Massive Update Nov. 12, 2006
How MIDI Softwares Work?
These softwares are used to record and accomplish multi-track editing. Each instrument is assigned into different tracks and in one click on a play button, all instruments play simultaneously.
Applications have all the necessary things needed to compile digital tracks. Everything is user-friendly, just drag and drop the mouse, "cut and paste" if you have to! And the most important thing is that you can make it to the point of digitally editing notes one by one. Editors have also the option to produce a generated arrangement (or musical score) of a piece created out of it, which has been recorded in the tracks coming from an attached MIDI instrument.
The only drawback is the raw sound, which is inevitably "too electronic." A friend who is not a fan to it calls MIDI generated sound...a "toy sound." More or less this is especially true during the era of FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis some patches really sound bad. Latest sophisticated soundcards use Wavetable Synthesis which is an alternate to analog synthesis in waveform, is actually recorded samples of real instruments.
Frequency Modulation is no longer used nowadays because of the improvements with sound devices from the time it was the available technology during the DOS era and transition stage to Windows. Musical Instruments have evolved from synthetic sounds and produced better "live recordings" incorporated in MIDI synthesizers and softwares.
MIDI port defines a designated output to a MIDI hardware (such as soundcard) has 16 paths called channels for communicating MIDI data. To grasp this, it is comparable to the way channels are assigned in a TV. It is really hard to explain how a channel is assigned to each instrument and how it behaves and affects a MIDI, but these allow tracks to be kept independent to each other and its properties, which can be customized in your choiced setting.
Definitely, there are lots of frustrations in working with MIDI from the time you start assigning instruments and combinations if you want it unique, otherwise you can use default settings where the flavor of genre you want is pre-assigned by the MIDI program you are using.
Generated MIDI notes are transformed into data rather than digitized audio very friendly for manipulation---it can be very much edited...well, it is a GOOD hard job, you must have all the PATIENCE and DEDICATION, and love for music! It is not like conversing to a person who can listen your complaints, with MIDI, you have to open your LISTENING ears and do it your own. You have to read graphs or use the digital staff and undestand how to get around a user application (MIDI Editor) and controllers.
So what is MIDI for, in other words? My phrase for that is this: If you create music using an analog instrument, you only hear the sound, with MIDI, being digital, you SEE the sound in form of linear graphs. Those linear graphs that represent each tone could be edited like any kind of changes you do on computers. Therefore it is an audio and visual advantage.
The Patches:
Patch defines an instrument or sound in a synthesizer and in the case of General MIDI has a name and number assigned to each of 128 patches. To illustrate: say you have done a track for rhythm guitar, the patch is pre-assigned in global terms to be #26 (steel guitar). If you want to use trumpet, it could be assigned to the track in one click, then your rhythm guitar lines is played with trumpet (obscure, huh!)
MIDI sounds may vary from system to system depending on what soundcard you are using. So instruments are assigned in patches in order to emulate a desired instrument like I said above "steel guitar" is patch # 26. It will overwhelm you when you use a MIDI keyboard and experiencing how it manipulates and overrides the sound of the PC synthesizer into the actual sound of your keyboard is the start of the knack.
Take note: Channel 10 is assigned to percussion/drum instruments.
Well, of course anything in the computer is guarded by upgrades. If this assignments change in time, then users shall have to conform with it.
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