MIDI Guide
Paradiddle can be turned into a much more powerful and versatile audio creation tool through its MIDI input and output support.
Default MIDI Info:
| Instrument | MIDI Note |
|---|---|
| Kick Drum | 36 |
| Snare Drum | 38 |
| Hi Hat | (Closed) 42 (Open) 46 (Pedal Close) 44 |
| Tom 1 | 48 |
| Tom 2 | 47 |
| Floor Tom | 43 |
| 13″ Crash | 55 |
| 15″ Crash | 49 |
| 17″ Crash | 57 |
| 17″ Ride | (Center) 53 (Edge) 51 |
| 20″ Ride | (Center) 53 (Edge) 59 |
| 15″ China | 52 |
| Event | MIDI Message |
|---|---|
| Hi-Hat Pedal Openness Change | MIDI Change Control (CC) Note 4 Velocity 0 (Hi-Hat Opened) – Velocity 127 (Hi-Hat Closed) |
| Drum/Cymbal Choke | MIDI Aftertouch Note corresponds to instrument MIDI note Velocity 127 (Sound Choked) |
| MIDI Channel |
|---|
| MIDI Channels 1-16 |
All drum options (including the MIDI settings for each drum) are saved/loaded with drum sets and recordings, so you won’t have to go through setting the drum options to enable MIDI in/out every time you launch the app. Just create your set the way you want, save it, and load it back whenever you’d like.
MIDI Output:
(Paradiddle user Sam Hartwell made a great video outlining the whole process – you can find it here!)
MIDI out support lets you send MIDI signals to any audio software that can take in MIDI, such as digital audio workstations (DAWs) like Ableton, Reaper, Superior Drummer, or even games that accept MIDI input such as Phase Shift or Osu. Each drum has its own default MIDI note and channel that can be customized, and will send proper velocity information based on how hard the drum is hit. Here’s how you can set up Paradiddle to send MIDI out and communicate with a digital audio workstation (DAW):
- First, create a loopback MIDI port using an app like loopMIDI. Because both Paradiddle and the app that’s going to receive MIDI messages is on the same PC, the loopback MIDI port will act as a bridge between the two programs.
- Open your DAW / and set it up to accept MIDI and play back your samples.
- Now launch Paradiddle, and in the app, go to the Options tab. Under MIDI, select your MIDI output to be the loopback MIDI port you just created.
- So now we’ve set up Paradiddle to send MIDI, but we also need to enable MIDI output for the specific drums we want. Expand the drum sound options by clicking the button hovering over the drum, and click on ‘MIDI Out Off’ to toggle it to On.
- That’s it! Now if you play on this drum, it shouldn’t create a sound within the app, but should send a MIDI signal (and play a sound through your DAW) instead! You can also change the MIDI note on your drum to change what note gets played on your DAW when that drum is hit. If you’d like to play the in-app drum sound in addition to sending the MIDI signal, you can always unmute the drum.
MIDI Input:
MIDI in support lets you integrate any peripheral that can send MIDI signals to Paradiddle. This lets you do things like use electronic drum pedals that can send MIDI, and the drum in Paradiddle will sound different based on the incoming velocity. Here’s how you can set up Paradiddle to accept MIDI messages from a peripheral like e-drum pedals. For our own testing, we were using the Roland KT-10 Kick Trigger Pedal plugged into the Yamaha DTX502 Drum Module. The drum module was then connected to the PC via USB, and sending MIDI signals to it:
- Launch Paradiddle and go to the Options tab. Under MIDI, select your MIDI Input device to be your peripheral (in the example case above, this would be the DTX502 Drum Module.)
- Now Paradiddle will be listening to MIDI input, but we need to set up a drum to accept these messages. For this you need to know what MIDI note your peripheral will be sending. Here’s a handy chart that shows these for percussion instruments. From here we see that our drum module will be sending a MIDI note of 36 when we use our pedal to trigger the bass drum.
- All of the drums in Paradiddle are already set up to accept MIDI notes that correspond to their type, so the bass drum will already have its MIDI note set to 36. You can see the default MIDI note each instrument is mapped to in the Default MIDI Info section of this guide. Let’s say we want to play the bass drum in Paradiddle using our e-drum pedal. Place a bass drum in your scene, click on the button over the drum to expand the drum sound options. Click on ‘MIDI In Off’ to toggle it to On.
- That’s it! You should notice that now when you press on your e-drum pedal, the bass drum will play, properly making use of the velocity information as well. If you wanted another type of drum to play when you hit your pedal, you can do this by enabling MIDI in on that drum, as well as setting its MIDI note to be the incoming MIDI note (36 in our example.)
MIDI Channel Numbering – Important Note: MIDI channels in Paradiddle are numbered from 1-16, in accordance with the official MIDI specification. There may be other audio apps/games (such as Phase Shift) that number their channels from 0-15. In these situations, keep in mind that MIDI channel 1 in Paradiddle will be equivalent to channel 0 in the other program, channel 2 in Paradiddle will be channel 1 in the other app, and so on.
Limitations:
There are currently a few limitations of the MIDI integration that will be addressed in future updates:
- Paradiddle currently accepts incoming MIDI signals from all channels, and it’s not possible to specify what channel to receive messages from.
- Outgoing MIDI signals are only sent through one channel, which is the MIDI channel that’s specified on that drum’s settings.