The USENET MIDI Primer

PURPOSE
It seems as though many people in the USENET community have an interest in the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), but for one reason or another have only obtained word of mouth or fragmentary descriptions of the specification. Basic questions such as "what's the baud rate?", "is it EIA?" and the like seem to keep surfacing in about half a dozen newsgroups. This article is an attempt to provide the basic data to the readers of the net.

REFERENCE
The major written reference for this article is version 1.0 of the MIDI specification, published by the International MIDI Association, copyright 1983. There exists an expanded document. This document, which I have not seen, is simply an expansion of the 1.0 spec. to contain more explanatory material, and fill in some areas of hazy explanation. There are no radical departures from 1.0 in it. I have also heard of a "2.0" spec., but the IMA claims no such animal exists. In any event, backwards compatibility with the information I am presenting here should be maintained.

CONVENTIONS
I will give constants in C syntax, ie. 0x for hexadecimal. If I refer to bits by number, I number them starting with 0 for the low order (1's place) bit. The following notation:

text

OK, let's give it a shot.

PHYSICAL CONNECTOR SPECIFICATION
The standard connectors used for MIDI are 5 pin DIN. Separate sockets are used for input and output, clearly marked on a given device. The spec. gives 50 feet as the maximum cable length. Cables are to be shielded twisted pair, with the shield connecting pin 2 at both ends. The pair is pins 4 and 5, pins 1 and 3 being unconnected:

                              2
                          5       4
                        3           1

	I think this arrangement shows some of the original conception
	of MIDI more as a way of allowing keyboardists to control
	multiple boxes than an instrument to computer interface.  The
	"daisy-chain" arrangement probably has advantages for a performing
	musician who wants to play "stacked" synthesizers for a desired
	sound, and has to be able to set things up on the road.

MIDI is current loop, 5 mA. Logic 0 is current ON. The specification states that input is to be opto-isolated, and points out that Sharp PC-900 and HP 6N138 optoisolators are satisfactory devices. Rise and fall time for the optoisolator should be less than 2 microseconds.

The specification shows a little circuit diagram for the connections to a UART. I am not going to reproduce it here. There's not much to it - I think the important thing it shows is +5 volt connection to pin 4 of the MIDI out with pin 5 going to the UART, through 220 ohm load resistors. It also shows that you're supposed to connect to the "in" side of the UART through an optoisolator, and to the MIDI-THRU on the UART side of the isolator.

	I'm not much of a hardware person, and don't really know what
	I'm talking about in paragraphs like the three above.  I DO
	recognize that this is a "non-standard" specification, which
	won't work over serial ports intended for anything else.  People
	who do know about such things seem to either have giggling
	or gagging fits when they see it, depending on their dispos-
	itions, saying things like "I haven't seen current loop since
	the days of the old teletypes".  I also know the fast 31.25
	Kbaud pushes the edge for clocking commonly available UART's.

	very similar to handling a terminal via escape sequences.  There
	aren't ACK's or other handshaking mechanisms in the protocol.

MIDI has a logical channel concept. There are 16 logical channels, encoded into bits 0 - 3 of the status bytes of messages for which a channel number is significant. Since bit 7 is taken over for marking the status byte, this leaves 3 opcode bits for message types with a logical channel. 7 of the possible 8 opcodes are used in this fashion, reserving the status bytes containing all 1's in the high nibble for "system" messages which don't have a channel number. The low order nibble in these remaining messages is really further opcode.

	If you are interested in receiving MIDI input, look over the
	SYSTEM messages even if you wish to ignore them.  Especially the
	"system exclusive" and "real time" messages.  The real time
	messages may be legally inserted in the middle of other data,
	and you should be aware of them, even though many devices won't
	use them.

status byte   meaning          data bytes

0x80-0x8f     note off         2 - 1 byte pitch, followed by 1 byte velocity
0x90-0x9f     note on          2 - 1 byte pitch, followed by 1 byte velocity
0xa0-0xaf     key pressure     2 - 1 byte pitch, 1 byte pressure (after-touch)
0xb0-0xbf     parameter        2 - 1 byte parameter number, 1 byte setting
0xc0-0xcf     program          1 byte program selected
0xd0-0xdf     chan. pressure   1 byte channel pressure (after-touch)
0xe0-0xef     pitch wheel      2 bytes gives a 14 bit value, least significant              7 bits first

For all of these messages, a convention called the "running status byte" may be used. If the transmitter wishes to send another message of the same type on the same channel, thus the same status byte, the status byte need not be resent.

