Just to beat a dead horse:
Originally Posted By: Mac
To the best of my knowledge, Band in a Box does not create nor send Note Off data, either. Hence the commonly found stuck synth on strings and other pads when someone hits Stop before the Duration value has ended.

BiaB most certainly creates and sends NoteOff data. How else would notes be able to turn off?

Sidebar: Sending a NoteOff or sending a NoteOn with a velocity of 0 amount to the same thing. Other than being pendantic, there's not really any point in making the distinction. And I'm certainly being pendantic here. laugh

The idea the the MIDI instructions themselves have any timing or durational information is incorrect.

MIDI commands don't contain timing information. They are directives that are meant to be executed when they are received by your synth. These include instructions like:
  • Play a note at velocity
  • Turn the modulation wheel to position
  • Change the instrument on channel to instrument


When the instructions arrive at your synth, they are executed immediately.

There's no such thing as "Play an eighth note" in MIDI. To make that happen, you would:
  • Send a NoteOn instruction.
  • Wait for an 8th note duration of time.
  • Send a NoteOff instruction.


If you want to store timing information, you can put the MIDI commands into a MIDI file. This is a binary (not humanly readable) file containing not only MIDI commands, but timing information as well. The program that executes the MIDI file (BiaB, your favorite DAW, whatever) reads the file, runs a timer, and send the MIDI instructions out at the appropriate time.

But the commands themselves have no timing information, and they are acted on as soon as they arrive at your synth.

The MIDI NoteOn command instructs the synthesizer to play a particular note until a NoteOff instruction is received. There is no durational information.

From the official MIDI Message Table specs:

Originally Posted By: www.midi.org
Note On event.
This message is sent when a note is depressed (start). (kkkkkkk) is the key (note) number. (vvvvvvv) is the velocity.


As a result, not sending the NoteOff command will cause any synth to behave like it had a stuck key.

I hope this clarifies things a bit.


-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?