12. MIDI

MIDI out and clock

A track can play out over MIDI as well as through its own sound: to a hardware synth, a guitar synth module, a drum machine, or another app. And the song in front can send its clock, so a sequencer or a drum machine plays in time with it, or follow another device’s clock instead.

MIDI out and clock

Available on every platform.

Destinations

A destination is anything Stab can send MIDI to: a device’s MIDI in, an interface’s output, or another app listening to Stab (to Other Apps), the source Stab offers on this device,or the outputs the browser lists, once MIDI is on (MIDI on the web),as Windows lists them, when it’s plugged in. Each has two settings, in the MIDI Out tab of the Audio & MIDI pane and under Settings › Audio & MIDI › Outputs (Send Clock is also in the Settings menu’s MIDI submenu):

• Latency: the time it takes to sound. Notes go out that much earlier, so a slow module still lands with the song.
• Send Clock: sends it the song’s clock (below).

Playing a track out

Open the track’s menu (its header) and choose a destination under MIDI Out (None by default; the item shows once a destination is plugged in, and audio tracks have none). Then:

• MIDI Out Channel: the channel it plays on, 1 to 16.
• MIDI Out: a Channel per String (a fretted track): each string on its own channel, the first string on the channel you chose and the next ones after it, for a guitar synth module.
• MIDI Out Instead of Its Sound: the track plays only out; otherwise it plays both.

The MIDI Out tab lists every track with the same settings. A muted track, or one left out by a solo, sends nothing.

What goes out: the notes with their velocities, graces and strokes; a drum track’s hits as General MIDI notes; each note’s bend, whammy and detune as the pitch wheel (on one channel only for a note alone on it, as a wheel bends everything on its channel); and the track’s automation that has a MIDI form (controllers, the wheel, pressure, programs, the fader as CC 7 and the pan as CC 10). Playback starts each channel with its program, volume, pan and a bend range of 24 semitones.

Like the controls you learn, a track’s MIDI out belongs to you on this device: it’s saved beside the song for you, isn’t undone, and isn’t sent to others when you play together. A destination that isn’t plugged in is skipped.

Sending the clock

Turn on Send Clock for a destination, and the song in front sends it MIDI clock (24 ticks a beat, following the tempo and the practice speed), Start when it plays from the beginning, Song Position and Continue when it plays from elsewhere, and Stop. At a loop’s end it sends the jump, so a sequencer following it comes back round too. Wait for Me’s pauses pause the clock.

Following another device’s clock