What Is Midi?
MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), is an industry-standard protocol that enables electronic musical instruments, computers and other equipment to communicate, control and synchronize with each other.
Why Will it Benefit my Final Project
Midi is a wonder-full thing within the musical world of today. It means i can run instruments through a keyboard for example. It opens up music production because your not limited to just playing samples, with midi I have control of the notes of which I want to play with, and also dependent on the instrument used, you have control of the complete sound. Midi can also allow me to play samples through the keyboard (with ableton live the instrument is simpler) and again lets me change many aspects of the sound it self that wouldn’t be as easy if I was to just do it as a audio clip.
Setting Up Midi In Ableton
Below is a brief explanation of how to set up midi In Ableton Live
First of all I need to find the instrument I’m wanting to use in the browser menu. Its slightly different than loading an audio sample, make sure you have the instrument icon selected which is in the top right hand corner, where the red circle is on the screen shot. Now i have a list in instruments that i can use, iv decided to use operator (in the blue circle). The best way to load up operator is grab and drag over to the midi slot that I wish to use (the yellow circle), now at the bottom on the page i should get the interface of the instrument operator (the green box below)
Here i can change the sound to what ever i want it to be, with different wave forms, filters, LFO’s and envelopes. To use a preset already loaded up in Ableton click on the arrow next to operator in the browser menu. Once i have found the sound i want i can either record myself playing the keyboard or double click on the midi clip in the yellow circle on the first screen shot, and draw in the notes that I desire, example is the turquoise area on the first screen shot.
How do I Quantize Midi If i Recorded it Slightly off Beat?
This is one problem i came about when recording in midi, there were a few notes that were slightly out off beat. To fix this I simply pressed CTRL+U, which will bring up the quantize box
Here i can ‘quantize to’, which once OK’ed will snap all midi to the closest eighth of a bar. Also here I can adjust where the start and end points of the midi note will sit, e.g if i wanted a slightly organic sounding melody I would set the amount to 80% which will move the note that is selected slightly off the quantized point.
February 12, 2008 at 8:05 pm |
Another fine blog entry with lots of detail that shows an advanced understanding of using MIDI clips.
Good Points
- Good introduction explaining what MIDI is…
- Excellent explanation of why using MIDI is beneficial.
- Solid understanding of the instrument setup process which you clearly explain with colour coding.
Points For Improvement
- When you say “the blue circle” – there are actually two blue circles – light and dark, which is a bit confusing for the reader at first! It would also be worth saying that the Operator is in the green square.
- You could include a section on the clip view itself, and how manual editing and copying of notes is achieved.
- There are also some basic presentational improvements you could make. There is “ethe” just before the title and elsewhere you use “u” instead of “you” / “iv” instead of “i’ve”.