Discovering the music revolution and why midi’s part in it has become mainstream for the industry and essential for many composers and musicians.
Midi Sequencer
The first thing to understand about midi sequencers is that they make no sound of their own. True, some later hardware units come with onboard sounds that the sequencer will use, but when midi sequencers originally came to market they were a stand alone application (both hardware and software units) and it was necessary to plug the midi output of the unit into the midi in of the desired sound module (there were dozens of them; DX7 (keyboard), TX7 (module) various Roland units (Sound Canvas, MT 32), Korg, and many others.
The sequencer’s role is to capture, accurately, the digital midi events produced by a midi keyboard or other type of midi controller such as a guitar to midi converter or Yamaha’s EWI – a midi wind instrument. The instrument sends out data in 7 bit packets (7 bits allows counting to 128) and tells the receiving unit what type of data is coming, note on, the note number to play, the midi channel it’s on, the velocity of the note and, note...