So there you are, looking fondly at your new digital piano. If you're like me, before you even plug it in, you'll be looking at the instrument from every angle, brushing off any stray packing peanuts, and polishing it until it shines. As part of this "getting acquainted" business, you'll undoubtedly get curious about the various jacks and switches located around the keyboard, some of which you'll recognize (like the sustain pedal) and a few of which you may not (like RS-422).

You'll probably find three jacks on the back of your piano or keyboard that can transform almost every aspect of the way you play, compose, study, and even hear music. These are the three MIDI jacks--In, Out, and Thru. These jacks, known as MIDI ports, give your piano the ability to talk to other electronic devices that also have MIDI capabilities. The MIDI In port receives information from other equipment, the MIDI Out port carries MIDI messages from your piano to another instrument, and the MIDI Thru port sends out a duplicate of the exact information received at the In port.

You may already have a computer, even if it's just a modest '486 machine or an antique Mac Classic that you use for occasional word processing or bookkeeping. Now you can finally make that machine do some real work! With a computer, a bit of software, and a MIDI instrument, you can have a complete, self-contained music studio. This article will explain some of the different ways computers can enhance the capabilities of your electronic instrument.

Who's in Control?

When you add a computer to your setup, you introduce new ways to use the piano. Now, instead of simply taking whatever notes you play and routing the information directly to the speakers, the piano acts as a MIDI keyboard controller. This means that everything you play--every press of the pedal, every sound selection--is translated into a digital impulse called a MIDI Message. All MIDI devices understand these messages, so when you play a chord, any other instrument connected to your digital piano can play exactly the same notes at the same time you play your chord.

These other instruments don't necessarily have to play the same sound that you're playing, however. Every instrument has its own set of sounds. The MIDI instrument connected to your digital piano might play a violin sound to complement your piano sound. That's part of the power and fun of MIDI: you can send the music back and forth without forcing another instrument to give up its own special set of sounds.

Stay Connected

Bringing a computer into the picture adds even more options. To connect your piano to your desktop PC or Mac, you'll need the following things: two standard MIDI cables and a device called a MIDI interface. External interfaces range in size from a little box that fits in your hand to a big rackmount unit that can control a complete MIDI studio. The purpose of the interface is to convert the signals your keyboard sends to a type of data the computer can understand, and the better the box, the bigger the price tag. If you're starting out with just a digital piano and a computer, you can easily get by with a tiny interface that costs between $30 and $40. (Be sure the device is the right one for your computer: Macs and PCs nearly always use different varieties.)

On the PC, an external interface hooks up to your computer via either its serial port (a jack in the computer where you usually connect an external modem) or the parallel port, where a printer is normally attached. Many interfaces let you keep your modem or printer hooked up when you're using MIDI.

You might already have a MIDI interface inside your computer, however. Most PCs come with an internal audio card for basic sound capabilities, and those cards often have MIDI built into them. A preinstalled sound card is nice because it means you'll have one fewer cable to worry about connecting. The Mac, on the other hand, usually requires an external device like those described above, which can connect to either the modem or printer port.

Creating a Sound Arsenal

A digital piano usually has a fair selection of sounds to choose from. The problem is that typically, you can't access them all at the same time. MIDI gives you 16 channels (independent streams of music), which you can use simultaneously with most modern sound-producing devices. If you're getting your computer into the act, why not get yourself a tone generator to cover the other 15 channels? With such an addition, you can listen to 15 different instrumental sounds playing at once--the equivalent of a small orchestra. Using the most sophisticated MIDI interfaces, you can get as many as 500 channels, but there's plenty you can do with just 16.

A tone generator, also known as a sound module, is the sound-producing part of a keyboard synthesizer minus the actual keyboard. These units are usually sold as stand-alone units without a keyboard attached and can be as small as a cigar box or as large as a microwave oven. This saves a lot of space and money, and because you already have a keyboard on your digital piano, you can use it to send MIDI instructions directly to the tone generator. (The computer can also direct its output to one or more tone modules.)

You need to look for certain important features in any tone generator you buy. To begin with, make sure the device is multitimbral, which means it can play more than one sound at a time. Each of MIDI's 16 channels can carry information to a different instrumental sound simultaneously, and you want a multitimbral device that can take advantage of this capability.

In addition, the tone generator should conform to the General MIDI (GM) standard. This will guarantee that certain instrument sounds will always be assigned to certain program numbers or "locations" in the module. (The acoustic-piano sound will always be Number 1 in a General MIDI device, for example.) This will become important when you send music files to your friends. You sure don't want your wonderful guitar solo to sound like a kazoo on your friend's machine, so make sure that both you and your friend have GM-compatible modules!

Another important feature is the number of parts or "voices" the module can produce at once. The earliest keyboards could only play one voice at a time (monophonic). As hardware became more sophisticated, electronic instruments could produce two or more voices (polyphonic).

