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