welcome back to the video tutorial
series for the pirate midi Bridge 6 and
Bridge 4. today we're going to be
talking about the midi settings and midi
Hardware on your Bridge devices
BRIDGE6 Hardware
on the bridge six you can see we have a
din 5 midi out and a TRS midi in we also
have two flexi ports which are able to
be set to MIDI TRS type A type B ring
active and tip active and that's the
same on the bridge four the only
BRIDGE4 Hardware
difference is that the bridge 4's midi
in and midi out are 3.5 mil TRS Jacks
for saving space you can use any 3.5 mil
to din 5 or quarter inch TRS adapter and
they will work fine the great thing
Flexiport MIDI Out
about being able to switch the flexi
Port modes is that you don't need to
have specially white cables you can just
change the wiring effectively from the
bridge itself so if you have a Chase
Bliss pedal you choose the appropriate
flexiport midi I think it's ring active
and you can then just plug a normal TRS
cable between the flexi port on your
bridge and the midi Jack on your Chase
Bliss pedal and the same goes for
Alexander pedals which I believe use tip
active midi cables and then you can just
use a normal old TRS cable to connect
the two together no needing to label
your specially altered wiring cables the
Power WIDI Devices
midi out Jacks are also able to power a
CME wedi Jack which you can see I have
here with me when you plug in a CME
witty Jack
to the midi out on your Bridge four
you'll see that it's powered there
no external power source needed the same
is true of the midi out on the bridge
six and the flexi ports on both devices
when they are in type a mode they power
the witty Jack no problems
External MIDI Control
the bridge 6 is of course a midi device
which means that it can listen to MIDI
commands from other midi devices and you
can externally control the bridge as
I've said in a previous video you can
find the list of midi commands at the
end of the user manual this includes
changing Banks accessing particular
message stacks on particular switches it
even now includes controlling and
overriding the LED colors on each
individual LED whether it be the primary
or the secondary you can send particular
midi messages to change the color at
will from an external device let me show
you where you find the global midi
Global MIDI Settings
settings we'll go into the menu on our
Bridge six
scroll back to the global settings and
then we have a midi menu each midi
Explaining MIDI Channels
device that you have should be using a
different midi Channel and so your
Bridge 6 is by default set to Omni which
means it will listen to all messages
coming in on any midi Channel and it
will act on them if it's appropriate for
that device say for instance I send a
cc0 message to the bridge 6 on any midi
Channel it will toggle switch 1 because
it's listening to all midi channels
however if I change this to channel 1
and I send that message on channel 3
then the bridge 6 will ignore that midi
message and won't toggle switch 1
because it's only listening to messages
on midi Channel One let's save it to
MIDI channel one the next setting we
Explaining MIDI Thru
have is the midi through settings now
midi through means that anything coming
into your device it will also then send
out again through its own midi app put
this is exactly how you connect multiple
midi devices in a chain and get those
messages all the way along to the last
device in the chain on the bridge 6 and
the bridge 4 the midi through settings
are labeled a little bit differently
because they have different dedicated
Mini In and Out Jacks so on the bridge
six we're talking about the TRS in
and then you can set anything that's
coming in the TRS in to be sent out the
din 5 the USB the flexi Port 1 or the
flexi Port 2. so for now let's set it so
that anything coming in the TRS in
will go out of the din 5 midi out so
that means anything coming in the midi
in will be sent out the midi out sent
through
save that and I'll show you the same
thing on the bridge 4 because it does
look a little bit different we'll go to
the midi settings through routing and
you'll see we have trsn USB in flexi one
in and flexi 2 in which is the same
however the din 5 label is of course
changed to TRS because on the bridge 4
we have a TRS midi out not a dim five
midi out
the next thing you'll see is the USB in
and then the flexi Port one and two in
it's important to note that the flexi
Device Link MIDI Routing
one and flexi 2 in don't mean that you
can plug a midi in cable into your flexi
ports the flexi ports can only do midi
out but the device link is a special
two-way communication between pirate
midi devices which allows you to send
midi to and from each device so if you
have a device link network setup you
will need to use these flexi Port 1 and
flexi Port 2 midi in through routing
settings so that you can choose where to
send the MIDI
so on flexi Port 2 if there was in
device link mode I could choose to then
send that midi out of flexiport one if
that was in MIDI out mode another thing
MIDI Clock Settings
you'll find in the global midi settings
is the midi clock settings so the midi
clocks are Global across each bank and
their settings are found here we have
the clock outputs which chooses where
the midi clock will be sent out very
similar to the message outputs when
you're adding a message
so we currently can't set the flexi Port
one and two outputs because Flex support
one and two are not in MIDI out mode
the din 5 and USB are able to be
switched on and off so you can set your
midi clock to only be sent out one
particular midi output which is really
great if you are just controlling one
particular pedal and you don't want say
your laptop which is connected by USB to
be receiving midi clock over the USB
save that
you can of course set the clock outputs
for both clock A and B and then you have
PC Bank Outputs
the banking PC outputs so PC here stands
for program change like the midi message
and what this means is that by default
when you receive your Bridge six on
channel one it will send out a program
change message every time you change
Banks so if I change this one to channel
3 that means that every time I change
Banks on the bridge 6 a program change
message will be sent out on midi channel
3 out of flexi Port one so when you
change to bank one program change one
will be sent when you change to bank two
program change two etc etc all the way
up to 99. this is really great for
products like the HX stomp or strymon
pedals which have program change preset
recall ability
it just means that you can immediately
plug in your Bridge controller connect
it to something else with a midi cable
and every time you change Bank those
presets will be in sync and of course
you can turn that off because sometimes
that's not exactly how you want to set
it up now I'll just walk you through a
few extra things to know about using
midi with your Bridge 6 and your Bridge
4. midi notes are all assigned a number
MIDI Note Number Assignments
however some manufacturers link this
number with an actual note you might
have heard of C3 or C sharp three B3 B2
B1 these all account for the octaves of
that midi note however there's no actual
specification for which number should be
linked to which note on the midi
specifications so some manufacturers
will use middle C as C3 and some
manufacturers will use middle C and C4
now the confusion comes when a device
has a user manual where the notes aren't
assigned numbers but only given names
like C3 or C4 so just to clear up any
confusion we note number 60 as C3 which
means that if you're having trouble with
your device not receiving or not
appearing to receive that midi message
you should maybe try a C4 or C2 just in
case your device is using an offset
octave from that midi note number as
More Than 16 MIDI Channels?
I've alluded to before with each message
you can turn an output on or off and
what this means is that even though midi
is limited to 16 channels you can have
messages sent out of each of the four
individual midi outs available to you on
a bridge six or a bridge four and so you
can have 16 messages being sent out
flexi Port 1 to 16 different devices on
their own channel and that will in no
way interact with a separate 16 devices
that you may have on flexi Port 2 all
linked up together so theoretically you
could have 48
you could have 48 midi devices connected
up that would be quite a lot and from
what I've heard not many people ever get
past 16 midi devices and needing that
many channels but if the need arises you
can easily do that using the flexi ports
the midi out and the USB midi out in
Outro
terms of midi settings that's all there
is to show you today thanks very much
for watching I'll see you next time
