This is fine if you’re playing lead keyboard for an 80’s disco funk band, not so cool in the 2010s. Pitch bend in the current MIDI spec is monophonic, so it affects all notes on the channel at the same time. Now consider how easy it is for the microtonalist – they only need to purchase a single MIDI keyboard controller that allows them to set up microtonal tunings, and then it automatically works with every MIDI 2.0 sound module! That’s a great leap ahead of the mess we have today, where all MIDI controllers output note numbers 0-127 and each sound module has its own quirky method of assigning frequencies to those notes. A connected MIDI sound module receives the message and starts outputting a sound at 440 Hz. On a standard MIDI 2.0 keyboard controller you press middle A and it sends a note on message with a frequency value of 440.0. Lose the MIDI note numbers – adopt frequencies!Ĭonsider that we have a MIDI 2.0 system where frequencies are sent instead of note numbers. Bandwidth is now cheap – so let’s forget about MIDI note numbers altogether! We can just send frequencies directly as single floats. If we were to represent every pitch of this scale with a MIDI note number, then note numbers would have to be represented by at least 11 bits (2048 notes).īut having all those note numbers (and a tuning table with 2048 values) isn’t an efficient solution. If I have 200 notes per octave, then to get a full piano range of 8 octaves I already need 1600 notes. People are starting to want something more than standard tuning.ġ28 notes simply isn’t enough for large microtonal scales. Oh don’t get me wrong, 128 notes is more than enough for standard tuning, but this isn’t 1890 anymore. The existing MIDI standard allows you a mere 7 bits to store the value of the note being played. We have a problem with MIDI note numbers… These limitations may not be apparent to your everyday musician, so I thought I would highlight some of the problems that are faced by those working in this field. MIDI has served musicians well for decades, but everyday microtonalists are struggling to make electronic music within the limitations of the MIDI spec. It now turns out that MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) is creating new convenient workflows for creating microtonal music with technology. Note – this was a highly speculative post written BEFORE the announcement of MIDI 2.0.
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