You have a daisy chain of MIDI instrument all hooked together and you want to control them from your master keyboard or sequencer program.
Now you want the drum machine to play the drum part and a sound module to play the string part.
This is where the MIDI channels come in handy.
The MIDI channels allow you to designate which messages go to a particular machine.
You can program each machine to receive messages on one or more of the 16 MIDI channels.
For instance, you can set your drum machine to receive messages on channel 10 (the default channel for drum sounds) and set it with the string sounds to receive data on channel 1.
(You set the MIDI channels on your instrument by using the System Parameters menu.
Check your owner's manual for specific procedures.
) After you assign your channels, your master keyboard sends the performance information for both the drum machine and the sound module playing the string sounds across one MIDI cable.
Each receiving device responds only to the messages directed to the MIDI channel that it's assigned to receive.
In the scenario, the sound module with the string sounds receives all the data from the master keyboard, responds to the messages on channel 1, and simultaneously sends the data from the master keyboard to the drum machine (via the sounds module's through port).
The drum machine receives the same messages from the master keyboard as the sound module but only responds to those sent for channel 10.