58
T
HE
S
TANDARD
MIDI F
ILE AND
ESEQ F
ORMATS
The
Standard MIDI File format
is a sequence data file format
which has been adopted by a number of sequencing soft-
ware products for the IBM PC/AT and compatibles, the Apple
Macintosh, and a variety of other computers. There are actu-
ally two Standard MIDI File formats: Format 0 records all se-
quencer data for channels 1 through 16 as a single track,
whereas format 1 provides for an unlimited number of tracks,
each including data for one or more channels.
The
ESEQ format
is a sequence file format particular to Yamaha
products. This format is used by a number of popular Yamaha
sequencing devices, such as the QX3 and the Clavinova CVP
series.
The MDF3 writes its SEQ data files using Standard MIDI File
format 0. It is capable of playing back files written by other
devices in the Standard MIDI File format 0 or 1, as long as
they are stored on a disk which the MDF3 is capable of read-
ing (MS-DOS 1,440 kilobytes (2HD) or 720 kilobytes (2DD)).
Moreover, the MDF3 can play ESEQ sequence files while in
SEQ mode. It distinguishes between standard MIDI files and
ESEQ files by checking the file header. No conversion pro-
cess is required to play back ESEQ files.
Note:
Files named such as “PIANODIR.FIL”, “MUSIC.DIR”,
“NAME.MDA” included in the ESEQ disks are the setup files and
cannot be played back.
If you will use the MDF3 to play sequence files recorded by
other devices, be sure to keep these files and your MDF3 (or
MDF2) SEQ files on separate disks.
When you place a disk containing only non-SEQ files in the
MDF3, it will display the full file name (including the exten-
sion) of each file. Should you mix SEQ files together with
other sequence files on a single disk, however, the MDF3 will
display the names of the SEQ files only, making it impossible
to play the other files. Hence the need to keep SEQ files and
non-SEQ files on separate disks.
If you have a personal computer, you can trick the MDF3 into
playing back ESEQ files (or standard MIDI files created by
other devices) which you have saved on disks containing SEQ
files. To do so, you must use your computer to change the file
name extensions of the non-SEQ files. The method for ac-
complishing this is described in the following pages.
