Program Change Messages and Bank Select Messages

To select a patch, that is, a sound in your MIDI device you must send a program change message to that device.

Program Change Messages

You can record program change messages, or enter them in a MIDI part. You can open the Inspector for the MIDI track and select a value in the Program Selector field.

Program change messages allow you to select between 128 different patches in your MIDI device.

Bank Select Messages

Many MIDI instruments, however, contain a larger number of patch locations. To make these available from within Nuendo, you must send bank select messages.

Bank select messages allow you to select between 128 different programs in your MIDI device.

If your device supports MIDI bank select, you can open the Inspector for the MIDI track and select a value in the Bank Selector field to select a bank, and then use the Program Selector field to select a program in this bank.

Unfortunately, different instrument manufacturers use different schemes for how bank select messages are constructed, which can lead to some confusion and make it hard to select the correct sound. Also, selecting patches by numbers seems unnecessarily cumbersome, when most instruments use names for their patches nowadays.

The MIDI Device Manager allows you to specify which MIDI devices you are using, and to select to which device each MIDI track is routed. This allows you to select patches by name in the track list or Inspector.