Also, a "note on" message with a velocity of zero is to be synonymous with a "note off". Combined with the previous feature, this is intended to allow long strings of notes to be sent without repeating status bytes.

	From what I've seen, the "zero velocity note on" feature is very
	heavily used.  My six-trak sends these, even though it sends
	status bytes on every note anyway.  Roland stuff uses it.

	On keyboard synthesizers, this usually simply means which
	physical key corresponds, since the patch selection will
	change the actual pitch range of the keyboard.  Most keyboards
	have one C key which is unmistakably in the middle of the
	keyboard.  This is probably note 60.

The pitch wheel value is an absolute setting, 0 - 0x3FFF. The 1.0 spec. says that the increment is determined by the receiver. 0x2000 is to correspond to a centered pitch wheel (unmodified notes)

	I believe standard scale steps are one of the things discussed
	in expansions.  The six-trak pitch wheel is up/down about a third.
	I believe several makers have used this value, but I may be wrong.

	The "pressure" messages are for keyboards which sense the amount
	of pressure placed on an already depressed key, as opposed to
	velocity, which is how fast it is depressed or released.

?	I'm not really certain of how "channel" pressure works.  Yamaha
	is one maker that uses these messages, I know.

Instruments are so fundamentally different in the various controls they have that no attempt was made to define a standard set, like say 9 for "Filter Resonance". Instead, it was simply assumed that these messages allow you to set "controller" dials, whose purposes are left to the given device, except as noted below. The first data bytes correspond to these "controllers" as follows:

data byte

0   -  31       continuous controllers 0 - 31, most significant byte
32  -  63       continuous controllers 0 - 31, least significant byte
64  -  95       on / off switches
96  - 121       unspecified, reserved for future.
122 - 127       the "channel mode" messages I alluded to above.  See below.

	This may of, course, wind up stretched a bit by a given manufacturer.
	The Six-Trak, for instance, uses only single byte values (LEFT
	justified within the 7 bits at that), and recognizes >32 parameters

Controller number 1 IS standardized to be the modulation wheel.

?	Are there any other standardizations which are being followed by most
	manufacturers?

An important point is that there is an implicit "basic" channel over which a given device is to receive these messages. The receiver is to ignore mode messages over any other channels, no matter what mode it might be in. The basic channel for a given device may be fixed or set in some manner outside the scope of the MIDI standard.

The meaning of the values 122 through 127 is as follows:

data byte                   second data byte
122       local control     0 = local control off, 127 = on
123       all notes off     0
124       omni mode off     0
125       omni mode on      0
126       monophonic mode   number of monophonic channels, or 0
                            for a number equal to receivers voices
127       polyphonic mode   0

124 - 127 also turn all notes off.

The mode setting messages control what channels / how many voices the receiver recognizes. The "basic channel" must be kept in mind. "Omni" refers to the ability to receive voice messages on all channels. "Mono" and "Poly" refer to whether multiple voices are allowed. The rub is that the omni on/off state and the mono/poly state interact with each other. We will go over each of the four possible settings, called "modes" and given numbers in the specification:

mode 1 - Omni on / Poly - voice messages received on all channels and
         assigned polyphonically.  Basically, any notes it gets, it
	   plays, up to the number of voices it's capable of.

mode 2 - Omni on / Mono - monophonic instrument which will receive
         notes to play in one voice on all channels.

mode 3 - Omni off / Poly - polyphonic instrument which will receive
         voice messages on only the basic channel.

mode 4 - Omni off / Mono - A useful mode, but "mono" is a misnomer.
         To operate in this mode a receiver is supposed to receive
         one voice per channel.  The number channels recognized will be
         given by the second data byte, or the maximum number of possible
         voices if this byte is zero.  The set of channels thus defined
         is a sequential set, starting with the basic channel.

	I think this shows the desire to "daisy-chain" devices for
	performance from a single master again.  We can set a series
	of instruments to different basic channels, tie 'em together,
	and let them pass through the stuff they're not supposed to
	play to someone down the line.

