MIDI Terminology

Technically speaking, Finale isn’t a sequencing program. It has been designed primary to produce notation. Yet it duplicates many functions of a sequencer, and has the added advantage of being notation-based.

If you plan to use Finale as a quasi-sequencer, it’s important to recognize that Finale can play back any score in one of three very different ways. Using a Human Playback style that interprets expression markings, dynamics, ritards, accents, hairpins and more. Or, if you set Human Playback to None (in the Playback Controls), you can use the Playback/Record Options dialog box to specify whether you want to playback the score as recorded, or rhythmically perfect, lacking any of the irregularities in performance that give music a human feel.

If in the Document menu, Playback/Record Options, all of the items under “Play recorded” are checked, Finale will, play back the score using captured MIDI data. Captured MIDI data is the actual, unquantized MIDI “recording” of a performance you created using HyperScribe Tool, including your key velocity information, your ritards, and your pedaling. What’s even more useful is that once you’ve transcribed such a performance, you can edit the notes, the dynamics, and other elements of the notated score; when you play the performance-data version, you’ll hear your changes incorporated into the original performance. Remember, you can only hear playback as it was recorded (or without any additional continuous data), if you set Human Playback to None in the Playback Settings dialog boxPlayback Controls.

If you want to capture this MIDI data when you record, before recording in HyperScribe, under the MIDI/Audio menu, choose Quantization Settings, and then click More Settings. Make sure Retain Key Velocities and Retain Note Durations are checked.

A MIDI setup is the physical connection between all your MIDI devices and your computer. A typical setup consists of a MIDI interface, a computer, and the actual MIDI equipment such as keyboards, sound modules, wind controller, and so on.

A MIDI system is any part of the operating system that handles communication between Finale (or any other software application) and a MIDI setup.

A MIDI interface is an external device that translates signals between your computer and MIDI instrument(s). On the Macintosh, a MIDI interface often connects to a USB port, or, if you have an older Mac, one of the serial ports.

A port is simply the connection at the back of the computer where you connect a cable leading to any of several kinds of peripheral devices, such as modems, printers, scanners, and MIDI interfaces. Some older Macintosh models have two built-in serial ports, the Printer port and the Modem port. Most newer Macintosh models have a USB port.

Depending on your MIDI interface, you may need an adaptor to plug into a USB port. If you have serial ports, you can plug in the MIDI interface’s cable to whichever serial port you prefer. If you have more than one serial port, it is often more convenient to connect the MIDI interface to the Modem port—if you have a printer, it is probably used often enough that it should have a constant connection to the Printer port. With some MIDI interfaces, you can plug your printer into a special connection on the MIDI interface, then easily switch between running MIDI and printing all on one port, without having to swap out cables on your computer. These interfaces are helpful for computer systems that are connected to a modem, printer, and MIDI gear or multimedia equipment.

Technical Note: if you have an internal modem on your Macintosh, you can no longer use the modem port. This port is in fact being used by your internal modem. Instead, you must use your printer port.

Finale supports up to 64 MIDI channels. If you are using a USB interface that has at least four MIDI Out ports, you can use the maximum number of channels Finale supports through your four (or more) external MIDI devices. (Finale supports up to 16 MIDI channels per device.)

If you plan to work extensively with staff-to-MIDI channel mappings, you should become familiar with the concept of Instruments. An Instrument is one distinct stream of playback information; you might think of an Instrument as one player’s part.

An Instrument is usually one staff in your score, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, you’ll probably want to write a piano part on two staves, but those two staves are considered just one Instrument (and thus they’ll use the same MIDI channel). On the other hand, each layer of each staff can be considered a different Instrument; you might write two clarinet parts on a one staff (in different layers), but you can tell Finale to treat them as two Instruments. Using two instruments (on different channels) allows you to edit their MIDI data independently.

Each Instrument can have its own MIDI channel, and each Instrument is dynamically independent. If you want the treble and bass staves of a piano part to have independent dynamics, make sure you assign them to different Instruments on different channels.

There are 64 possible channels in Finale. If you use the Setup Wizard or new defualt document, each instrument you add is assigned to its own channel. Note that multiple staves of the same instrument added with the Document Setup Wizard (or New Staves Setup Wizard) will be given the same instrument name and channel.

