Midi Channels Question

[Tim Bainbridge]

Hi There,

This may be a newbie question. But even though I have used midi for a long time, I have always been confused with the “midi channels” thing. My question is 2 parts:

1. I can have a midi instrument on one track in my DAW using midi Channel 1, but also have others using midi channel 1 as well is that right? seems that this channel idea is not you can only use it once?

2. I notice on my Ezdrummer Midi track that it can change midi channels through the drum programming from Channel 1 to Channel 10? why is this? and should I change all of these events to one channel (Like all 1 or all 10) before sending this midi to someone else? You can see in the picture attached how in logic it is showing that channel has changed from 1 to 10.. can someone explain this? Cheers

Topic

[Henrik Ekblom]

As long as you are using virtual instrument plugins (such as EZdrummer 2) in Logic Pro X, and you have separate instrument tracks for each instruments and its MIDI, you don’t have to change the MIDI channels – it will just work. Logic Pro X has it’s receive midi channels set to “All” by default, which means that it doesn’t matter what channel the MIDI is using.

MIDI channels where from the beginning used when you had several external hardware MIDI devices (keyboards, synths, e-drums etc) and you wanted MIDI to control the correct hardware. For example, Keyboard A should control your hardware sampler B. A and B should then be using the same MIDI channel.
One MIDI file can contain notes for different channels, which is the case if you download a MIDI file which is a complete song with guitars, piano, drums etc. In those cases, the notes for drums are usually on channel 10.

There are more examples of usage of MIDI channels, but if you use instruments tracks in Logic you shouldn’t have to worry about that 🙂

Henrik Ekblom - User Experience Designer
Toontrack

[Tim Bainbridge]

Thanks for the help. The other reason I wanted to know this is that I send my midi to a Reaper User when my songs are finished and ready for mixing. Sometimes the midi comes up in his Reaper DAW as some of the midi being on Channel 1 and some on channel 10. Should I change all the midi for the drums to just one channel before sending it to him?

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