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Synthesizer:
- It is a sound generator (various pitch, loudness, tone colour).
- A good (musician's) synthesizer often has a microprocessor,
keyboard, control panels, memory, etc.
Sequencer:
- It can be a stand-alone unit or a software program for a personal
computer. (It used to be a storage server for MIDI data. Nowadays
it is more a software music editor on the computer.
- It has one or more MIDI INs and MIDI OUTs.
Track:
- Track in sequencer is used to organize the recordings.
- Tracks can be turned on or off on recording or playing back.
Channel:
- MIDI channels are used to separate information in a MIDI system.
- There are 16 MIDI channels in one cable.
- Channel numbers are coded into each MIDI message.
Timbre:
- The quality of the sound, e.g., flute sound, cello sound, etc.
- Multitimbral - capable of playing many different sounds at the
same time (e.g., piano, brass, drums, etc.)
Pitch:
- musical note that the instrument plays
Voice:
- Voice is the portion of the synthesizer that produces sound.
- Synthesizers can have many (12, 20, 24, 36, etc.) voices.
- Each voice works independently and simultaneously to produce
sounds of different timbre and pitch.
Patch:
- the control settings that define a particular timbre.
Next: Hardware Aspects of MIDI
Up: Introduction to MIDI (Musical
Previous: Introduction to MIDI (Musical
Dave Marshall
10/4/2001