stab Help

12. MIDI

MIDI on the web

In a browser, Stab reaches your MIDI devices through Web MIDI: the same keyboards, kits, guitars and controllers as the apps, playing, recording, learning controls and sending to destinations. The browser asks you first, and not every browser has it.

This article is about the web app. In the apps, MIDI devices work as soon as they’re plugged in: see MIDI devices.

Web MIDI

Available on Web. Not on Mac and Windows.

This isn’t on Mac.

This isn’t on Windows.

Which browsers

Web MIDI is in Chrome, Edge and Firefox on a computer. Safari, and every browser on the iPhone and iPad, don’t have it: Settings › Audio & MIDI then says MIDI needs Chrome, Edge or Firefox on a computer., and the rest of Stab works as before.

Turning it on

Stab asks for MIDI only when you want it:

  1. In Settings (Settings… in the Settings menu), under Audio & MIDI, choose Turn On MIDI (or Turn On MIDI in the MIDI In tab of the Audio & MIDI pane).
  2. Allow it when the browser asks. Chrome and Edge ask with a prompt; Firefox asks you to add a small permission add-on for the site.

Once you’ve allowed it, MIDI is on whenever you open Stab in that browser. If you said no, change the site’s MIDI permission in the browser’s settings, then turn it on again.

Devices come and go as you plug them in. The pane you’re working in takes what they play.

Your devices’ settings

Settings › Audio & MIDI lists each device plugged in: whether it’s On, its kind (Keyboard, Drum Kit, MIDI Guitar, Controller) and its Latency. The Audio & MIDI pane has the same and more: a MIDI guitar’s strings and bends, a kit’s module map, arming, Send Clock for each destination, the mapping (the MIDI controls you’ve learnt, each Relative or forgotten) and the monitor.

These settings are kept in this browser, for this computer, like the apps keep theirs on the device. Teaching an e-kit its pads one by one is in the apps only.

Recording, practice and control

The Transport menu has the same MIDI commands as the apps: Record, Capture MIDI, punching in, MIDI Step Input, Wait for Me, Listen, the speed trainer, Calibrate MIDI Latency and Learn MIDI Control. See Playing and recording MIDI, Step input, MIDI latency and MIDI control and mapping.

The web app records MIDI, not audio.

When played notes sound late

Stab plays its sound on a thread of its own when the page allows it. When it can’t, nothing on the screen says so: what you play sounds a little late, but it’s recorded where you played it.