Re: Repeater: MIDI (was record CFC)

[Tom Ritchford <tom@swirly.com>]

>can you explain to a dummy what a midi bank change is?

now, now, don't run yerself down!

it's simple enough ONCE someone tells you.


MIDI program changes tell a MIDI synthesizer to switch
to a new sound. (*)

However, there are only 128 possible MIDI program changes
and a lot of synthesizers have a lot more than 128
sounds.

So in these synths, the sounds are organized into Banks.

In order to switch between banks, you send a MIDI Bank
Change command.  You can have up to 128 banks which means

Each bank contains (up to) 128 programs.  So that
means that you can have up to 16384 different sounds.


The way it works in practice is that you send a MIDI Bank
Change command to select the bank, and then send a MIDI
program change command to select the program.  It's
effortless once you get it down and I don't seem to
notice any extra delay in getting the program out...

    /t


(* - Actually some gizmos do other things with the program changes --
for example, lighting units might move to a new scene -- but the
idea still holds...)


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