MIDI Masterclass - The Puzzle of MIDI Program Changes Solved - EVERYTHING you NEED to KNOW !

Hi all, continuing my series of MIDI videos, today it's the turn of how to use MIDI Program Changes. Here we look at what MIDI Program changes are, how and what you can use them for and explain exactly what MSB and LSB mean and how they are applied. Armed with all this info, you should easily be able to save or trigger MIDI Program Changes using your DAW or a MIDI Controller.

Also, here’s a link to my ‘MIDI’ Playlist containing all the videos I’ve made on this topic:

CONTENT:
00:00 Introduction
01:09 What are MIDI Program Changes
01:28 What are MSB, LSB and PC ?
04:19 How do MSB/LSB/PC relate to Presets
07:17 DAW MIDI Program Changes
10:59 MIDI Controller Program Changes
12:33 Key Things to Remember
13:34 Closing Thoughts

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[tdrake]

This is the best description of this that I've found. Thanks very much.

[enjayBeecho]

Thanks, Graham, for a perfect, succinct summary. I've just bought a Launchkey Mk4 to use as a controller with Cubase and other hardware, including an MPC Live 2. Your explanation here has completely demystified how to use Midi Implementation Charts to link together the various hardware and software.

[trixonx]

This man is doing a service to humanity. Godspeed sir.

[gayan]

Thank you very much for this . Now I know what I'm doing in theortically

[EnsVocaleNapoli]

You are way the most useful content creator in all Youtube, thank you!

[madmac]

I’ve been waiting about 39 years for someone to explain this to me. I hope it doesn’t disappoint

[rainernilsen]

Awesome! To the point, no nonsense schooling of essential MIDI skills! The best I've come across on the Tube on MIDI ever... Thank you sir, a masterclass indeed, but two ways I suspect as the masters and pros probably need this lession more than anyone. I'm one, and now signed on for more :) Thanks again.

[a.zavertailo_UA]

That’s probably the one and only video on YouTube that explains the topic this well! Very thoroughly and informative! Thanks a lot for your effort!

It helped me to hook up my console with Qlab, now it can communicate with each other via MIDI using this CC and PC commands.

[rockdfunk]

did not know about the CC#00 for MSB and CC#32 for LSB, very insightful video

[El_Coyote_Real]

Crips & clear explanations. Best I've seen. Thank you very much!

[musiclover-lhhb]

Got into synths during COVID, I'm hooked, wish to heck I had this vid 4 years ago! Great vid, totally subbed.

[cordyceps]

this is gold! much appreciated! thank you!

[davidtownsend]

Fantastic video!! Thank you so much for this breakdown of MIDI Program Changes!

[frontline]

Thanks again for this valuable information. Now I’m going to be spending the whole entire day looking up the formulas for the synthesizers I have in my studio starting with my Roland XV-5080.

[DesertNinjaX]

So glad I found your channel. I need your wisdom in Fruity Loops

[RaquelFoster]

The cool thing Roland/E-mu/Korg/Yamaha did in the '80s/'90s was make sound expansions (patch data on memory cards with or without PCM waveforms) that worked across multiple synths and shared the same MSB/LSB conventions. So for example if you have an XV-5080 with an SRX card you can do a patch dump to any other synth that takes SRX cards and if it has that card it'll be able to use the patch. I think presets on ROMs for LA / FM synths worked the same way. Yamaha were really pioneers in this advanced MIDI stuff — the way portamento and SysEx works is because of Yamaha making it work on the DX7 first then they updated the MIDI spec to add portamento. And E-mu was interesting they had different things with the same underlying waveforms but different patches. So like the Xtreme Lead-1, XL-1 Turbo, XL-6 keyboard or XL-7 Command Station had different patches. The XL-7 the first 80 patches were drum kits that weren't on the others. But they all use MSB 07 for the waveform data, so you can swap all the ROM SIMMS around with each other and the patches will work no matter which ROM you have. So you could copy the drum kits into user RAM on an XL-7, then swap ROMs with a regular Xtreme Lead-1 and you'd have all those presets now (I think you just get one extra arp), then the Xtreme Lead-1 could see all the drum kits but still use any old patches it had copied to the user banks.

[RetrokitsDev]

Nice - I’ll refer to this when people want to know how the RK008 Program Assistant works so I won’t get blamed for terms like MSB and LSB😬

[manyguitarz]

now we're talkin! lol. this is one of my biggest gripes. thanks

[FreddysFrets]

Thank you! Great explanation. I have an issue I hope you can help me with. I'm using Cubase to change presets on a Boss effects unit. I would like to have the preset change even if I drop the cursor while in stop mode (not playing). For example let's say I have cubase programmed for PC-1 from 0 to 1 minute in the timeline and then PC-2 from 1 minute to 2 minutes in the timeline. I would like the Boss effect to change to preset 1 even if I just drop the cubase cursor say at the 45 second mark in stop mode. Or respectively change to preset 2 if i drop the cursor somewhere between the 1 and 2 minute mark. Is this possible? It seems like I can only fire the command when cubase is actually playing and the cursor passes the point of the PC midi command.

[NaderRafieyan]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge
Could you
Do a deep dive on cc?