6 <h2>What Can Ardour Do With MIDI?</h2>
8 <dfn><abbr title="Musical Instrument Digital Interface">MIDI</abbr></dfn>
9 is a way to describe music data and to control music hardware and
10 software. Ardour can import and record MIDI data, and perform a
11 variety of editing operations on it. Furthermore, MIDI can be used to
12 control various functions of Ardour.
15 <h2>MIDI Handling Frameworks</h2>
17 MIDI input and output for Ardour are handled by the same "engine"
18 that handles audio input and output. Up to release 3.5, that means
19 that all MIDI I/O takes place via JACK. JACK itself uses the
20 native MIDI support of the operating system to receive and send
24 <h3>OS X : CoreMIDI</h3>
26 <dfn>CoreMIDI</dfn> is the standard MIDI framework on OSX systems.
27 It provides drivers for MIDI hardware and libraries needed by MIDI
31 <h3>Linux : ALSA MIDI</h3>
33 <dfn><abbr title="Advanced Linux Sound API">ALSA</abbr> MIDI</dfn>
34 is the standard MIDI framework on Linux systems. It provides drivers
35 for MIDI hardware and libraries needed by MIDI software clients.
39 NoteThe <dfn>QJackCtl</dfn> control software displays ALSA MIDI
40 ports under its "ALSA" tab (it does not currently display CoreMIDI
41 ports). By contrast, JACK MIDI ports show up under
42 the <kbd class="menu">MIDI</kbd> tab in QJackCtl.
45 <h2>JACK MIDI Configuration</h2>
47 By default, JACK will <strong>not</strong> automatically detect and use existing MIDI
48 ports on your system. You must choose one of several ways
49 of <dfn>bridging</dfn> between the native MIDI frameworks
50 (e.g. CoreMIDI or ALSA) and JACK MIDI, as described in the sections