What Is MIDI? How It Works and Why It's Useful

hey what's up I'm Matt and today we're going to be doing MIDI videos it's going to be great I love MIDI hey I'm Matt I'm with Leonard today talking about my favorite subject MIDI and what it is and how we use it don't forget to Like and subscribe today we're going to look at what is MIDI and if you're wondering what it stands for it actually stands for a musical instrument digital interface and that's exactly what it does it's an interface between all these musical instruments and a computer musical instrument digital interface so MIDI was invented in the early 1980s as a way to let different instruments communicate with each other before MIDI all these different manufacturers have their own means of communicating with sequencers but someone realized hey a lot of studios have a lot of different equipment there must be a universal way to connect them and what's amazing too is it allows it to communicate with computers so we can use Ableton Logic Pro tools to send information to these devices so as you could see here I have three different machines all different manufacturers but they all use MIDI to allow each other to talk which is really really helpful in the studio so now you have an overview of what MIDI is let's take a little deeper look and see how I actually have this set up so if you notice anything with MIDI usually has three inputs one is a MIDI out the other is a MIDI in and one's a MIDI through what an out does it sends a MIDI signal out of the device a MIDI in takes a MIDI signal inside and a MIDI through allows it to pass to another device if you want to chain them together think of guitar pedals having little jacks in between each other chaining them together that's what a MIDI through allows you to do so if you look closely here I have my mode set up to control my bass line so the MIDI out of the mode is going into the MIDI in of the bass line allowing me to take these keys and control this synthesizer so now if you look [Music] I'm affecting the pitch by playing the keys and I'm adjusting the parameters because this is actually with generating the sound not the mode the mode is just allowing me to take the keys and control it the way MIDI works and modern devices they actually have two inputs you have the USB to connect it or you have the traditional MIDI ports like the MIDI in through and out we just talked about the mode is a great example of a modern instrument that actually has both and the tr-909 is an example of one that just has MIDI and MIDI out so if you want to set this up the mode is very simple you plug in USB into your computer and it will connect because they're not online is an older instrument it doesn't have USB MIDI it just has to traditional mini ports so in that case for me to connect it to Ableton I need to actually get a MIDI USB box sometimes your sound card has a built-in MIDI in MIDI out you can use that if not you might get a box that you could hook up to Ableton which allows it to send information to your devices that don't have USB so now that I explain what is MIDI and how I have it set up talk about how to get it working in your DAW in my situation I'm using Ableton but it's the same for almost every dog so what I want to do is I'm going to click on the live button and go to preferences you're gonna see that there's a dedicated MIDI tab because everyone knows MIDI is so important and it has its own place in every software so when I click on MIDI you're going to see a couple of things it looks a bit intense but it's really simple first thing you're gonna notice is that you're gonna have a bunch of inputs and outputs those inputs and outputs correspond to the MIDI ins and MIDI outs and we're talking about earlier now you're gonna see track sync in remote now what those three things do is that track allows the actual notes to be changed between instruments sync is gonna allow instruments to be on the same BPM and the remote is going to allow an instrument to control a different parameter when you open this up you're most likely gonna see a bunch of these off and you might see less or more inputs and outputs see in my situation I'm using the mobile sub phatty with a US beat because it's modern so it pops up as input mogh sub phatty output Moke sub phatty now you're going to notice MIDI sport a B and C and this corresponds to my MIDI device and you could see I have ABCD VCD which are right there in ableton so we want the notes that I'm playing on the keys of the sub phatty playing the notes on the bass line so I got to turn this on as an input because this is inputting notes into Ableton so if I turn this on I should be able to get sounds right but you're gonna hear nothing's being triggered that's because Hamilton needs to know where these notes go where is it outputting it to and that's where I'm gonna choose the MIDI channel that corresponds to my bass line which in my case because I'm using a MIDI box it's port a so if I go to output mini sport port a and I turn it on guess what we got a sound because now MIDI is being sent from one device to another and a Moulton is telling it hey this is where it's going you might notice that why don't i to turn them all on well you actually totally can I just wanted to show it like this so you kind of see how to set it up but what I do in my situation is I literally turn them all on because I don't want to think about where they're going in the setup because we can do that later within the doll which I'm going to show you so now let me set up the MIDI routing in Ableton let's look at how we make a MIDI track in Ableton to actually program notes so what you need to do is it's got to go create and you're going to see two options insert audio track which I'm sure everyone's used to using and they're gonna have another one called insert MIDI track so when I click on that I'm gonna get a blank MIDI thing and you're gonna see two options MIDI from and MIDI 2 which is exactly the equivalent to Midian and MIDI out so what I'm going to do is that MIDI from which is really convenient in Ableton you don't got to select anything you can have all winds which means that anything that's sending a MIDI input signal it's gonna come through there so if I click on