From bruce@ashbysolutions.com Thu Jun 02 13:43:03 2011
Subject:Re: Nord C2 as a Controller

Hi Lorrie,

Think of MIDI is like the rolls on a player piano. Those rolls tell the
piano which notes to play and when, but they don't provide any sound on
their own, nor do they control the basic sound of the piano. MIDI does
a few things more than a piano roll -- ex: note velocity -- but on the
whole, it performs the same tasks.

MIDI was designed in the '80s, and it original purpose was to allow
keyboard players to layer sounds, rather than use two hands to play the
exact run on say, an organ and a synth. Layering was new technology,
and very few keyboards could play two or more sounds at once. MIDI
fixed that. It also created a standard for communicating between two
digital keyboards, because up until that time, Roland had their own
in-house standard, as did Yamaha and Voyetra, but none of the standards
'talked' to each other.

Regards,

-BW

Bruce Wahler
Ashby Solutions.com^(TM)
bruce@ashbysolutions.com
http://music.ashbysolutions.com
877.55.ASHBY (877.552.7429)

On 6/2/2011 3:35 PM, ccmacdon wrote:
> Lorrie,