Martin LIGHTING DIRECTOR User Manual download pdf (Page 71)

CHAPTER 7 - MIDI Control

Developed in 1982, MIDI is an international specification used mostly by musical

instruments that contain microprocessors to communicate with similar devices of

different manufacturers. Although MIDI stands for “Musical Instrument Digital

Interface”, the protocol is now in use in a variety of non-musical devices such as lighting

boards, voltage controllers, smoke machines, SMPTE-to-MIDI converters, etcetera.

The Martin Lighting Director has built-in support for MIDI IN/OUT/THRU. The MLD

software can recognize and utilize the Roland Mpu-401 card, the de facto standard MIDI

card for the PC. Through this card the MLD can direct or become integrated into

sophisticated show control situations.

After installing the MIDI card and enabling MIDI functionality in the set-up screen, the

MLD software will automatically enable the MIDI control zone of the layer media

screen.

Figure 41 - Portion of the Layer Media screen related

to MIDI

MIDI enabling box, toggles on/off

layer defaults

dynamic control mark

command

end flag

layer media behaviour curves may be

defined for dynamic MIDI control

MIDI byte

boxes

As in DMX control, you may assign static and dynamic MIDI relationships to a single

layer. However, in the case of MIDI control the actual byte values in hexadecimal code

must be entered so a thorough understanding of MIDI is important to use MIDI with

the MLD.

The type of MIDI command sent by the MIDI card when the performer enters a region

in a layer is determined by the byte values in the sixteen MIDI byte boxes under the

“MIDI Control” area. The numbers that you see in the boxes correspond to

hexadecimal values for the actual MIDI command string that will be sent to the

instruments when you enter the region(s) defined for that layer. Hexadecimal codes are

MLD manual 1.1 Page 71

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Martin LIGHTING DIRECTOR User Manual Page 71