Ask.Audio Article on MIDI Messages

Ask.Audio and Non Linear Educating

Ask.Audio is one of our favorite technology websites and has been a great partner to The MIDI Association. We have worked with Ask.Audio’s parent company, Non Linear Educating to provide extensive video training right here on the MIDI.org website in our courses section.  Here’s a brief description on what NonLinear Educating is all about. 

Nonlinear Educating is an adaptive technology company dedicated to improving the way the world learns. The combination of our powerful and modular video-courseware production & distribution platform and our extensive library of industry leading training courses, has granted us the opportunity to empower a variety of partners from a multitude of industries. The foundationally modular approach to our application infrastructure enables us to rapidly customize instances of our platform to meet the specific needs of our partners. We are agile adaptive and are committed to developing the most efficient and robust video-learning platform on the internet.

by  Non Linear Educating

 The MIDI Association collaborates with many of the top technology websites including Ask.Audio, Electronic Musician, Harmony Central, Hispasonic, Keyboard Magazine, SonicState, Sound On Sound and more by mutually sharing information and stories about MIDI. 

Joe Albano, a well known author on Ask.Audio recently put together a great article on MIDI messages. We have Ask.Audio’s permission to summarize the content of their articles and then include a link to the full article.

M.I.D.I.—Musical Instrument Digital Interface—shook up the industry when it was introduced in 1983, by separating the player’s performance from the sound of the instrument, and this powerful digital communication protocol has been going strong ever since.

by Joe Albano

Joe’s article covers the basics about the most common MIDI messages

Channel Voice Messages

The bulk of the musical performance data of a MIDI recording falls into the message category of “Channel Voice Messages” (I’m going to ignore the old-school “Channel” designation here). The 7 Voice Messages are:

• Note-On

• Note-Off

• Monophonic (Channel) Pressure/Aftertouch

• Polyphonic (Key) Pressure/Aftertouch

• PitchBend

• Program Change

• Control Change (or Continuous Controller) messages, a.k.a. CC messages, of which there 127 

Below is a link to the full article on Ask.Audio’s website. 

Here is a link to our collection of MIDI and Audio curriculums developed in cooperation with Nonlinear Educating.