MIDI

A MIDI track in Prest sends MIDI to your rig as the song plays: program and bank changes, controllers, SysEx, and notes, for keyboards, guitar processors, and lights. Prest has no instruments of its own: a MIDI track is heard only through what it drives.

MIDI tracks come from a MIDI file, a score, a stem transcribed by PresTools, or a REAPER, Ableton Live, or DAWproject project opened in Prest. Prest has no command to add an empty MIDI track.

Add a MIDI file

1. Open the song first.
2. Choose Add stems in the toolbar and pick a .mid or .midi file, or drop it on the window.

Expected result: each track of the file that plays or sends anything becomes a MIDI track, starting at bar 1. A song with a tempo map keeps it, and the file’s bars fall on the song’s; a song without one takes the file’s tempo and time signatures. Each file added is one undo step.

Prest says what it could not do:

• Without a song open: “open a song first; it is added to the project in front”.
• A file that counts time in SMPTE frames rather than beats is not read.
• A file with nothing that plays or sends is not added.
• When the song already has a tempo map, Prest says the file’s own tempo was left aside.

Send a track to your rig

1. On the MIDI track’s head, choose its output button (it says Not sent until you choose), or choose Output… in the track’s menu.
2. In Output of the track, choose the Port.
3. Choose the Channel: 1 to 16, or Each event’s own to keep the channel each event was written on.
4. Set the port’s options, below, if the device needs them.

Expected result: the track’s head shows the port and channel, for example Nord · 3, or only the port with Each event’s own. The port and channel are saved with the project.

A port that is not connected now, such as a device that is unplugged, stays chosen and shows as name (not connected). If a port cannot be opened while playing, Prest says so, for example “MIDI port “Nord”: it isn’t there; what goes to it is not sent”. Prest tries the port again the next time you start playing.

What is sent

• A track sends only while it is heard: not muted, and not left out by another track’s solo. A muted clip sends nothing.
• When you start playing midway, or jump, Prest first sends what is in force at that point on each channel: bank, program, controllers, pressure, and pitch bend. Notes that were sounding are released.
• The same happens where the song’s form jumps, for example to a repeated or skipped section, and where a loop goes round.
• Every open project that is playing sends its own MIDI. Several tabs can play at once.

Port options

These belong to this computer, not to the project. They are kept for every project, and the same project played on another computer uses that computer’s settings.

• Lead (ms): what goes to this port is sent this much early, so that a device loading a patch has it by the beat. From 0 to 1000 ms.
• Send MIDI clock and song position: for tempo-synced delays and arpeggiators, which then follow the song’s tempo map.
• Patch names: one per line, the program and its name (12 Rhodes), or with its bank first (2:12 Rhodes). They name the program changes sent to that port, on the lanes and in the events list.

MIDI clock

MIDI clock and song position follow the project in front. They start and stop with its transport. When you bring another project in front, the clock stops, then the ports are told where the new project is, and the clock continues if that project is playing. Clock starts on the next sixteenth after you press play.

Prest’s own port

On macOS and Linux, Prest is also a MIDI port of its own, named Prest, listed first. Choose it as a track’s port, and other apps on the computer can listen to it. Windows has no such port.

List and add events

Choose Events… in a MIDI track’s menu. Events of the track lists every event the track sends, in time order: where it falls by bar and beat, its channel, and what it is, with program changes named by the port’s patch names. The trash button beside an event removes it.

To add an event at the playhead, under Add at the playhead:

1. Choose What: Program change, Controller, SysEx, or Note.
2. Choose the Channel, 1 to 16.
3. Fill in the rest, then choose Add:
   • Program change: the Program, 0 to 127, and optionally its Bank (optional), sent first as a bank select.
   • Controller: the Controller number and its Value, 0 to 127.
   • SysEx: the Bytes (hex), for example F0 43 10 4C 00 00 7E 00 F7. The F0 and F7 may be left out; the bytes between them are 00 to 7F.
   • Note: the Note and its Velocity, to trigger something. It lasts a quarter note.

Each event added or removed is one undo step. Prest has no piano roll for editing notes.

Next: Scores.