About MIDI

Nearly all of the electronic musical instruments made today—particularly synthesiz- ers, sequencers and computer music related devices—use MIDI. MIDI is a worldwide standard that allows these devices to send and receive performance and setting data. Naturally, this instrument lets you save or send your keyboard performance as MIDI data, as well as that of the songs, styles and panel settings.

The potential MIDI holds for your live performance and music creation/production is enormous—simply by connecting this instrument to a computer and transmitting MIDI data. In this section, you’ll learn the basics of MIDI and the particular MIDI functions of this instrument.

What Is MIDI?

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 classical guitar as representative acoustic instru- ments. 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?

Acoustic guitar note production

Digital instrument note production

 

 

L

Tone Generator

 

R

 

(Electronic circuit)

 

 

Sampling

Sampling

 

 

 

 

 

Note

 

Note

 

Playing the keyboard

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.

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 instrument. 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.

●Example of Keyboard Information

Voice number (with what voice)

1 (grand piano)

 

 

Note number (with which key)

60 (C3)

 

 

Note on (when was it pressed) and

Timing expressed numerically (quarter note)

note off (when was it released)

 

Velocity (about how strong)

120 (strong)

 

 

Your keyboard performance and all panel operations of this instrument are processed as MIDI data. The songs, auto accompaniment (styles), and User songs are also made up of MIDI data.

MIDI is an acronym that stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and it allows different musical instruments and devices to instantly communicate with each other, via digital data. The MIDI standard is used all over the world and was designed to transmit performance data between electronic musical instruments (or computers). Thanks to MIDI, you can control one instrument from another and transmit performance data between the devices-taking your creative and performance potential to even higher levels.

MIDI messages can be divided into two groups: Channel messages and System messages.

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PSR-K1 Owner’s Manual