the general rule is, notes to the same voice share a channel. the
exection to this rule is polyphonic instruments with pitch bends on some
of the notes, i.e. guitar. pitch bend midi events apply to all the
notes in a channel, so if you want to bend just one whilst a chord plays
you'll need more than one "guitar" channel. make sense?
paul wisehart wrote:
Hi All,
What's the canonical way to play a "one instrument" chord
in midi?
Do I send multiple note-on events to the same channel?
Or, should I split them up into different channels, and
make sure that the used channels have the same program
(or patch-value?)?
My intuition says stack up the notes on the one channel.
That would be more analoguous to a band situation where
each channel is an instrument. But, in practice are most
midi synths able to handle enough multiple notes on a channel?
For example a "piano" channel should be able to take up to say
5 notes, and still play them distinctly. Or the same with
a guitar channel where a guitar chord is commonly plucked
on 5 or 6 strings.
I'm using a soft-synth in my developement/learning/experimenting,
but I hope to eventually use hardware midi modules, and not have to
modify my code.
So quick question recap...
"Should I stack up to 6 note-ons on one midi channel, or should
I figure out how to split them up into multiple channels?"
I've been reading up up on general midi issues, but I haven't
seen any relevant docs about this.
thanks for any info/pointers/flames,
--
paul w
