I took yesterday off as a mental health day Today I started my full program – all 4 topics: Music Theory, Piano, Guitar, and Digital Music. I’m a stickler for learning the basics first, because I struggle with understanding things if I don’t comprehend the rules that drive it, so I’ve made it a point to not even touch the guitar or piano yet as far as learning goes. Just nailing down the basics this week!

I started on MIDI Basics in Tweak’s Guide for Digital Audio. It took me waaaay longer than 15 minutes though, I actually had to split it up in the morning and evening to finish it. It was a real good primer for understand how MIDI works and why it’s useful.

Music Theory: (pages 15, 16, 17)

Since I wrapped up Chapter 1, I used my study time today to review what I’ve learned so far, go through the exercises at the end of the chapter, and listen to the accompanying Audio CD for Chapter 1.

Piano: (pages 12, 13, 14)

Honestly, I was getting sick of the history of piano, so I finished reading all 33 pages of it. Bleh. My gripe is that a lot of it is explanations of how things worked, with only a few pictures to show how it worked – no diagrams until the Steinway, and obviously no video to demonstrate the action. So it’s hard to visual the developmental progress of the history of the piano from just words and a few pictures. My goal is to learn the basics of the piano, so I went ahead and fast-forwarded through the history material so that I could focus on the fun stuff

It did eventually merge into more of the piano-playing styles instead of development, which was still hard to visualize (well, imagine in my head, I guess) because the accompanying Audio CD didn’t have any musical samples of the musicians listed throughout the development and progression of piano music (understandable, due to licensing problems). Luckily I have Youtube

In the future, I want to come back and revisit the history of the piano and piano music in detail, along with an audible study of the music from each artist, plus the inner workings & development of the piano as an instrument. I don’t particularly like studying history, but history gives you a solid perspective and understanding of the modern scene.

Tomorrow I’ll start on Unit 1, which covers the keyboard, posture and technique, reading music, hand positions and fingering, hands seperately and together, the passing thumb, and scales and triads. Unit 1 spans about 20 pages, so it will take about a week to plow through it.

Guitar: (pages 4, 5, 6)

I watched the first section of the video that came with my electric Peavey guitar today, entitled “Parts of the Guitar”. I learned that the nut of the guitar is what guides the strings from the neck to the headstock. The first fret is just below the nut, and of course the machine heads are used for tuning the strings (twist up or down).

On the body, there are two dials – tone and volume. The tone changes from treble to bass, while the volume obviously changes the output volume of the guitar. Then there’s the pickups and the pickup selector. There are two single-coil pickups, and then a pair of pickups below that called a double-coil pickup, or humbucker. The humbucker stops the humming.

The humbucker is sometimes called the bridge pickup, since it’s closest to the bridge. The uppermost single-coil pickup is sometimes called the neck pickup, since it’s closet to the neck. The second single-coil pickup (below the neck pickup) is simply called the middle pickup.

The pickup selector has 5 positions: (1) humbucker only, (2) humbucker and the middle pickup, (3) the middle pickup only, (4) both single-coil pickups, and (5) the neck pickup only.

Digital Music: (MIDI Basics)

The intro to MIDI article is broken into 3 parts:

1. Understand MIDI data
2. How to setup a keyboard and sequencer
3. Configuring Ports, Channels, Tracks and Instruments

The first thing Tweak points out is that in order to succeed at being a home electronic musician, you have to understand MIDI. MIDI applies to both keyboards automating studio gear through controller data. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

It’s important to understand what MIDI is and how it works: it’s for sending data, not audio. Instead of sending a sound from a keyboard note, it simply sends a signal that the key was pressed. It’s the idea of audio waveform (sound) vs. events (signals), and it all boils down to numbers.

MIDI events include: when you pressed down on a key, which key you pressed, how hard you pressed the key, when you let the key up, when you pressed the next key, when you moved a knob, and when you changed a program. Once you record the MIDI data, you can edit it in your sequencer. It’s all just recorded as numbers – not audio. That’s the big idea and differentiation you need to understand.

MIDI Sequencers record the note events (on/off) on a timing grid (which you can play back at any tempo). Hitting the play button in your sequencing software simply sends the data back to the synth, which then turns on the notes (sound) to play back for you. To change how it sounds, you just edit it in your sequencing software.

