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iPhone Midi

iPhone midi applications are becoming more and more important for musicians and hobbyist. Connecting a midi device to your iPhone is one of the most unique features on iOS compared to Android and other Windows devices. The addition of CoreAudio, CoreMidi and innerAppAudio in iOS 7 make music and synthesizers so powerful on the iPhone using some great apps in the App Store.

The powerful audio services in iOS caused the existence of great iPhone music accessories which make the iPhone such a great tool for musicians and hobbyist alike.

What is Midi:

Midi stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is simply a connection type between musical instruments just like USB and other connections between computers and devices. This connection allows musical instruments to talk to each other and to other computers. Therefore, connecting a midi instrument to your iPhone is an amazing way to control your midi instrument.

You can easily connect your midi instrument to your iPhone by attaching a 9 pin lightening to USB cable, or the older 30 pin to USB iPhone cable. Both cables allow your iPhone to connect a midi interface like iRig which can be connected to your midi instrument.

What can you do:

There are lots of resources on the internet that explains midi and how it works. The focus on this page is to expose you to the possibility of connecting your iPhone to your midi instrument and and the ability to use your iPhone as a sequencer, a sampler, a drum machine, a synthesizer, or a sound module or more.

Whatever instrument you play, if it has a midi connection, you will be able to connect it to your iPhone and do amazing things.

You will find great apps that use your iPhone to control and manipulate your instrument. You can create a whole band with your instrument and a good app on the App Store.

There are tons of iPhone midi controller apps that allow to trigger your synthesizer, drum machine, or sound module. Thanks to iOS 7 CoreAudio and InnerAppAudio which allow you to control the audio output of one iPhone application from another application like AudioBus and GarageBand are greate examples of implementing those new iOS 7 features.

How to Connect Midi:

The connection to from your iPhone to your instrument is very easy. The first thing you need is a lightening to USB cable or a camera connection kit. This cable allows you to connect not only your camera to your iPhone but also other devices like keyboards, sound input, and Midi modules.

Therefore, once you have your lightening to USB cable ready, there is no driver or anything to install. Simply run the iPhone midi application that you have, and turn on your midi instrument and you should be able to trigger your iPhone from the instrument, or trigger your instrument from the iPhone depending on the iPhone midi application that you have.

iPhone midi connection

Those midi modules will have one portion that connect to your USB port on your lightening cable, and the other portion will have one or two midi connections. You should connect the Midi in to your midi out , and midi out to your midi in on your instrument.

Some instruments don't have midi, and just have a USB port which is even simpler as those instrument use USB to talk to your iPhone. Therefore, you just need a USB cable from your iPhone to your instrument.

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