MIDI

MIDI System Exclusive message

The Music Telegraph | Text 2019/03/11 [15:18]
MIDI

MIDI System Exclusive message

The Music Telegraph| 입력 : 2019/03/11 [15:18]

▲ Dump System Exclusive (SysEx) files into Korg M1 workstation

© Korg M1 Source

 



MIDI System Exclusive message

 

A MIDI event that carries the MIDI system exclusive message, also known as a "MIDI SysEx message", carries information that is specific to the manufacturer of the MIDI device receiving the message. The action that this message prompts for can be anything. A manufacturer, such as Lexicon, for example, could send a message that only Lexicon devices will understand and other devices will simply ignore.

 

The MIDI system exclusive message consists of virtually unlimited bytes of data. The first byte is the status byte and has the hexadecimal value 0xF0. The second byte is the manufacturer ID. Various MIDI device manufacturers have assigned IDs and those IDs are used in the system exclusive message so that the devices produced by those manufacturers know that the system exclusive message should be acted upon (if the message is from the right manufacturer) or ignored (if the message is from another manufacturer). A list of assigned manufacturer IDs is here. Several (unlimited number) of bytes of data will follow the manufacturer ID. The one common thing among these bytes of data is the fact that the top bit of each byte is 0, and thus these bytes can only carry values between 0x00 and 0x7F (0 and 127). The last byte of the message is 0xF7 and signifies the end of the message. When encountering this last byte MIDI devices that are from different manufacturers and do not understand the message will know when the message ends.

The following is an example of a MIDI "system exclusive (SysEx)" message.

0xF0 0x41 0x01 0x34 0xF7

The status byte 0xF0 shows that this is a system exclusive message. The manufacturer ID is 0x41 which shows that this is a Roland system exclusive message. The data of the message is 0x01 0x34, which prompts the Roland device to do something (this is only an example and such a Roland message probably does not actually exist). The 0xF7 byte shows that the message is finished.

Note that, since all bytes in the data portion after the manufacturer ID and before 0xF7 must have a top bit of 0, any status byte that comes after the manufacturer ID will be interpreted by devices that do not understand the message as the end of the message (since status bytes have a top bit of 1). **Excerpts from Recording Blogs (https://www.recordingblogs.com/wiki/midi-system-exclusive-message)

 

The main purpose of System Exclusive message is to send a large amount of data to a MIDI device, such as a dump of its patch memory or sequencer data or waveform data. Also, SysEx may be used to transmit information that is particular to one model device. For example, a SysEx message might be used to set the feedback level for an operator in a Roland Physical Modeling Synth. This information would likely be useless to an AKAI sample playing device. (By contrast, virtually all devices respond to Modulation Wheel control, for example, so it makes sense to have a defined Modulation Controller message that all manufacturers can support for that purpose). **Excerpts from midi.teragonaudio.com (http://midi.teragonaudio.com/tech/midispec/sysex.htm)

 

 

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