the sub phatty you're going to see that it's lighting up if I click on even my keyboard it's going to light up which is really really cool and convenient now if I want to send it to the bass line all I got to do is go to MIDI 2 and I got to choose MIDI sport 4x4 poor day like we did before and now I'm gonna be able to hear a note once I click the monitor in awesome if I don't want to use the sub phatty anymore to control the bass line I actually want to control it directly from Ableton in that MIDI Channel we just created I can just double click anywhere and I'll get this piano rule as you can see I have a loop here and I have corresponding keys if I hit these keys guess what it's going to play the bass line and what's really cool is I can actually drawing notes like this if I if I change the monitor now to auto and I hit play we're going to hear it on the bass line so if you're really good at writing melodies you can actually fill in all your melodies within Ableton or if you want some inspiration like I always rely on I like using via page heater which is built into Ableton under MIDI effects so now if I want to use in a page heater let's just choose house here then thou I can click on it and it's going to send an Apache ated version of the notes i put in i like clicking on hold so what hold does it allows the page you to kind of go on forever so I can actually jam with the Bach so if I click on hold and I play again we get this whole page here now and I can actually sit here and tweak [Music] went through the couplet that is I can sculpt my sound while it's going and I can think of ideas and how I'm going to use your page eater or what else I want to do now and that's one of the best benefits of using MIDI it allows you to free up your hands which is really really cool because you know we only have two hands but we have these many machines or more it's a great way to kind of become an octopus that makes no sense that makes no sense so you can be working like you have a hundred hands which is an amazing amazing amazing thing to do so that's a great example of setting MIDI note information from Ableton to a synth like we just did with the bass line but what if I want to send note information from an actual hardware instrument into the computer so a lot of us use vsts and when you're using vsts you ought to have a MIDI controller which of course we all know what that is now or you can put in notes like we just did for the bassline but what if I want to have the sub phatty play a BST within Ableton so I'm going to be doing now is I want to send the MIDI out information and let able to decide where it's going to go as an input within Ableton so if you look here I have a VST open and Ableton called enough chord pad which is just a stock instrument that comes with Ableton so I can do the old-fashioned way if I didn't have a MIDI keyboard I can use just a draw tool and pencil in exactly the notes that I want it to play or what I could do is I can actually use a sub phatty now to control it similar to what we did before with the MIDI from all ends keeping that on allows any signal to go into Ableton and go to what we're doing so now if I were to play the sub phatty it's going to control the VST that's all because at all ends so now that I have the sub phatty controlling the VST in Ableton yeah I can play it which is super cool but what if I want to record these MIDI notes in Ableton so that it can keep looping and I can decide oh if I want to change a note how do I do that so pretty much what you're gonna do is you're gonna click on a record and we're going to get this moving just like an audio track but don't forget MIDI visitin record audio it records a note information so now if I play a chord on the sub phatty the MIDI notes are gonna get recorded within Ableton so now if you look here on our piano roll instead of drawing it in I actually played it with my hands and it's popping up here and I can choose oh you know I want this e to be another note you can move it around because it's just MIDI information which is super cool you can unclick fold and then you just move it around how you like and if you're thinking you have what is full do full just kind of condenses the view so if you see here you have all the notes in between then I'm playing I click fold you're just seeing the notes that are being played very useful favorite small screen now not only are we able to send note information into Ableton we could do something called control messages and what that is it's exactly the opposite it's not notes it's using MIDI to send other information now how do we set that up we're not gonna be using track anymore because that's just for notes so we got to go back into our live preferences and figure out what we're gonna set up so as I mentioned before we got track sync and remote if you're thinking why is a colle remote well think about unlocking a car you can physically go and put the key in and turn it or you can have a button and press and unlock set at a distance so what we're doing with remote is we're telling a molten to take MIDI information that's not notes and do something else that I don't have to physically touch Ableton to do it so that sounds a bit confusing I'll show you what I mean so doing exactly what we did with track we've got to turn it on and what we're going to be doing is using the sub phatty so I'm turning remote in on and why is it in is because this is going to be an input into Ableton which is our brain I close this and I turn a knob nothing's really happening but if you look in the top right of Ableton next to the D you're going to see that a lights appearing and you're thinking okay what does that do that allows me now to take any of these knobs using MIDI to control something in Ableton and what's really cool about that is that you can send it at the same time as no information so I can actually have now this knob control a parameter in my VST so if I'm playing the VST again and I want to control the cutoff like this it's kind of annoying to have to use my mouse and touch it and go like that too bad I can't play like a real synth well guess what MIDI you can actually do that and it's super simple to do in Ableton I'm going to click in the top right this