music notation for computers

MIDI stands for

Musical Instrument Digital Interface

It was introduced in the early 1980, to play synthesisers remotely from another keyboard. It is bascially a way to write down musical information in a digital format. They are many different aspects of Midi messages, but for today I’d like to focus how we can use them for beat programming. Two simple parameters are relevant for today’s lesson:

• Midi Note Pitch (to use for Kick, Snare, HiHat closed, HiHat open)
• Velocity (how strong a note is played within a range of 0-127)

how does MIDI look like in Ableton?

Here the first tracks are audio, track 3 & 4 are MIDI Tracks:

If put an instrument on a MIDI track, it will look different, because now there is actual sound coming out. It looks similar to an audio track, except the input section and the arm button on the bottom has a note symbol:

and here is a side by side comparison: