MidiMessage

Class Overview

MidiMessage is the base class for MIDI messages. They include not only the standard MIDI messages that a synthesizer can respond to, but also "meta-events" that can be used by sequencer programs. There are meta-events for such information as lyrics, copyrights, tempo indications, time and key signatures, markers, etc. For more information, see the Standard MIDI Files 1.0 specification, which is part of the Complete MIDI 1.0 Detailed Specification published by the MIDI Manufacturer's Association (http://www.midi.org).

The base MidiMessage class provides access to three types of information about a MIDI message:

• The messages's status byte
• The total length of the message in bytes (the status byte plus any data bytes)
• A byte array containing the complete message

The MIDI standard expresses MIDI data in bytes. However, because Java^TM uses signed bytes, the Java Sound API uses integers instead of bytes when expressing MIDI data. For example, the getStatus() method of MidiMessage returns MIDI status bytes as integers. If you are processing MIDI data that originated outside Java Sound and now is encoded as signed bytes, the bytes can can be converted to integers using this conversion:

If you simply need to pass a known MIDI byte value as a method parameter, it can be expressed directly as an integer, using (for example) decimal or hexidecimal notation. For instance, to pass the "active sensing" status byte as the first argument to ShortMessage's setMessage(int) method, you can express it as 254 or 0xFE.

Summary

[Expand] Inherited Methods

From class java.lang.Object Object clone() Creates and returns a copy of this object. boolean equals(Object obj) Indicates whether some other object is "equal to" this one. void finalize() Called by the garbage collector on an object when garbage collection determines that there are no more references to the object. final Class<?> getClass() Returns the runtime class of this Object. int hashCode() Returns a hash code value for the object. final void notify() Wakes up a single thread that is waiting on this object's monitor. final void notifyAll() Wakes up all threads that are waiting on this object's monitor. String toString() Returns a string representation of the object. final void wait() Causes the current thread to wait until another thread invokes the notify() method or the notifyAll() method for this object. final void wait(long timeout, int nanos) Causes the current thread to wait until another thread invokes the notify() method or the notifyAll() method for this object, or some other thread interrupts the current thread, or a certain amount of real time has elapsed. final void wait(long timeout) Causes the current thread to wait until either another thread invokes the notify() method or the notifyAll() method for this object, or a specified amount of time has elapsed.