Yamaha DJX MID I FUNCTIONS

MID I FUNCTIONS

No doubt you have heard the terms “acoustic instrument” and “digital instrument.” In the world

today, these are the two main categories of instruments. Let’s consider an acoustic piano and a classi-

cal guitar as representative acoustic instruments. They are easy to understand. With the piano, you

strike a key, and a hammer inside hits some strings and plays a note. With the guitar, you directly

pluck a string and the note sounds. But how does a digital instrument go about playing a note?

As shown in the illustration above, in an electronic instrument the sampling note (previously recorded

note) stored in the tone generator section (electronic circuit) is played based on information received

from the keyboard. So then what is the information from the keyboard that becomes the basis for

note production?

For example, let’s say you play a “C” quarter note using the grand piano sound on the DJX keyboard.

Unlike an acoustic instrument that puts out a resonated note, the electronic instrument puts out

information from the keyboard such as “with what voice,” “with which key,” “about how strong,”

“when was it pressed,” and “when was it released.” Then each piece of information is changed into a

number value and sent to the tone generator. Using these numbers as a basis, the tone generator

plays the stored sampling note.

Acoustic guitar note production Digital instrument note production

Pluck a string and the body

resonates the sound.

Based on playing information from the keyboard, a

sampling note stored in the tone generator is

played through the speakers.

Tone Generator

(Electronic circuit)

Sampling

Note

Playing the keyboard

Sampling

Note

The MIDI functions cannot be used in the Song mode.