Robbey10,

I believe you are confusing midi channels with midi tracks.

A midi instrument uses at least one channel but doesn't have to be limited to a single channel. While recording or composing midi data it is not unusual for midi guitar data to occupy six midi channels (one for each string), a piano to occupy two (left hand and rght hand). At some point though most people consolidate all of an instrument's data into one midi channel unless there is another need. Think about the piano again, you may want to have the left hand panned far left and the right hand panned far right or apply different effects. Then you will have to use two instances of the piano and they will need two midi channels.

Drums however are a special case though because drums don't have one, common sound at different pitches. Instead each note is a different instrument (kick, snare, closed high hat, open high hat, ride cymbal, crash cymbal and so on). That is why drums are assigned their own channel.

By the way, before the general midi (GM) standard was released each hardware manufacturer created their own standard. There was an informal agreement for drums to use channel 10 but some manufactures used channel 16. Microsoft released midi mapper to map midi channels to how your hardware works.

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