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Multimedia Articles
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Written by TParker
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Tuesday, 31 August 2004 |
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Page 4 of 10
Using MIDI THRU
We know that all
 MIDI Interfaces
are not created equally. Most common interfaces will have a MIDI IN and a MIDI OUT port. If all you will
ever use is one MIDI instrument, then that will probably work quite nicely for you. But, if you are a gadget freak like me,
then you will wind up owning several
MIDI devices
and will want to hook them all together and have an all night  recording
session. If you want to control more than one instrument using a single device (like a sequencer or master
keyboard
controller), then you will need a way to pass outgoing information to every MIDI device in your setup. This is where the
MIDI THRU port comes in.
The MIDI THRU port takes all information that comes into the
MIDI Interface by way of the MIDI IN port and passes it on to the
next device. In essence, it makes a copy and anything that comes in and sends it back out. For example: let’s say that you
are using a PC-based MIDI sequencing program and that you have two external MIDI devices, a
keyboard and a
drum machine.
If all you do is hook up the
keyboard
using the MIDI IN/OUT scenario, then you will not be able to pass information to the drum
machine when you are recording or playing back your sequence. Most decent external MIDI devices will have a MIDI THRU
port. If you take a MIDI cable and plug it into the keyboard’s MIDI THRU port and take the other end and plug it into the drum
machine’s MIDI IN port, then all of the MIDI data that the
keyboard
receives will be duplicated and passed along to the drum
machine. Cool, huh? Not only that, if your MIDI sequencer has MIDI THRU option, you will be able to triggers sound that are
on the
drum machine
from your keyboard as long as you have the PC’s
MIDI Sequencer up and running. If your MIDI sequencer
does not have a THRU function - get rid of it... it sucks. If your
drum machine
has a MIDI THRU port as well, you can hook another MIDI instrument into your chain by "daisy-chaining" it off of
the
drum machine. Using the daisy-chain method, you can attach a total of sixteen external MIDI devices to your PC!
Why sixteen? Sixteen is a crucial number in the MIDI specification. Your sequencer has to know which instrument a MIDI data
stream is intended for. If there was no way to give your external devices a way to ignore multiple MIDI streams, then each
instrument would try to play all the MIDI data that it receives whether it was intended for that device or not. Confused?
Don’t worry... read the next section on MIDI Channels.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 24 August 2005 )
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