MIDI Channels and Drum Instruments

Command Location: Staves Menu / Staff Manager

Many MIDI devices treat Channel 10 differently to the other channels (1–16).  Often MIDI Channel 10 is used to access a particular group of General MIDI (GM) drum instruments.  This is why when you select Channel 10 in either the Staff Manager dialog or the Staff Instrument dialog the list of available instruments (1 – 128) changes.

Note:  Not all MIDI devices treat Channel 10 this way but MIDI devices on computer soundcards often do.

These drums use MIDI information in a different way to other instruments.  Specifically, staves which use Channel 10 use pitch rather than the instrument patch in order to determine which drum sound is heard.  For this reason special treatment is given to Channel 10 staves when, for instance, you are transposing a score.  Transposing these drums may have undesirable effects, such as changing all of the Bass Drums into Acoustic Snares.  As a result, you can opt to leave drum notes as they are when transposing the rest of the score.  If a given staff is using Channel 10 then MidiIllustrator will assume it contains drum notes.