So, for example, if we receive a MIDI message “224 120 95” that means “pitchbend on channel 1 with a coarse setting of 95 and a fine resolution of 120 (i.e., 120/128 of the way from 95 to 96)”. We do that by bit-shifting the MSB 7 bits to the left and combining that with the LSB using a bitwise OR operation (or by addition). In the pitchbend message, we combine the two bytes (the LSB and the MSB) to make a single 14-bit value that has a range from 0 to 16,383. Thus each data byte has a useful range from 0 to 127. Remember that all MIDI data bytes have their first (most significant) bit clear (0), so it’s really only the other 7 bits that contain useful information.

If it’s always 0, you’ll still have 128 equally spaced values, based on the MSB alone.ģ. In your synthesizer there’s really no reason to ignore the LSB. To do so means having only 128 gradations of bend information (values 0-127 in the MSB). Some devices ignore the least significant byte (LSB), simply setting it to 0, and use only the most significant byte (MSB). A pitchbend message consists of three bytes: the status byte (which says “I’m a pitchbend message,” and which also tells what MIDI channel the message is on), the least significant data byte (you can think of this as the fine resolution information, because it contains the 7 least significant bits of the bend value), and the most significant data byte (you can think of this as the coarse resolution information, because it contains the 7 most significant bits of the bend value).Ģ. When designing a synthesizer or a sampler, how should you interpret MIDI pitchbend messages so that they’ll have the desired effect on your sound? First let’s review a few truisms about MIDI pitchbend messages.ġ.

Midi number to music note chart