J. Anthony Allen explains MIDI recording in Ableton Live 10. MIDI sends note and velocity data from a controller to Live, which triggers sounds from virtual instruments on MIDI tracks. The controller itself makes no sound; the instrument device does.
Okay, let's move on and talk about MIDI recording. So a little recap. Sort of MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. And what that means is that it's kind of like a protocol, is what it is. That's the way to think of it. Think of it like a little language in which we have a MIDI device. So something like a MIDI keyboard, let's say. And what that MIDI keyboard does is it sends information to Ableton that says what note was pressed and how hard it was pressed, and some other things, too, but that's the main stuff. And what Live then does with it is it says, okay, I will now make this sound based on that information, more or less. So the key to remember here is that there is no audio information coming from the MIDI keyboard. The MIDI keyboard does not make sound at all. All it does is send information to LIVE that says what sounds it should make. Okay? So that's why we learned in the first class that you have to put an instrument on a MIDI track, because that's where all the sounds are made is in the instrument. So what we're going to be doing in this section is talking about how MIDI recording works, how to record stuff from your MIDI devices. We're going to be looking at a few different MIDI devices. Some of the setup that you need to do, some of the hardware setup, the software setup, how it works, and then doing some actual arranging. So let's dive in.
