Looking for some MIDI guidance

Cafe Society
1

Can anyone recommend some good online resources and/or books I can use to bone up on my MIDI knowledge?

I have some ideas for a project but I need some help figuring out the moving parts, and I’d like to talk with people who are comfortable in the Sequencing/Synthesis/Sample world to bounce some ideas off of.

My primary goal is to figure out how to orchestrate and control multiple sequences in real time. For example, I’d like to have loops 1, 2, 3 & 4 sending to Sampler1, and loops A, B,C, & D sending to Sampler2. With those loops pre-programed, I’d like to be able to combine them in multiple, arbitrary ways (1A, 1B, 4C, 3<mute>, etc) in real time; I don’t want to just create a master sequence and hit “play”

I’m not sure if this is part of what a Sequencer does anyway, or if there may be a better way of doing it using another technique, or what.

Can anyone here point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance -

2

I Googled “MIDI message boards” and got a bunch of responses. You should hang out on a few and see if there are folks who know what they are talking about.

http://www.hamienet.com/forum7.html

http://www.music-tech.com/

The wiki entry on MIDI appears to have a bunch of links: MIDI - Wikipedia

Many products/gadgets/software apps, etc. that are MIDI-based have their own specific message boards - check out the manufacturer’s sites. Those are great places to learn about tweaks, best uses, tricks, etc…

That’s just a start.

3

I think you’d need to be able to change channels on the fly. I’m not sure that can be done.

4

The product you should look at is Ableton Live - there are also a bunch of MIDI controllers that you can use to trigger your loops.

Si

5

Thanks for the responses so far - I’ll take a look at Ableton.

When I did my initial Google searches I noted that there were a fair number of message boards and figured that a recommendation from someone might be useful in finding a good one.

I’m also digging up manuals, etc - but still, sometimes asking about a problem can save a lot of time otherwise wasted trying to reinvent a wheel or barking up the wrong tree.

Once again, I appreciate the time taken to post to this thread