General questions about midi

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HarryR
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General questions about midi

Post by HarryR »

Hi everybody, it's me again.

Don't know , if this is the correct board for general questions about midi,
but the other (board)choices didn't match better.

I'm simply trying to find out which midi cc are free for custom usese.

I found a table (on a german page) where the control changes shown below are described as "not defined"
and "General Purpose x" . Other sources of midi documentation are partly different ...

So, in my opinion those control changes are free for custom use (for a random event sent to a midi-capable device/application)

Is that correct and if not, which control changes can I (miss)use for my own purposes ?

Best regards
(midi newbie) Harry

3 not defined
9 not defined
12-15 not defined
16 General Purpose 1
17 General Purpose 2
18 General Purpose 3
19 General Purpose 4
20 - 31 not defined
44 - 47 not defined LSB
48 General Purpose 1 LSB
49 General Purpose 2 LSB
50 General Purpose 3 LSB
51 General Purpose 4 LSB
52-63 not defined LSB
68 not defined
70 not defined
75 - 79 not defined
80 General Purp 5
81 General Purp 6
82 General Purp 7
83 General Purp 8
84 - 90 not defined
102 - 120 not defined
nils
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Re: General questions about midi

Post by nils »

Yes, that is the correct understanding.
These lists are copies of the original MIDI 1.0 specification and it is safe to assume they are correct.

That said, CCs are just numbers. You will find plenty of programs who just use whatever CCs they want for any functionality.
And some programs don't define any pre-bound controls but let you choose via midi learn.

If you write your own programs or patches it is nice to stick to the standard, but it is also important to know that most hardware midi controllers offer direct controls (knobs and faders) to volume, modulation, expression and pan (and pitch wheel, which is not a CC). And then you need to menu dive in your hardware to reconfigure them which is tedious. So there is an argument to use these over free ones or matching predefined ones (such as the filter cutoff cc)
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