MIDI parameter and when you click it you're gonna see certain things highlighted blue and what that is it's able to tell you this is what you're allowed to actually use as a remote so what I want to do is I want to use the filter cutoff so I'm gonna click it and all you need to do to assign something is touch what you want to assign it to so I'm gonna hit the cutoff because it's a cut-off of the syn and it's a cut-off of that I touch it it's gonna pop up here under MIDI mappings and I'm going to see the control over here so if I take off the MIDI assign button go back to a regular thing and I play a chord and I touch this knob guess what it's going to be controlling the cutoff which is super useful if I want to be more crazy I can by controlling the filter res with the residents know up here so now that I map the cutoff and I just map the residence now I have more control over the VST not even looking at Ableton so now I'm just touching the cutoff and touching the residence and this is an example of what remote is now I'm standing information that's MIDI but not notes it's actually control messages as what we call CC messages and MIDI and I was super cool about that is remember how I showed you before I was playing the keys and recording it I can actually record the keys and also I can record the information of me sweeping the cutoff so I'll share an example and if I do this so now that I recorded those notes I also recorded the filter sweep because that's also mini information that could be recorded in Ableton so let's hear how that sounds beautiful it's there on after we're with that and this is what I was talking about that MIDI actually allows you to have multiple hands so technically while that's going I can control the residence at the same time so now we talked about what track and remote do in MIDI settings in Ableton the one thing we didn't talk about yet was sync as you can imagine sync has something to do with the tempo what's really great about MIDI is that again it doesn't only send note information doesn't only send control information it also sends clock information as I could tell all these dawes that you use you always have to set the clock which is the BPM when you have an old drum machine like this for example and I want it to be in time with Ableton I gotta have the clocks sync to each other so now with the 909 if I hit start the internal clock is syncing the machine but what if I want Ableton to sync this this is where we're gonna use sync click on live we go to preferences I'm gonna go back to our MIDI settings and we're going to see sync is off for all the channels so it's kind of a similar thing that we did for a remote and also for track so we got to tell Ableton where is the MIDI information going and in this case we want Ableton to send sync information to the Nano 9 so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to sync we're gonna go to output and I'm gonna report be because the na 9 is hooked up to port beyond my MIDI box I'm gonna turn sync on for port B of the output now when I close it and hit play guess what it's synced now if I press play again you're to see that the tempo no longer does anything but the tempo now is we control the Ableton and this is really helpful because not only can I control all these parameters on the 909 like so it allows this now to be fully synced in what's going on in Ableton which is really really useful now the reason why I like to use it with the 909 for example is that I have access to this of course I can use samples but for me it's more fun that I can actually have a plank and I can actually control the knobs live and I can jam like that which I really like to do without changing parameters and tweaking things but that's just my way sync can actually be used in so many ways like I mentioned before so it's really up to you just like everything else with MIDI it gives you the freedom to control everything you want in this video I showed you just a very basic overview of what MIDI can do and we actually did quite a lot within Ableton so you can only imagine how much more you can do and that's what's really cool about it that I have it set up a certain way here but when you do it at home and your studio you'll be set up a million different ways that works best to your workflow this why we've been using it for 40 years interesting enough MIDI 2.0 is actually being developed right now which is gonna take the existing MIDI protocols that we have and we use today and just make it a little bit better a little bit faster a little bit more modern will it change much of course is there going to change how many works completely absolutely not the workflow is still gonna stay intact and this is why it's so useful in a studio if it's your first time using MIDI and we're setting it up in your studio after this video I'm really curious to see how you're setting it up so read in the comments if your MIDI expert you have a better idea how to set things up or a really cool way of doing it write in the comments - because I'm always looking for a new way to make my MIDI situation a lot better in my studio because as you could tell Middies endless and we can do so much with it like to subscribe if you want to see weekly videos like this because i'm going to be doing them again I love nerding out so if you want to keep watching them like it subscribe musical instrument digital interface it sounds weird but they're not sound where am I crazy musical instrument digital interface

Channel: LANDR

Views: 92,179

Keywords: what is midi, midi controller, what is a midi, controller, how does midi work, what is a usb midi controller, what is a midi keyboard

Id: 9zFecOaD4CU

Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AnthonyLANDR]

Hey everyone,

Anthony from LANDR here. I'm sure most of you know what MIDI is, but we've made a video with Matt Salaciak to really dig into a lot of its capabilities, and demonstrate this powerful tool at a beginner level. I hope this can help with your song writing if you begin to start laying out ideas in a DAW.
Let me know if you have any feedback on the video, and any other topics you'd like to see next. We're really trying to make quality videos to help people with their music.
Thanks!