Most software carries 16 or 32 voices but the more expensive programs can carry up to 64. This means that you could have an entire orchestra playing for you!

Basic Principles of Creating your MID files

The copyright of the article Making MIDI Tracks in PC Support is owned by Chris Cruickshank. Permission to republish Making MIDI Tracks in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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