Re: [LAU] midi channels....

From: Stephen Doonan <stephen.doonan@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue Sep 09 2008 - 17:11:02 EEST

Grammostola Rosea wrote:
> Hi,
>
> When I load an soundfont with all different sounds in it, i don't have
> problems with sound...
>
> But how should my setup be when I want to play with rosegarden or
> qtractor and qsynth with an soundfont with one instrument?
>
> Thanks in advance,

"load a soundfont"? Into Qsynth? Into your sound card memory? Somewhere
else?

"Play with rosegarden or qtractor and qsynth"? You mean record MIDI into
rosegarden or qtractor and then send that MIDI data to qsynth to produce
sounds?

MIDI data can come from many places (a piano-like keyboard, electronic
drum set, virtual MIDI keyboard in a computer, etc.). Those devices are
typically set (by default or by the user) to send their MIDI data on one
channel (of the 16 standard MIDI channels available), although it is
usually also possible to transmit the same MIDI data on all 16 channels
at the same time (although this is not often necessary or useful).

To record the MIDI data in qtractor or rosegarden, it doesn't matter
which channel the MIDI data is transmitted on. Just make sure that the
MIDI recorder ("sequencer") is receiving that data and--during the
recording process--is depositing that MIDI data onto a track.

After the MIDI data is recorded, the MIDI channel it was received on
becomes irrelevant. You can assign whatever MIDI channel you like to
each track, so that the MIDI data of each track can be sent to qsynth or
an external MIDI-triggered tone generator or wherever, through whichever
MIDI channel you assign to each individual track of recorded MIDI data.

You can set 2 or more tracks to transmit using the same MIDI channel,
which means that both tracks are likely to trigger the same sound in the
MIDI-triggered tone-generator like qsynth; or you can assign different
MIDI channels (one channel per track) to each of the tracks, and if
qsynth is set up to have a different sound on each of those channels,
the MIDI data sent by each track will trigger a different sound.

Just remember that a MIDI _input_ channel is important to know for
recording purposes, but it does not have to match the MIDI _output_
channel (one channel can be used to receive and record the data, another
channel to send and play it, for example), and that more than one track
(all tracks, if you want) can be set to transmit on the same channel, or
any track can be set to transmit on a separate, different channel (of
the 16 standard MIDI channels).

I hope that makes sense. :-)

Steve
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Received on Tue Sep 9 20:15:01 2008

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