Nowadays, even inexpensive tone generators allow you to play up to 32 or more voices--an important consideration when you start creating music for larger ensembles. An acoustic piano, in contrast, has no limit to the number of sounds that can occur at once. If you hold down the sustain pedal and keep pounding all the keys, the sound will just keep building up. But with an electronic instrument, you have to be sensitive to how many voices it can handle before it starts dropping some.

Check to see whether the module is stereo, and make sure it has standard jacks in the back so you don't go crazy looking for the right cables or for adapters to plug it into your audio system. Usually you can simply take a regular RCA cable (the kind you use for cassette decks, CD players, and so on) and run it to the tape jacks on the back of your home stereo.

You might not need to add a separate sound module if you have one of the two gadgets mentioned above. If you own a Windows-based PC with a sound card, it may very well have a GM-compatible tone generator built in. Such cards are usually said to be "Sound Blaster compatible." The other possibility is that you did actually purchase a sophisticated digital piano or keyboard with full MIDI sound capability. In that case, you're ready to take a look at the options provided by your computer.

Before moving to the world of software, let's have one last check of the hardware in your setup: You have the piano's MIDI Out connected to the MIDI In on the little interface box or the connector on the sound card in your computer. You have the MIDI Out of the interface connected to the piano's (or tone generator's) MIDI In. And if you are using an external interface, it is now connected to the correct port on your computer.

Here's a summary of some of the things you can do with software now that you're set up. Specific features will vary somewhat according to the manufacturer and type of computer and the specific program you are using.

Scrap the Tape Recorder

Think of all the great ideas that might go unrecorded while you are doodling on your keyboard. Well, with a handy MIDI sequencer program up and running, you can sit down, click the mouse, and improvise for hours--all the while capturing the results in your computer. For a piano solo, an hour of playing might take up no more than 40K of memory. My entire 20-minute piano concerto, complete with a 75-piece MIDI orchestra, uses only about 300K. The computer simply records the actions you perform and saves them in a MIDI file. These files are very compact, so just imagine how much music you could store on your hard disk!

After you're done playing, you'll want to skip around and find the good parts, right? That's easy with a sequencer because, unlike a cassette deck (or any other tape recorder), a MIDI sequencer allows you to jump instantly to any place in the piece. (This process is known as random-access editing.) The sequencer includes a counter window that lets you see the music not only in terms of measures and beats but even in real time--hours, minutes, and seconds. So if you have to compose a tune that's exactly three minutes long, you can work interactively with the sequencer, adjusting the length of measures, the tempo, and so on, and watch the onscreen counter until you've hit the three-minute mark.

If you feel the composing bug but you're still working on your technique, you can take advantage of a feature known as step recording. This allows you to record notes one at a time, picking the note value for each one as you go along. It's as though you were writing the notes on paper, only you're actually recording them. This is great for thirty-secondûnote passages and those funky Zappa-like rhythms.

Did you make a mistake? There's no need to start over. Just click on the track that has the mistake in it, and an event list will pop up that shows you every single note you recorded, where it is in time, and even how hard you played it. Click the offending note, press the correct key on the piano, and--ta da!--the note is fixed. Do you have a weak fourth finger? You can edit each note that finger played and increase the volume of those notes selectively.

Most sequencers also offer several ways of viewing the music, including piano-roll notation, which shows notes as stripes running across the screen. (When you need a longer note, you just click on it and pull it to the right.) Another view, score notation, gives you real musical notation, and the score is often good enough to print parts out right from the computer.

Other Cheap Tricks

Is your rhythm a bit sloppy? The sequencer allows you to fix the rhythm using a process known as quantizing. This technique tightens up the music by shifting the notes forward or backward to line up with a specific note duration. For example, if a few notes landed just ahead of the spot where you want them to be, you can use quantize to place them rhythmically where they should be. Good sequencer packages also typically offer you two or three other ways of handling this type of musical problem. For instance, you can choose to do your editing with either a mouse or a keyboard.

If you're a vocal accompanist, the sequencer alone can save you a ton of transposition time. (I remember being paid at one time to transpose sheet music for a singer who just had to have "Send in the Clowns" in the key of D, for instance.) With your sequencer, you just record the song in the original key, choose a new key--one more appropriate for your range--with a click of the mouse, and the transposed tune appears. The process is literally instantaneous.

If your taste tends toward the bizarre, some sequencers even allow you to transpose the music modally. If your tastes tend toward the really bizarre, you can even try out the tune inverted, retrograded, or both. These smart operations are particularly useful when teaching composition and theory. Get your student to come up with a short musical phrase, and you can immediately produce numerous melodic transformations. You can then paste them together and compose a piece right on the spot.