Once the synth is playing back a midi track (like a player piano), then you can record that as an audio track, since it’s playing notes now (based on MIDI data) instead of recording MIDI events. You can do that by recording the output from synth on your computer from the analog audio output, which then records as an audio track. So you’ve got a MIDI track (data, which is editable) and an Audio track (sound, or a recording of the notes). Again, data vs. sound is the big idea here.

MIDI devices have 16 channels to send and receive data on. Devices include keyboards, hardware sound modules, and control surfaces. The channels are like TV channels – you can have a different program on each channel – except that you can play all 16 channels at the same time. You can also assign a different instrument to each track, so you can have a 16-piece band if you want! In addition, you can record each track while the previous tracks play back. Channels are useful because you can setup your sequencer like this:

Channel 1: Bass
Channel 2: Strings
Channel 3: Drums
Channel 4: Piano

There are 3 types of MIDI connections:

1. MIDI In: This is input from, say, a computer. So the computer sends the keyboard MIDI data into the “In” port.
2. MIDI Out: This is the output from the MIDI device, such as a keyboard to a computer. So the keyboard sends MIDI data through the “Out” port to the computer.
3. MIDI Thru: This is an exact copy of the MIDI “In” data. So when a computer sends MIDI data to the keyboard, it makes a copy and sends it through the “Thru” port, kind of like “Tape Monitoring” on older equipment. The key to remember here is that only incoming data (from another source) is copied, not outgoing data (from the device).

In addition to MIDI ports, you can also send MIDI over a USB cord (for computer usage). Whereas MIDI ports only send data in one direction (depending on the port), a USB cable is bi-directional and can act as both a MIDI “In” and “Out” port. Next we’ll talk about MIDI ports on the computer – how to add I/O. For recording MIDI input, there are 5 methods:

1. Keyboards with integrated USB MIDI
2. Sound cards with MIDI ports (internal cards, USB, and Firewire)
3. USB MIDI adapters (standalone)
4. MIDI Cable Converters (conversion cables that use device drivers to turn PC ports into MIDI ports). There are 2 main types: Joystick port to MIDI (for older Soundblaster sound cards) and Serial port to MIDI. These cables are only as reliable as the drivers are and aren’t recommneded – get a USB MIDI adapter instead (they’re as cheap as $30 for a unit with MIDI I/O).
5. Rack MIDI Interfaces (these are older and connect via Serial or Parallel ports). They were made for DOS/Win95/Win98. They require a driver to work. Avoid these and get a USB to MIDI adapter.

If you have more than one MIDI input device, you can mix and match them on your computer. You’re not limited to just one input – the computer will see and use all of the MIDI inputs you’ve got connected, even if they’re on USB, a sound card, Firewire, or piped in through another MIDI device – as long as they’re all connected with the proper drivers installed, the computer can read them.

Next let’s talk about MIDI output from the computer. The data that was recorded in the sequencer gets piped out of the computer to two types of ports: External and Virtual. For External Ports, the data is outputted via MIDI Out to the MIDI In port of your hardware instruments, which turns into sounds and plays for you to hear. With a Virtual Port, the Internal MIDI ports are instead directed to sound sources in the computer.

The External Port for MIDI Out will show up in your Sequencer when you install the drivers. For Virtual Ports (virtual MIDI ports), they’ll show up as soon as your software synth is initialized (or “instantiated” in nerd-speak).

So to summarize the hardware aspect of MIDI: Each MIDI port (parent) has 16 channels each (children). You can have as many MIDI ports as you want. If you want 128 channels, then you just need 8 MIDI ports (8 ports x 16 children each = 128 channels). A shortcut for designing MIDI connections is “Out to In, Thru to In”. You can only output to an input, and you can only pass “thru” data to an input.

You can turn channels on and off inside a MIDI device; this capability is separate from the flow of MIDI data. If say, channel 7 is on two MIDI keyboards that are daisy-chained together, then it will play from both keyboards. If you have a big setup, you can save yourself the hassle of managing channel states by just buying a computer adapter with a bunch of MIDI ports.