title: MIDI Learn
---
-<h3>Philosophy<h3>
+<h2>Philosophy</h2>
<p>
There are no "best" ways to map an arbitrary MIDI controller for
controlling Ardour. There may be very legitimate reasons for different
for them.
</p>
<p>
-On every platform that Ardour runs on, there are excellent free-of-charge tools for making connections between MIDI hardware and "virtual" MIDI ports like the ones that Ardour creates and uses. Rather than waste precious developer time replicating these connection/patch managers, we prefer to leverage their existence by having users rely on them to actually connect Ardour to other MIDI devices and software. On OS X, we recommend Pete Yandell's MIDI Patchbay. On Linux, a wide variety of tools are available including QJackctl, aconnect, Patchage, and more. So, you will not find a MIDI connection dialog in Ardour 2.X.
+On every platform that Ardour runs on, there are excellent
+free-of-charge tools for making connections between MIDI hardware and
+"virtual" MIDI ports like the ones that Ardour creates and
+uses. Rather than waste precious developer time replicating these
+connection/patch managers, we prefer to leverage their existence by
+having users rely on them to actually connect Ardour to other MIDI
+devices and software. On OS X, we recommend Pete Yandell's MIDI
+Patchbay. On Linux, a wide variety of tools are available including
+QJackctl, aconnect, Patchage, and more.
</p>
-<h3>Basics<h3>
+<h2>Basics</h2>
<ol>
<li> Enable Generic MIDI control: Options -> Control Surfaces -> Generic MIDI</li>
<li>The binding is complete. Moving the hardware should control the Ardour fader etc. </li>
</ol>
-<h3>Avoiding work in the future<h3>
+<h2>Avoiding work in the future</h2>
<p>
If you want the bindings you set up to be used automatically in every