Sequencer manufacturers are constantly adding new capabilities to their products. Two of these are digital video synchronization (for use with QuickTime movies, for instance), which lets you pinpoint places in a film clip to put musical effects, and groove quantization, which allows you to apply a hip studio feel to your tune. You'll also find some sequencers that don't leave everything up to you. They can be programmed to vamp along in a number of styles, and you can adjust the tempo, chord changes, and feel--a great way to prepare for gigs, get ideas for songs, and practice improvising.

Smart Stuff

One of the most exciting developments in the MIDI-software field is what's referred to as intelligent software. Suppose you want to create sound for an art installation. Because an installation is an ongoing, often nonrepetitive experience, the music should be equally continuous. Maybe it will have sections that repeat periodically, but you don't want the listener to think the music is just a looped recording.

You could, of course, compose a 16-hour piece. (Hey, Wagner did.) Or you could create a rough outline for the music--the various tonalities, the way it's going to ebb and flow in tempo and energy, the general kind of instrumentation you want and how it will change throughout the day--and then use your program to design an algorithmic player to actually create the music. (Algorithm refers to process: you map out the process and then instruct the program to do the work for you.)

Intelligent software is also often used as a performance tool. You can have your program provide an improvised accompaniment for you to solo along with or even have it solo while you accompany it. If you like to tinker, there are even programs that allow you to use your piano's MIDI capabilities to do extra-musical things, like run a light show. This type of software invariably plays a role in such ventures.

If you desire a more linear approach to jamming, check out auto-accompaniment software. Some programs have a lot of user-definable capabilities; other programs are more like karaoke tracks packaged according to an artist or a style of music. These programs are great for players who want to explore a style of music with which they're unfamiliar. You choose the chords, the tempo, and so on, and a virtual band will play along with you. You might use auto-accompaniment software as an improvisation and composition tool or for practicing your solo work.

Getting It Down

Your piano can help you save time when you're creating musical scores and parts. The link from your keyboard to the computer allows a music-notation program to receive notes, just as in step recording. The notes are displayed directly on the screen, in score form, as you play them. You can set up a metronome and play in real time, or you can depress the damper pedal to provide the beat. The advantage of the latter method is that you can ruminate all you want between beats and still have the music come out rhythmically correct when you play it back. If you like, you can even enter the left-hand and right-hand parts separately.

Some notation software allows you to play in the music without regard to meter or tempo, improvising freely, and then reassign it to the correct meter after the fact. (This more sophisticated method is usually found in the higher-end packages.) You can also create the score graphically, note by note, with the mouse and then have your piano play the results. Most programs will even interpret dynamic markings and tempo changes.

Another source of income in my undergraduate days was extracting parts for other composers. These days, you can easily spend $5,000 to $10,000 having parts extracted from a full orchestral score. If you use software to create your complete orchestral score, though, the software can automatically extract, format, and print all the parts, complete with cues, expression markings, and transpositions.

The inverse of score-writing software is score-reading software. With this method, you can input a page of sheet music using an ordinary scanner, and the program will transcribe the graphic image into a MIDI file. You can then take this file, transpose it, and print it back out, or you can generally change it in any way you like.

Managing Sounds

There are many categories of sound software, most of which involve MIDI to some degree. An important part of the serious MIDI user's arsenal is called editor-librarian software. These packages combine two features: the organization of sounds and the manipulation of sounds. In MIDI parlance, we call a sound that is made by a tone generator a patch (a holdover term from the old days when electronic sounds were literally wired--patched--together in big recording studios).

Patch-librarian software gives you the freedom to take the sounds from your instrument, load them into the computer, and then rearrange their order. For instance, you might have a particular song that requires a lute, a guitar, a trumpet, a harp, and a xylophone. Normally, those patches are located far from each other in the tone generator's memory bank, so you have to spend time searching for them. With the librarian software, you can make these sounds consecutive and then send them back into your tone generator at their new locations.

You can even create customized banks of certain groups of instruments, sending and retrieving them at your leisure. It is also possible to download entire sets of patches from many places on the Internet. Some of these patches don't require separate librarian software to use; for example, they load themselves from the computer to the synthesizer via your sequencer.

The editor is the most exciting part of the editor-librarian package. With it, you actually get to see what makes an individual patch tick. Every tone generator has a set of controls that governs the way it creates sound. The editor gives you a creator's view of the inner workings of the module and allows you to graphically change the individual parameters (settings) of a patch. This is a wonderful way to learn about sound, and it can enhance and personalize your patch library immeasurably.

Do It All

Having a computer and the right software alongside your instrument is like having a trusty sidekick, collaborator, librarian, accompanist, and transcriber at your service. And because setting up and using MIDI is so easy, the only thing you'll work hard at is finding an excuse for not making the most of your digital piano.

Daniel Palkowski composes, produces, designs sound, and teaches in New York City. Look him up on Yahoo.com

This article presented courtesy of Electronic Musician magazine.