MIDI: Presets

In our previous posts exploring forScore’s MIDI integration, we’ve seen how you can send a series of MIDI messages automatically when you open a score, or you can choose to send them at a specific time by pressing a button. Often times, the messages you’re sending configure your devices and you’ll be reusing the same ones frequently. For those sets of messages, we created Presets.

To create a preset, open the Metadata panel and choose “Presets” at the bottom of the MIDI section. Tap the + button to create a new preset with the name you supply, then tap the circled “i” button to add some messages. The interface here works just like it does when you’re adding MIDI messages to a score or button. You can add a program change or song select message, type in raw hexadecimal codes, or let forScore listen for incoming signals and save them automatically. Tap the “Done” button or close the MIDI panel to save your changes.

If you’ve already set up outgoing MIDI messages for the current score or bookmark, creating a new preset will prompt you to do one of two things: you can either create a new blank preset and add messages from scratch, or you can turn those messages you’ve already set up into a new preset. If you choose the latter, forScore will remove all outgoing messages for the current score or bookmark and replace them with the new preset instead.

One last detail—MIDI presets are referenced, not copied, so if you change which messages a preset sends you’ll be changing them for every score or button that uses that preset.

Next week we’re wrapping up our discussion of MIDI features with one last post, so don’t miss out!