Fire Your Roadie. MIDI's Here.

MIDI or "Musical Instrument Digital Interface" — basically the bleepin' ancient protocol that made electronic music possible back when your parents were young. Yeah, it's from 1984. YEAH, 1984. & yet here we are, still usin' it like it's not a fossil. Apple shoved CoreMIDI into iOS, which means your iPad & iPhone are basically tiny concert rigs now. Plus, MIDI talks to other music apps on your device & to fancy external gadgets. Totes wild.

Gettin' MIDI Up & Runnin'

Step 1: Shove a MIDI or USB cable into your iOS device. Sounds easy, right? Here's how to make it actually work:

• MIDI Adapters — those weird little dongles that plug into your 30-pin or Lightning port & give you old-school MIDI "DIN-5" connections like it's 1987.
• USB with Camera Connection Kit — for when your MIDI gear has a USB port & you wanna plug it straight in like a normal human.
• MIDI over Bluetooth — wireless MIDI adapters & pedals talkin' to OnSong without gettin' tangled in cables. Revolutionary. (Not really.)
• MIDI over WiFi — works too, as long as you got a computer or some host device sittin' around creatin' a MIDI network session. Why? Don't ask us.

Makin' MIDI Do Stuff

Once your MIDI gear is plugged in, you can map MIDI signals to OnSong actions. Scroll your chord chart, jump around your setlist, trigger backing tracks — basically, teach your pedals to do your job for you. Any bleepin' action in OnSong can get mapped to MIDI in the MIDI Triggers screen. Srsly.

*Note: Different MIDI devices send signals different ways cuz they were designed for different stuff. That iRig Blueboard? It's a latching pedal with control changes. OnSong's got fancy MIDI Settings to handle all that weirdness.

Sendin' & Receivin' MIDI

OnSong can also throw MIDI commands at other MIDI devices when you're viewin' songs or pickin' sections. Set it up by tappin' & holdin' your song title or a section to open the Section Mapping Menu.

Plus, you can make OnSong switch songs by listenin' for specific MIDI commands. Typically that's done with Metadata & the Metadata Editor in the Song Editor. Fancy, amirite?

Virtual MIDI

Most peeps think MIDI is all about cables connectin' instruments. Sure, it can be wireless via WiFi or Bluetooth. But here's the kicker — MIDI can work directly between apps with Virtual MIDI. Mind. Blown.

Virtual MIDI's got all the MIDI power but bounces between apps instead. You can pick which apps send & receive MIDI with OnSong usin' Sources & Destinations in the MIDI Settings Menu. It's like MIDI had a baby with the cloud & nobody asked us how we felt about it.