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Name: Dave Barnes
Category: Sequencing
Date: 27 Apr 2001
I've had several questions lately about making a midi play in a stand-alone midi keyboard that can play sequences. Some balk at the number of tracks that are present. If they have a limitation, it's usually 16 -- the same number as there are midi channels. This is because most keyboard sequences were assumed to be made in the keyboard, not in a computer. Most computer sequencing software can have up to X number of tracks -- mine can deal with up to 256 tracks, even though there have and only will be 16 midi channels.
A computer sequencer can make use of multiple midi devices at once -- going to however many midi ports you have set up on the computer. Right now, I'm using a SoundCanvas external midi module (16 channels) and an internal SoundBlaster Live! (2 internal ports with 16 independent midi channels each), so I can currently have up to 48 channels playing at once! I have one more external midi output on my midi interface card plus one external port on my SB Live! so I could add 2 more devices (each with 16 midi channels) for a whopping total of 5 ports x 16 = 80 midi channels each playing their little hearts out. I doubt I could create a sequence with that much activity, but it would be possible to do with the set-up that I currently have... Scary thought, huh.
The typical way to program a sequence is to use one track per channel. The theoretical 80 channel sequence above would typically use on track per channel, (plus the control track zero) for a total of 81 tracks.
The software I have allows tracks to be merged -- even if the tracks are of different midi channels. The merged track will have multiple midi channels... That's how I do the "album" midi's -- I use one track per song in the album -- each track is a multi-channel track, containing all parts of the data for that song.
Comments? Post 'em here.... Dave