Cc#11 - cc#7

[Raymond62]

In another thread I saw a reply where somebody used CC#11 and CC#7. In Sonar/MIDI environment, what is the purpose of this using Expression and Volume, while we can do almost anything with CC#1 (ModWheel)?

Please explain,

Raymond

[bigears]

Goedemorgen Raymond,

I believe it depends on what the programmers set up in any particular instrument. GPO uses the mod wheel mapped to CC#1 to control volume/expression, while the Strad and Gofriller use CC#11. Perhaps what
you read was referring to another instrument or library. John

[buckshead]

The original MIDI spec has too volume controls 7 and 11, and the idea was that CC11 was used to control the dynamics of each track and 7 was used to control the overall dynamic.

SO you could copy all the CC7s to all the tracks have control of all the tracks at once. Basically superseded now by the the use of different players but useful if you're only using MIDI.

The following table refers (if you can understand it, its not entirely obvious to the layman )

http://www.midi.org/techspecs/midimessages.php

[BenNichols]

Thats quite a big table. Table 3, over halfway down the page, is probably the most useful. thanks!

[rbowser-]

In the thread you referred to, Raymond, they must have been talking about the discontinued solo strings instruments, as Bigears pointed out. Either that, or there was misinformation.

Thanks for the good MIDI link, Buckshead - the stuff in the MIDI books I bought eons ago but which I haven't cracked in a very long time. Doing music on a computer makes dealing with MIDI so much easier for the most part.

All of this about cc7 and cc11 reminds me of how when I was still using hardware synths, I only used cc7 for volume and not cc11. That was the advice in books, in the music stores - nobody seemed to get what cc11 was for, like it was a redundant controller.

But the concept was/is that cc7 sets a static value for the Potential volume on each instrument, and then one uses cc11 for the detailed volume sweeping etc--because in well programmed synths, the timbre of the instrument will change in response to the volume changes, like acoustic instruments.

One reason cc11 was such a mystery and largely ignored was that keyboards generated cc7 for volume - volume pedals did the same. Everything was geared towards the "wrong" controller apparently.

ANyway---just a little footnote on the history of MIDI use.

Randy