For more complex playback situations, however, you’ll find that Finale’s Instrument List window gives you a lot of power and control with very little effort. As a matter of fact, we’ve included Instrument Libraries—preconfigured instrument, channel, and patch setups—for many popular MIDI keyboards. See “To load an Instrument Library.”

Finale supports up to 16 channels per MIDI device. Some devices only play back using one channel at a time. Other devices are multi-timbral, meaning that they can play back more than one channel at a time. In other words, you can play different sounds assigned to different channels at the same time, on the same MIDI device.

Different sounds within a MIDI device have specific numbers assigned to them, called patches (or program numbers). Depending on the device, patch 1 may be a grand piano sound, patch 2 - electric piano, program 3 - violin, program 4 - viola, and so on. Some of the more sophisticated sound modules can contain many hundreds of sounds. However, MIDI only supports the use of the first 128 numbers (numbered 0 through 127). To use some of the additional sounds “above” 127, renumber them as lower numbers, or set them manually on the instrument before playing back. To accommodate more than 128 sounds many MIDI devices use banks of sounds. Banks are an isolated group of 128 patches, which are accessed by changing your “active” bank of patches to a new bank using a special controller message. Bank information, combined with program information, creates what is referred to as a Patch.

To have different patches play back at the same time, you need to use different channels with a specific patch assigned to each channel. For example, if you wanted to play back a piece for a trio consisting of flute, violin and piano, you would set up the piano staves to play back on channel 1, program 1; the flute staff to play back on channel 2, program 74; and the violin staff to play back on channel 3, program 41. These settings reflect the General MIDI program numbers. Each MIDI device can be different, so refer to the device’s documentation for a reference to its patches.

There are 64 Finale channels available for MIDI output. Since each instrument in Finale’s Instrument List allows you to specify a unique channel and patch combination, you can define up to 64 different instrument sounds.

Finale makes 64 total channels available, but supports 16 channels per MIDI device. So, Finale groups its internal channels in four fixed sets: 1-16, 17-32, 33-48, and 49-64. Using the MIDI Setup dialog box, you can assign each set of Finale channels to the 16 MIDI channels on a particular MIDI device. By assigning an instrument to a staff in the Instrument List, you tell Finale which device should play that staff’s information and furthermore, which of the device’s channels Finale should use. For example, if you had two devices, one using the first set of 1-16 and the other using the second bank of 17-32, assigning a Finale instrument to channel 17 would cause the second device to play on channel 1.

Depending on your MIDI setup, you could map four different devices to their own bank of channels, or overlap them. In the following example, Finale’s 64 channels are mapped to each of the four devices and their 16 MIDI channels.

Finale Channels	MIDI channels on the connected instrument
1-16	Device One’s channels 1-16
17-32	Device Two’s channels 1-16
33-48	Device Three’s channels 1-16
49-64	Device Four’s channels 1-16

For entering notes with MIDI using HyperScribe, enter any number between 1 and 64 for the Finale channel that will receive the MIDI information, or set HyperScribe to receive on all MIDI channels. You can also remap the input channels using Finale’s MIDI Thru dialog box. See MIDI Setup dialog box.

For MIDI playback from Finale, you can either use the Instrument List to assign the channels to staves in your score, or you can create expressions to change a staff's channel during playback. Enter any number between 1 and 64 for the Finale channel used for playback. Finale will direct the playback to the appropriate device.

Regardless of whether you use the Instrument List or create expressions, Finale refers to settings in the MIDI Setup dialog box to see what Input or Output device is assigned to the channel you selected. Finale channels 1–16 go directly to channels 1–16 of the specified Input or Output device. The remaining three sets of Finale channels are mapped to channels 1–16 of the specified Output or Input device for that set of channels. For example:

Finale channels	MIDI channels on the connected instrument
1-16	1-16
17-32	1-16 (Add 16 to determine the Finale channel.)
33-48	1-16 (Add 32 to determine the Finale channel.)
49-64	1-16 (Add 48 to determine the Finale channel.)

Input Device and Output Device options in the MIDI Setup dialog box let you choose where you want MIDI information sent or received. The available devices vary, depending on the MIDI driver and device you are using.

Note: You can’t assign the same input or output device to more than one set of Finale channels—after all, each device only uses 16 channels. You can, however, select multiple devices for a set of Finale channels. This allows you to double the number of devices playing the affected staves’ music. (To do this, hold down the Shift key when selecting your MIDI devices.