	This suffers greatly from lack of acknowledgement concerning
	modes and usable channels by a receiver.  You basically have
	to know your device, what it can do, and what channels it can
	do it on.

	I think most makers have used the "system exclusive" message
	(see below) to handle channels in a more sophisticated manner,
	as well as changing "basic channel" and enabling receipt of
	different message types under host control rather than by
	adjustment on the device alone.

	The "parameters" may also be usurped by a manufacturer for
	mode control, since their purposes are undefined.

	Another HUGE problem with the "daisy-chain" mental set of MIDI
	is that most devices ALWAYS shovel whatever they play to their
	MIDI outs, whether they got it from the keyboard or MIDI in.
	This means that you have to cope with the instrument echoing
	input back at you if you're trying to do an interactive session
	with the synthesizer.  There is DRASTIC need for some MIDI flag
	which specifically means that only locally generated data is to
	go to MIDI out.  From device to device there are ways of coping
	with this, none of them good.

byte    purpose              data bytes

0xf0    system exclusive     variable length
0xf1    undefined
0xf2    song position        2 - 14 bit value, least significant byte first
0xf3    song select          1 - song number
0xf4    undefined
0xf5    undefined
0xf6    tune request         0
0xf7    EOX (terminator)     0

Song position / song select are for control of sequencers. The song position is in beats, which are to be interpreted as every 6 MIDI clock pulses. These messages determine what is to be played upon receipt of a "start" real-time message (see below).

The "tune request" is a command to analog synthesizers to tune their oscillators.

The system exclusive message is intended for manufacturers to use to insert any specific messages they want to which apply to their own product. The following data bytes are all to be "data" bytes, that is they are all to be in the range 0 - 127. The system exclusive is to be terminated by the 0xf7 terminator byte. The first data byte is also supposed to be a "manufacturer's id", assigned by a MIDI standards committee. THE TERMINATOR BYTE IS OPTIONAL - a system exclusive may also be "terminated" by the status byte of the next message.

	Yamaha, in particular, caused problems by not sending terminator
	bytes.  As I understand it, the DX-7 sends a system exclusive
	at something like 80 msec. intervals when it has nothing better
	to do, just so you know it's still there, I guess.  The messages
	aren't explicitly terminated, so if you want to handle the
	protocol (esp. in hardware), you should be aware that a DX-7
	will leave you in "waiting for EOX" state a lot, and be sending
	data even when it isn't doing anything.  This is all word of
	mouth, since I've never personally played with a DX-7.

	Sequential Circuits   1      Bon Tempi     0x20     Kawai     0x40
	Big Briar             2      S.I.E.L.      0x21     Roland    0x41
	Octave / Plateau      3                             Korg      0x42
	Moog                  4      SyntheAxe     0x23     Yamaha    0x43
	Passport Designs      5
	Lexicon               6
    	PAIA                  0x11
	Simmons               0x12
    	Gentle Electric       0x13
    	Fairlight             0x14

	Note the USA / Europe / Japan grouping of codes.  Also note
	that Sequential Circuits snarfed id number 1 - Sequential
	Circuits was one of the earliest participators in MIDI, some
	people claim its originator.

	Two large makers missing from the original lineup were Casio
	and Oberheim.  I know Oberheim is on the bandwagon now, and
	Casio also, I believe.  Oberheim had their own protocol previous
	to MIDI, and when MIDI first came out they were reluctant to
?	go along with it.  I wonder what we'd be looking at if Oberheim
	had pushed their ideas and made them the standard.  From what I
	understand they thought THEIRS was better, and kind of sulked
	for a while until the market forced them to go MIDI.

?	Nobody seems to care much about these ID numbers.  I can only
	imagine them becoming useful if additions to the standard message
	set are placed into system exclusives, with the ID byte to let
	you know what added protocol is being used.  Are any groups of
	manufacturers considering consolidating their efforts in a
	standard extension set via system exclusives?

?	Do any devices REALLY insert these things in the middle of
	other messages?

0xf8   timing clock
0xf9   undefined
0xfa   start
0xfb   continue
0xfc   stop
0xfd   undefined
0xfe   active sensing
0xff   system reset

Start / continue / stop are for control of sequencers and drum machines. The continue message causes a device to pick up at the next clock mark.

