Now I’m confused, does Note Off exist at all? Or is this just a confusing convenience move by library coders? Cause that sounds more like the command should just be “Note,” indicating “notes follow until I say different.”
Cause now I’m wondering what the purpose of having Note Off is, unless they don’t actually have it.
MIDI Note On (0x9n) and Note Off (0x8n) both exist in the standard. By using Note On commands only you have the potential to simplify the code and take advantage of running status and this is done by many manufacturers but it comes at a small cost. You lose the note off velocity value. For the majority of synthesis engines this is not used but there have been some that take advantage of this to influence the sound. For example a piano may have more resonance and mechanical sound with rigorous release of keys and synths may affect the release characteristics of the sound.
Within Zynthian there are various modules that handle note on/off, at least one of which (it appears) converts note-off commands to note-on with zero velocity. This is likely to be for code simplification purposes, e.g we need to handle note-on at zero velocity (because of the MIDI standard) so it is simpler to just convert everything thing to that and handle that condition only downstream. (I am working from memory of when I last looked at that code so may have some flaws in my description of Zynthian code.)
For almost all users this is of no consequence. I have not audited our suite of engines to identify whether any benefit from note off velocity but suspect the quantity to be approaching zero. (There are a couple I could imagine may use it.) Also, I think you are the first to notice and that was in an esoteric use case with flawed logic, i.e. the Zynthian behaved correctly to the stimulus. (The input was correctly handled as (effectively) note-off commands.)
The MIDI 1.0 Specification is freely avaialble from the MIDI Associtation although you need to sign up as a member (can be free) to access it. Also there are many MIDI primers out there. I have the excellent (although somewhat dated) MIDI for Musicians by Craig Anderton in a drawer. It hasn’t had much use for a while but it was my bible during the 1980’s, particularly (almost exclusively) the MIDI specification reference in its appendix. MIDI is extremely simple and really effective. Anyone considering engineering with the MIDI spec should take a little time to familiarise themselves with it. It won’t take long and you will feel enlightened. Spread the love and happiness of knowledge!
Lol I also have a moldy copy of midi for musicians, I “borrowed” it from the audio school I took a course at years ago. I seem to recall there is a foreword by Howard Jones. :>
