Sequencer

Event View

  Tracks 0, 4 and 7 were selected in Track view, and they show up all mixed together, in the Event View snapshot, just below. Track 0 is used for basic song information, often including the set-up, or initial SysEx. And now's probably a good time to point out that it's preferred that tempo changes, time signatures, key signature, even SysEx (but not necessarily) be placed in track 0 of a Type 1 SMF.

  Track 4, here, is playing out channel 2, track 7 out channel 4; in this case, they just happen to be an overdrive and distortion guitar. This sequencer gives the option of setting your own color codes, so I prefer a yellow field for SysEx, and this reverse highlight in teal for selected events; here I used the mouse to highlight and E and G note on track 4. The leftmost column shows the track number. Next over is the bar/beat notation, discussed before - bar.beat:tick (tick based on the timebase for the whole MIDI, which happens to be 120 in this example). The next over, in this sequencer, is actually the time, the hours, minutes, seconds, down to the millisecond. If you want to know what plays 2 minutes into the song, for example, you can find the 2 minute mark in that column. Next over is the channel. Just because events are on a particular track, doesn't mean they all play out the same channel. Sometimes people might use a couple of channels/track; I just don't myself. Next is the event, itself - controller, note, SysEx, whatever else. And the values for that depend on the sort of event.

• A note is going to specify the pitch (incl. which octave), the start time, the velocity, and the duration or length (in bar.beat:tick notation). And the note's start time is, of course, shown over in the 'beat' column.
• But a SysEx, which observe doesn't go out any particular channel, is just a command string - which is shown here.
• The pitch bends (PtchBnd) just have their values, which run from about minus 8000 to plus 8000, as noted before. You can see that it's a bend up, playing out channel 2, and there's a C# on channel 2 which is likely going to sound like something just lower than a C# being struck and simultaneously bent up to C#; about 3 seconds into the song, about the 3rd beat of the 2nd measure, and playing pretty loud (at 117, cause it only goes up to 127) and for somewhat less than a full beat (if 120 is the timebase, then 100 is 20 short of a full beat).
• The controllers have their values, and here a little label/description is given of the controller, as well.
• The patch/program change (Pgm Chg) also tells what the instrument is, a little label to accompany the patch number, and also shows a couple of bank numbers (here both banks are 0).

  You can imagine how carefully and precisely you can select events this way. If you want to be sure you get all of a certain sort, but only in a certain spot in the song, it's a good way to do it. You can highlight events right down to the 'tick mark'. If you need more control over pitch bends, say, or want to end a run of them with a 0 value, it might be easiest just to insert or edit an event from this Event window.

  In addition to some of the standard set-up stuff, like initial time signature, SysEx commands, one might try resetting a synth right when one starts to play a new MIDI. I include a reset file from Roland to reset its synths, in all my MIDI .zip files. But various people like to insure you get some things reset, in their own MIDI files, and you will see some of this kind of stuff out there, in different MIDIs. And in this Event View you can see the whole list, of course:

  So this is just the first three tracks of the RolReset.mid that you find in so many files at this site. Of course, all 16 channels are being reset, but only 4 tracks/3 channels were selected here to show up in the Event window. It's making sure the bank 0 Piano is used, that it's centered in your speakers (mid-point pan value, which is 64), no chorus, a bit of reverb (controller 91 to 40). Just above the highlighted event, you see a RPN LSB, and RPN MSB. For those who don't know, that's the Registered Parameter, 0, which is the degree of pitch bend; which as far as I know is recognized as such by all synths. The value just below is the value for the last RPN specified, and here it's 2 - 2 semitone pitch bend range. That's a whole note up, a whole note down, from that 0 we saw half way up on the Controller window; 4 semitones in all. And that's considered the standard setting - 4 semitones overall. But you can change it to something else, even on the fly, later in the MIDI, specifying it by RPN, as here. It's just that I understand some older synths might not give you more than 4 semitones, and that could make your MIDI sound awfully funny, to say the least, if you were counting on more. But . . oh, well. Other RPNs and NRPNs are covered a bit in that link toward the bottom of the general info page, and as well in the section on synthesizers.

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