	These things are also designed for performance, allowing control
	of sequencers and drum machines from a "master" unit which
	sends the messages down the line when its buttons are pushed.

	I can't tell you much about the trials and tribulations of drum
	machines.  Other folks can, I am sure.

	My impression is that active sensing is largely unused.

AND NOW, CLIMBING TO THE PULPIT ....

 - from here on out.

The electrical specification leaves me with only one question - WHY? What was wanted was a serial interface, and a perfectly good RS232 specification was to be had. WHY wasn't it used? The baud rate is too fast to simply convert into something you can feed directly to your serial port via fairly dumb hardware, also. The "standard" baud rate step you would have to use would be 38.4 Kbaud which very few hardware interfaces accept. The other alternative is to buffer messages and send them out a slower baud rate - in fact buffering of characters by some kind of I/O processor is very helpful. Hence units like the MPU-401, which does a lot of other stuff, too of course.

The fast baud rate with MIDI was set for two reasons I believe:

1. to allow daisy-chaining of a few devices with no noticeable end to end lag.
2. to allow chords to be played by just sending all the notes down the pipe, the baud rate being fast enough that they will sound simultaneous.

I think MIDI could have used some means of packetizing chords, or having transaction markers. If a "chord" message were specified, you could easily break even on byte count with a few notes, given that we assume all notes of a chord at the same velocity. Transaction markers might be useful in any case, although I don't know if it would be worth taking over the remaining system message space for them. I would say yes. I would see having "start" and "end" transaction bytes. On receipt of a "start" a receiver buffers up but does not act on messages until receipt of the "end" byte. You could then do chords by sending the notes ahead of time, and precisely timing the "end" marker. Of course, the job of the hardware in the receiver has been complicated considerably.

The protocol is VERY keyboard oriented - take a look at the use of TWO of the opcodes in the limited opcode space for "pressure" messages, and the inability to specify semitones or glissando effects except through the pitch wheel (which took up yet ANOTHER of the opcodes). All keyboards I know of modify ALL playing notes when they receive pitch wheel data. Also, you have to use a continuous stream of pitch wheel messages to effect a slide, the pitch wheel step isn't standardized, and on a slide of a large number of tones you will overrun the range of the wheel.

?	Some of these problems would be addressed by a device which allowed
	its pitch wheel to have selective control - say modifying only
	the notes playing on the channel the pitch wheel message is
	received in, for instance.  The thing for a guitar synthesizer
	to do, then, would be to use mode 4, one channel per string, and
	bends would only affect the one note.  You could play a chord
	on a voice with a lot of release, then bend a note and not have
	the entire still sounding chord bend.  Any such devices?

There is a crying need to do SOMETHING about the "loopback" problem. I would even vote for usurping a few more bytes in the mode messages to allow you to TURN OFF input echo by the receiver. With the local control message, you could then at least deal with something that would act precisely like a half or full duplex terminal. Several patchwork solutions exist to this problem, but there OUGHT to be a standard way of doing it within the protocol. Another thought is to allow data bytes of other than 0 or 127 to control echo on the existing local control message.

The lack of acknowledgement is a problem. Another candidate for a standard system exclusive set would be a series of messages for mode setting with acknowledgement. This set could then also take care of the loopback problem.

The complete lack of ability to specify standardized waveforms is probably another source of intense disappointment to many readers. Trouble is, the standard lingo used by the synthesizer industry and most working musicians is something which hails back to the first days of synthesizer design, deals with envelope generators and filters and VCO / LFO hardware parameters, and is very damn difficult to relate to Fourier series expressing the harmonic content or any other abstractions some people interested in doing computer composition would like. The parameter set used by the average synthesizer manufacturer isn't anyplace close to orthogonal in any sense, and is bound to vary wildly in comparison to anybody elses. There are essentially no abstractions made by most of the industry from underlying hardware parameters. What standardization exists reflects only the similarity in hardware. This is one quagmire that we have a long way to go to get out of, I think. It might be possible, eventually, to come up with translation tables describing the best way to approximate a desired sound on a given device in terms of its parameter set, but the difficulties are enormous. MIDI has chosen to punt on this one, folks.

Well, that's about it. Good luck with talking to your synthesizer.

Bob McQueer
22 Bcy, 3151

All rites reversed. Reprint what you like.