You said MIDI? Part 1
For our
first chronical, we have chosen to talk about the
midi language. Why? Cause most of the people on
the internet have a sound card generating midi
sounds in their puter.
First of
all, what does midi mean? Midi is the
abbreviation of "Musical Instrument Digital
Interface". The idea of the midi language
was presented in 1983 by the company "Sequencial
Circuit", associated by "Roland"
at NAMM. Engineers, many of the major synthesizer
companies were in attendance. They discussed a
proposal for the adoption of a universal standard
for the transmitting and receiving of musical
performance information between all types of
electronic musical instruments. The original
proposal was called UMI, for Universal Musical
Interface. The original proposal went through a
significant number of revisions before being
renamed and becoming the midi standard.
In midi,
we use a 5 pin din connector to connect the
instuments together. Like you see on the graphic,
the first and third pins are not used. Pin 2 is
the shield, pin 4 is the ground, and pin 5 is
where the midi data goes through.
Since
midi uses a single wire in the cable to send
information, the musical data that midi sends
travels in only one direction over a single cable.
However, midi was divised to allow information to
go in both directions between two instruments, by
simply using two cables. At the same time, midi
can also pass data on to a third, fourth, and
fifth instrument, or as many synthesizers as you
can afford. To accomplish this, it was decided to
have three different midi connectors on each
instrument.
-One to
receive data in
-One to
send the data out
-One
to pass incoming data on through (spelled thru in the midi world) to
another midi instrument.
Those
three connectors (in, out, and thru) are the
backbone of all midi hardware. Understanding
these will give you the basis for being able to
put together a midi system to suit any purpose.
Now, look at what is actually communicated
between instruments over midi.
to
continue
Frank
Levert
|
