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This page is read from MIDI Instrument Definitions, a Python library used in the author's other projects, in which every number is traced to a document its maker published. Its source is on GitHub.

Korg MS-20 mini MIDI implementation

The MIDI implementation of the Korg MS-20 mini: what it answers to.

At a glance

Firmware
Not recorded.
MIDI channel
1 only.
MIDI mode
3: omni off, poly.
Voices
Not recorded.
Note range
12 to 91: C0 to G6, counting middle C as C4.
Velocity
Ignored. Release velocity is ignored.
Aftertouch
None, sent or answered.
Pitch bend
Not recorded.
Program change
Not received or sent.
MIDI clock
Neither sent nor received.
Start and stop
Neither sent nor received.
Control change
None.
NRPN
None.
System exclusive
None.

Where these facts come from

Source documents

How they were read

Korg's MIDI Implementation for this instrument, which is 2,212 bytes of plain text - the smallest MIDI document in this library - and the four-page Owner's Manual, whose second page carries the MIDI Implementation Chart.

THE CHART IS NOT IN THE DOCUMENT CALLED AN IMPLEMENTATION, AND THAT IS WHY ALL FIVE WERE READ. The implementation is two tables of status bytes with no chart rows in it at all; the chart is on a page of the owner's manual, between a German introduction and a French one. That is the second time in four instruments that the chart has been somewhere other than the document named for it - korg/kronos at rank 89 had its in the appendices of an operation guide, 884 printed pages from the implementation it summarised, and this corpus wrote that instrument up as having none before the page was found. The rule from it is applied here rather than restated: every page of every document this maker publishes was read.

FIVE DOCUMENTS, AND THREE OF THEM ARE ABOUT A DIFFERENT INSTRUMENT. The downloads page lists an MS-20 Original Owner's Manual, MS-20 Original Setting Examples and an MS-20 Patch Book - 54 MB of reprints of the 1978 MS-20's paperwork. They cannot describe this instrument's MIDI, and that is Korg's own statement rather than an inference from the date: among the ways it lists the MS-20 mini as differing from the original is "Equipped with MIDI IN connector and USB port" (manual p. 2), so the original has neither. The reprints are there because "We recommend reading the reprint of the original Owner's Manual for in depth descriptions of the various controls and their functions." (manual p. 2) - the panel is the 1978 panel, and only what is new is in the new manual.

AND THEY WERE CHECKED ANYWAY, WITH ONE LIMIT WORTH STATING. All three were fetched and searched: none contains Basic Channel, True Voice, Implementation Chart, Recognized, Transmitted, MIDI, Control Change or Program Change. But two of the three are scans with no text layer at all - 44 pages and 32 pages, zero words between them - so for those two a text search proves nothing and what carries the claim is the sentence above. The Patch Book has 453 words and is genuinely searched. Their digests are in the provenance record beside the implementation; they are not in this library, because 54 MB of a 1978 panel's documentation supports one sentence of this definition.

WHAT THE TWO MIDI DOCUMENTS DISAGREE ABOUT, WHICH IS NOTHING. Every row of the chart has a counterpart in the implementation's tables and every one agrees. The implementation adds the keyboard's span, *1 : kk = 48 ~ 84 (37Keys) (implementation), which the chart gives as its transmitted Note Number; the chart adds the True Voice row, the fixed velocity values and the USB footnote, which the implementation has no column for. Two documents, one map, and between them they say more than either does alone.

NOT RECORDED: the mode. The chart's Mode row crosses its transmitted cell and gives 3 recognised, which is this format's figure - but its Messages row is crossed in both columns, so the mode cannot be set over MIDI at all, and the six channel mode messages the implementation lists are each glossed as an all-notes-off. mode: 3 is recorded on the recognised cell, and what it does not mean is that 1, 2 and 4 are available.

NOT RECORDED EITHER: the polyphony, which no document states and which is one by construction - the manual's own title block reads "[MONOPHONIC SYNTHESIZER]" (manual p. 2) and the chart's model line is under it, but that is a category rather than a voice count, so the field is left to a reader who counts the oscillators. The patch panel, which is this instrument's real interface and has no MIDI at all. And the trigger input, named in the auto-power-off condition beside MIDI - "Sound is produced with the keyboard; Note On via MIDI IN or USB MIDI; input to TRIG IN" (manual p. 3) - which is how a 1978 synthesiser was sequenced, and still is.